Thursday, September 8, 2016

Remnants Of An Evolution


Time....it can't be tasted, smelled, touched, or heard; but it can be seen if we know where to look.  We can see the sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle trail that it leaves behind. When we still ourselves long enough, it can be felt, not by our hands, but by our souls.

Mirrors have always held a fascination for me. I have no clue why they just did. Before I was tall enough to stand and see myself in the bathroom mirror, I would shimmy up and sit on the sink. I would sit there and look at myself for what seemed like hours. I don't think it was about vanity, it was as if I was studying myself, trying to see beyond the outside of myself. I would stare into my own eyes, memorizing them, the imaginings of a child racing through my mind.

I would also watch my Mom when she would be getting dressed for work and would be looking in the mirror. In my child eyes my Mother was the most beautiful of all the Mothers on the planet! Isn't that how we think as children? As time has moved on I've watched the changes in her face and in her physical form, just as I have watched the changes in mine. I watched her once bright eyes turn slightly blood shot, the ever darkening circles under her eyes, gray  hairs, wrinkles. I'll be honest with you, I found myself thinking, "I don't want that to happen to me".



Now, we are years down the road and I am a mother myself. Today I look at my mother and she is just as beautiful to me as she was when I was a child, even more so. I understand now that every change to her physical form is simply an outward manifestation of the blessings that God has given to her.

Her blood shot eyes came from years as working as a nurse, 11 pm to 7 am, coming home to get us ready for school, grabbing a few hours sleep and then going to school herself to work on her BSN degree. In between all of that she found a way to take us to dance classes, cheer leading practices, and track practices. My Mom never complained, she always had a smile for us, and the patients that she cared for.

Then came the grey hair, her beautiful silver white hairs. My Mom always says that her grey hairs are symbols of the "wisdoms" that God has gifted her with over the years of her life. (She'll be 83 this year. She wouldn't mind me telling you.) Then there are the wrinkles, facial road maps of her emotions. When you look at her face you can see remnants of the first smile that she had when she saw her babies for the first time, when she saw us take our first steps, when we graduated from High School and College, when she became a Grand Mother. There are worry lines as well...worrying about us when we started hanging out with friends, when we started driving, dating *laughing*.

I look at myself in the mirror and I see the same changes in me that I saw in her. At first I thought what little physical appeal I may have had was fading, that I just needed to accept it and move on. Now, I know that I have been blessed. I am running the race that God has set my feet upon and the changes in me like those in my Mother are simply the physical manifestations of that race. I know why my eyes are always a bit blood shot and have bags under them that won't go away, why I have silver white hairs that are starting to take over the front of my hairline. But more than that, I realize that the beauty that I see in my Mother I will someday see in my own reflection.

Much Love,

Pandora



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