Mirror; a last minute request works

Here was what happened eighteen hours ago.

"Dad, I need your help. Can you write me a tale about a mirror for my submission tomorrow?" I knew then the extra scoop of ice cream was not the norm then. With the 'goading' by the mother, I relented and here is my 'other scoop' of works.

The mirror reflects us in our surrounding. It does not speak nor does it move unless we moved. I am not a mirror but young person with an affinity towards mirror. I knew that one day when I was in my grandfather’s room. He had passed on but his memory remained with us. I was close with him and still recalled the hours I spend with him in the room. He was mostly sleeping on the bed while I played there next to him. He told me a lot of stories of his travels and that soon made me intrigued that his life was more than just lying there on the bed. It was much later I found out that he was sick soon after an accident at the workplace and was bedridden since. One day I asked him of his travels and this was he told me.

“I am here on the bed due to my accident but most times I am not here. I am in my mirror. My mirror takes me places I cannot reach and be the person I cannot be anymore. “

It was from there I learned of his secret.

“The mirror is handed down to our family by a passing stranger. He left with my father and him to me. The stranger told us that he was dying and he had no one to give it to. My father took his offer for we were need of a mirror then. What my father did not tell me then was the purpose of the mirror until near his death.

“Son, there are gifts in life that only miracles can bring. I was a father to you but I have not much to spare for you and your mother in the family times. I had wished many a times to be with you but the work brings the food to the table. I regretted that but with this gift I was with you. I was in your dream running in the park and having that picnic or we were at the seaside.”

I did not understand then until he showed me the mirror. It was a hand held mirror with an oblong frame with the crafted designs on the frame. At the back of the mirror was the print; made with pride.

My father then told me of the words to speak and then I saw a change from my view. I was no more myself in the physical sense but I was there. I was looking at myself seated next to my father. Then I saw myself looking at me.

Was it real?

I recalled then I was asking myself or the other self who I was. It took my father some words to calm us down and then he told us of the mirror.

“It will take you to places where you appeared as real. You are not limited to your physical state here.”

It scared me and I had the mirror stored away. I had it wrapped in cloth and stored in a box that was kept in a huge case with layers of books over it.

I had forgotten of it until I was to go to college. I uncovered it by accident and then I recalled the words told to me. I sat there and looked at it. It was then I saw the photograph of me with my first set of new jeans.

It was Texwood. It was the brand to be ranked with Levis and AMCO then. I was to show it to Jenny.

“Jenny….I wondered where are you?” It was then I took my first approach to the experience with the mirror. I recited the words and then closed my eyes.

Maybe I was expecting fireworks or maybe some heavy metal music which I adored then when younger.

Or maybe the opening music from Star Wars.

The resounding electronic keyboard with the violins and biolas. I knew my music for I was into the scene as an aspiring music conductor.

But there was no sound coming out of the mirror.

I opened my eyes and saw my reflection in it. I recalled then that I was looking at the mirror with my thoughts on how I will look in the new clothes and how will Jenny feel then. Jenny was my girlfriend then.

“Hi Jimmy. That looked neat on you.” I looked at my clothes and then I was dressed in a new red shirt and jeans that held a waist line of thirty two with the classy new sneakers. I looked up and saw Jenny. She was in her usual; the old worn out shirt and skirt made from jeans and sandals.

It was unreal for I had not seen Jenny for five year then when she had died in a car accident. She did not meet me that day when I wore the new jeans. She was…. dead.

“You looked like you saw a ghost.” Jenny approached me. I looked around and tried to make sense of my surrounding but it was more unreal then. I was back at the park where I was supposed to meet Jenny. The garden seat was still there and so were the bed of flowers but I recalled they were removed to make way for the new shed there. I was there last week. That was the real event.

“Jimmy, speak to me. Are you fine?” I saw her right hand reached me on my left forearm. It was unnerving and I stepped back. It was then I found myself back at my room and staring at the mirror. I stepped away and reasserted my emotions then.

Did I see a ghost then? Was it real? Was I ever real there?

The challenge was to do it again. It was the foolishness of youth. I grabbed the mirror and thought of my jeans and Jenny.

“Hello, Jimmy. You are back.”

It was my first of many more trips in the mirror that I re-visited my past. I met my old friends, old places and even my dead grandfather.

“Hello Jimmy. I see that you have grown up. Please tell me of your life.”

Surreal or real but I told him everything of what I could recall. We shared our activities and knew more of my father not mentioned before. He told me the older days when he was younger.

“You know Jimmy a year after you were born we came to see you and your parents during your one year birthday. It was the first time we saw you. Your dad and myself never spoke for a long time but when you were born, he told us about it. Sorry he did not tell us. He wrote a note and left it at our house. The same home he was staying for over twenty five years before he left to be with your mother. You were born in his twenty six years of age.” I recalled then my Grandfather smiling.

“We went to the address he wrote. Your grandma and myself was there during that birthday of yours. We had our first meal with you and your mother with you in my hands. You were a great baby then and very much like your father. Both of you were adorable when younger in the cradle of love but like him, you turned out differently when you get older.”

It was true that I became a tyrant in my adult life as was my father. Ironically, I never seek my father for I was in fear of him; alive and dead. He was not the one that you want to meet every day or missed your dinner when he was at the table. The only kind words that he spoke to me were on my birthday. It was a single syllable; Happy Birthday. I was surprised that he called me to his bedside and handed the mirror. It was the only conversation which we had that was more than one syllable.

Back to the mirror, I found myself soon a frequent visitor in the mirror. As mentioned I was in there or was with it or was it was in me, I was not sure.

Today, I am in the same bed my father had lain on. I was seconds to leaving this world but I have an unfinished work here. I looked at my right hand holding the one thing that I had treasured for so long. I looked outside the room to the assembled members of my family and those that still count as my kin. None had dared to come in and say their final farewell. Even my pastor had done the final rites in the abbreviated version.

I was bad. So were my father and his father. I knew this for I was able to ask the later. He told me my dad was not that bad but misunderstood. So was I. I guessed I am my best in the mirror world. In the real world, I was the ‘black sheep that the shepherd had not bothered to bring into his flock’.

But I held the family inheritance. Funny I used that word. It should be a curse. A family curse.

It was then I stared at it. I wished I may see my grandfather but my father turned up instead. He stood there as if he was alive but both of us knew that we were in the mirror.

“Jimmy, you are the beholder now. Do as you please but bear this in mind. We cannot change the past no matter how many times we visited it.”

“No, Father. We cannot change the past but reliving it in here does not make it better either. We have to look beyond the image that we see. We have to improve on the image for the better. I have to stop the reliving and began living as I should be. My son will not carry this curse into his life. He will live his life as it progressed. That’s why we call it a life and not a reflection.”

With that I tossed the mirror to the wall and it broke.

It also broke the barrier to my family love. They rushed in to comfort me and in my dying breaths I told my son this.

“Life is not looking at the mirror but looking from it as life unfolds for you what was to be reflected. “

I left them with my conscience that the curse was lifted.

I was wrong.

I met my son today.

“Dad, I got your note and the mirror you broke was Mum’s.  You wrote the words for me. So how are you? Still the bad dude, huh?”

I guessed like my father I should have stuck to one syllable and not three that sounded like this.

“One for all and all for one.”