19 August 2010
Hall of Mirrors
(Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. Photo VisitingDC.com)
I am seated at my table, peering suspiciously into the screen of the laptop. I have installed mirrored panels on rich wooden sliding doors to replace the original metal bi-fold doors on the closets.
It gives the illusion of space in the little apartment, a useful thing that normally helps to keep the claustrophobic dimensions of urban living at bay.
This morning I look up and see myself reflected in endless facets, each identical but diminished in size. I feel things contracting this morning, falling into the endless series of sameness. My sister reports it was another of those mornings, fierce resistance to change, the same conversation between parent and child that occurred the day before and the ones before that.
I have been reading up on what is happening to us. Dad’s fate has been bearable to the degree that Mom was able to deny it was happening. The struggle to keep his driver’s license was one battle that eventually passed without significant incident; his essence had fled in the moment that he still might have been able to take the wheel, and the public at large was saved.
What was left as he burned away was a gentle soul, accepting.
Combat troops are out of Iraq, they are saying on the radio, though 50,000 troops remain in the country, and battalions of contractors will be deployed in the months to come to pick up the slack. It is a clever slight of hand, and there will be no death of volunteers to serve in the hall of mirrors that is that country today.
We have the largest American Embassy in the world there, and thousands will be cloaked within its fortress walls, a palace by any other name in a land that Saddam sprinkled with his royal residences.
He is long gone, of course, though the shadow of his passing still lies across the decade like a wraith.
It is funny what remains as things pass away. Did I mention that my Mom was the first of her family to go to college? She clawed her way to a scholarship after Grandpa died, so long ago that of course we never got to meet him, see his smooth good looks or experience his towering rages. Did I mention that Mom managed to get through a four-year education in just two and a half years?
She noted the accelerated program for the men, so they could graduate and go to war, so she just followed along with her schedule, classes so close together that she sometimes would save time getting between them by jumping out a convenient window.
What is emerging from her sweet sunny nature, as it wafts away, is that fierce determination. My poor sister has been dealing with it all this summer. Yesterday was the first day at Potemkin Village Assisted Living.
Apparently she spent a great deal of time at the balcony window, watching for her car to arrive so she could once more take to the roads.
That cannot happen, and the keys have been hidden. But I am looking at the reflections in my mirrored doors, the images getting smaller in each iteration, but still with all the detail of the original.
I am fearing a jailbreak attempt when my sister returns to her home far away. It is my turn to be there next, in less than two weeks.
Did I mention that Mom is very determined?
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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