I am nearing the end of Knife by Salman Rushdie. There is a passage in the book that continues to return to my thoughts. It captures the moment when Rushdie determines that it is time for him to look at the man in the mirror “mirror man”. He peers at the deep gashes crossing his face and neck as well as his right eye lid tightly sewn shut. He touches the mirror in front of him and pushes through to the other side and an interesting series of memories burst forward.

Dearest mirror woman.
Who do I see?
What world exists behind the looking glass?
What movies flash before me?

The movie begins.

“What is wrong with your mom?” asks a six year old boy in my class who seems at unease.
“What do you mean?”
“There is nothing wrong with my mom.” I respond.
“Her eye.” he says.

I look closely at the woman standing in front of our class. My mom was a surprise visit and had come to teach us about color. We look at the paper plates in front of us with three blobs of yellow, red, and blue paint. As mom starts to speak, I look around the room and each of my classmates are staring in fascination at my mom.

And then I see her eye.

The lid covered in spider veins and red around the edges. The green iris looking slightly in the wrong direction. The same eye that I would often see her cleaning in our bathroom at home. The glass eye that replaced the one she lost at the age of nineteen.

As she instructs us on color theory and tells us to dip our brushes in yellow and then blue and to mix them together various degrees of green swirls appear on the paper before us.

Magic before our eyes.

She asks “Does anyone know how to make purple? How about orange? What about black?”

I know the answer to each question, but sit quietly.

I look up at my mom and she smiles back at me.

I look around the room and see plates filled with so many different rainbows of color. Heads down creating their own art. Eyes fixated on creating.

I sit there in silence. I am so proud she is my mom.

Mirror woman.
Thank you for bringing back this beautiful memory.
I had not visited this moment in forty years.