A Face Without a Reflection

by Bowen, Linda Lee

  I was upset by this thought. “Does that mean he can’t go in other parts of the house?”

  “Oh no,” she explained. “He’ll go wherever we go. But when we’re busy or have someplace to go, he’ll have a nice spot that’s all his where we won’t have to worry about him getting into trouble.”

  I was relieved and very agreeable to the arrangement. I liked the idea of Spirit having his own space, and the laundry room was the perfect spot. It was located just off the kitchen, which was where we spent most of our time. The door that led outside from the laundry room was almost never used, as it emptied into the side yard, where there was no path. My mother used to call it the “door to nowhere” and often placed things in front of it that prevented it from being easily opened.

  “We’ll have to take the folding table from the room, but that won’t be a big deal. I’ll just fold the laundry on the kitchen table.” She looked lovingly at Spirit. “Please keep this minor inconvenience in my mind whenever you’re thinking of tinkling in the house instead of in the yard,” she told him sarcastically.

  He stared up at her with wide eyes as if to say, “Yes, ma’am,” and then wiggled his way to her bare feet before rolling over on his back.

  “He wants a belly rub.” She leaned down to tickle his pink little tummy; and we all sat together in the grass as Spirit tugged on the strings of our hearts.

  CHAPTER 5

  NO WAY TO END A DAY

  The day flew by quickly, and soon it was time to get myself and Spirit ready for bed. I was still hoping that Spirit would be allowed to sleep in my room, but Mother insisted that he stay downstairs so as not to awaken me through the night. I considered protesting but knew it would be futile. Besides, I was too overcome by the joy of a perfect day to waste a single breath on anything but gratitude. I stood before the mirror in my favorite pink and gray pajamas watching my mother as she brushed my hair. This had been part of our nightly routine for as long as I could remember, mostly because my hair drove my mother a little crazy.

  “This hair has a mind of its own,” she would say after another futile attempt to keep the wispy strands from assaulting my face.

  She tried everything from barrettes to gel to very short cuts, but nothing could tame my unruly mousey-brown mane. It didn’t help that the hair on the back of my head had several stubborn cowlicks that made it curly, while the hair on the sides was very fine and perfectly straight. To anyone else it would have been a losing battle. But to my mother, it was just something else she had to deal with.

  “I think if we keep it no longer than shoulder length and comb the curls out every night, we might be able to train it to behave.” Her plan hadn’t worked so far.

  “Mommy,” I began as she tackled the knots and tangles in my hair, “do you think Daddy would have loved Spirit as much as we do?”

  The hairbrush halted halfway through my cowlicks, and a tiny gasp passed through my mother’s lips just before she stopped breathing.

  “I mean, he loved dogs, right? You said he was always bringing home strays and taking care of them until he found them good homes. So, he must have loved them.”

  “Oh my, yes,” she said, after taking a deep breath. “Nothing could be truer of your father. He loved all animals, but he had an affinity for dogs, especially those in need of a home.”

  My face lit up as the longing in my heart pleaded for more. I loved my mother’s stories of the compassionate, selfless man who was tragically lost while serving his country before I was born. Her grand accounts of my father’s unparalleled love and kindness for the earth and everything in it filled me with joy. I wanted to be just like the man I’d never met. I waited for my mother’s words to summon the spirit of the man who was too good to be true and fill my heart with his presence.

  “He never turned away a single stray,” she said. “He cared for them as if they were his own while he searched high and low for the perfect family who was meant to be theirs alone. When a match was found, he took them to their forever home, where they lived happily ever after.”

  My eyes sparkled with hope.

  “So,” she said, “the answer to your question is…yes! Yes, darling. He would have loved Spirit with all his heart. Just as he loved you.”

  My smile was ear to ear as she kissed the top of my head and turned me toward my bed. It had been a long day, and my body was ready for sleep. But the smell of the freshly laundered linens awakened my senses, and the crisp white cotton beckoned me to make snow angels in the sheets as my mother shook her head.

  “Where does all that energy come from?” she asked as she swept away the angels and straightened up the sheets.

  I wiggled under the covers, so she could tuck me in. But I was not yet ready for sleep.

  “Mom,” I began, propped up on one elbow, “you know how you always say that Daddy is in heaven and his spirit watches over us every day?” She smiled and gave me a nod. “Well, I was just thinking…if he wants to be with us as much as we want to be with him, maybe he decided to reincarnate and come back as a dog.”

  The shock that registered on my mother’s face was off the charts, and she stood frozen in place with her eyes opened wide. There was no question that this was the most imaginative thought I’d had in my eleven years, and it turned everything that had always been true upside down. It was as if in a split second we supernaturally switched roles and she was the one who searched for logic and reason while I floated carelessly on a cloud of impossibility.

  “Wow!” she finally exclaimed more loudly than warranted. “Wouldn’t that be something?” Her head bobbed up and down as if it was on a spring while I continued to hold on to my lifeline of irrational thinking.

  “It’s a very interesting idea, Lily,” she offered, while I remained convicted that I’d just uncovered a great mystery of life. “Really!” she continued unconvincingly. “I absolutely wouldn’t have thought of that one myself. Not in a million years!”

  The fact that my mother was stumbling over her words somehow gave me hope. What if my idea had come from a source far greater than either my mother or me? What if I’d just been given a key to a door in the universe that held the secret to eternal life? What if what I thought was true…and my father was Spirit?

  “Honey,” my mother began, “I know this isn’t what you want to hear. But the truth is…people don’t come back after they’re gone. We’ve talked about this, right? I mean…we’ve talked about life and death, haven’t we?”

  No…we never talked about life and death. Or about anything that truly mattered. I had an unspoken understanding of what she believed in, but that didn’t mean I agreed with her. It just meant that I didn’t want to disagree out loud.

  “I mean, it’s very, very sad,” she said to my blank stare. “But it’s something we have to accept. There is no such thing as reincarnation. People die, and they don’t come back. They don’t come back as snails or animals or even other people. They just don’t. Death is a part of life, and we have no control over it. It’s simply not up to us when someone will die, and we don’t understand why or how it happens. It just happens.”

  My heart pounded violently inside of my chest. I wanted to scream in protest and make everything she said disappear. And…I wanted her to disappear, too.

  “The best we can do is be grateful for the time they were here on earth,” she offered feebly, “and be thankful for the love they left behind.”

  My mind was a maelstrom of emotions and fear that threated to burst inside of my brain, and I was helpless against the powerful force that was about to explode.

  “But that’s not fair!” I erupted. “I never had a chance even to meet him, so how am I supposed to be grateful? How do I give thanks for something I never knew?” My fists pounded the bed as tears filled my eyes. “Argh!” I shouted into my pillow. “It stinks!” I lifted my head and spoke to the ceiling, avoiding my mother. “Just because you got to love him doesn’t mean I did.”

  My mind was not capable of contr
olling my fear as spirits of rejection and abandonment soon took hold of my brain. I wallowed in self-pity as remorse and regret for the words I’d just spoken overwhelmed and convicted me of the unforgivable sin of breaking my mother’s heart.

  “It’s your fault he’s not here,” the voice in my head said as guilt and despair swallowed up everything that was left of my spirit.

  I needed my mother now more than ever, but I didn’t have the courage to face her. I wished I could erase everything that just happened and restore my life to the moment before I stepped out of my comfort zone and ventured into the realm of the impossible. I didn’t belong in my mother’s creative world. That was her turf, not mine. And I made a vow to never again imagine more than I could grasp.

  But my immediate problem was that dying seemed like a more acceptable alternative than facing my mother. I laid perfectly still with my head buried in my very damp pillow when I felt my mother’s hand glide gently across the small of my back. Every rigid muscle in my body melted by her touch as the walls I’d built around my heart came crashing down.

  “Lily,” she said, just above a whisper. “Lily,” she repeated. “Honey, I’m so sorry.”

  I tossed the pillow onto the floor, spun around, and threw myself into her arms as she rocked me back and forth.

  “I’m sorry, Mommy! I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean it,” I confessed.

  “Shh,” she quieted me as we continued swaying. “It’s okay. I get it. I do.”

  We stayed in that position until I knew it was safe to look at her and she at me. Then I unwrapped my arms from around her neck and sat with my back against the pillows as she wiped the tears that were still on my face.

  “The thing is,” she said, brushing strands of hair from my eyes, “I know that you feel your dad’s love every day. I know you do. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to miss him.”

  I held on to her words for dear life.

  “Love is not something that lives in the wind, Lily. It isn’t here one day and gone the next. Real love exists in the very air that we breathe. It fills us up and gives us life. The air never goes away, even if people do.”

  My heart leapt; I wanted desperately to believe what she said was true.

  “Close your eyes, honey,” she instructed as she held my hand. “Now pretend that your lungs are a single red balloon that you are filling up with air. Then take a deep, deep breath, and hold on to it for a moment.”

  I did just as she said. Closing my eyes, I imagined my lungs as one big balloon that expanded as my breath poured into it. Holding on to the air, I felt the balloon begin to pulsate, as if it had its own heartbeat. The feeling wasn’t uncomfortable, as I’d expected it would be; instead it felt as if new life was inside of me. I welcomed this feeling and held on to it for as long as I could. Then I released the air very slowly until every breath was expelled. I kept my eyes closed until my lungs functioned normally again.

  “That was Daddy!” I stated.

  This undeniable truth brought an awareness that my father’s presence was as close as my breathing, and it filled every cell and fiber within me. I looked at my mother with awe and smiled as I wiped the tears from her eyes. The air was unquestionably lighter all around me, and I wanted to lie awake all night just to breathe it in. I scooted down under the covers to get ready for sleep, but my mind refused to cooperate.

  “Why don’t we have any pictures of him?” I asked as my mom reached to turn out the light.

  She sighed as she pulled her hand away from the switch and sat down in the chair next to my bed.

  “I don’t know,” she replied as she made herself comfortable. “He was in the army when we met, and it seemed as if he was always away on one assignment or another, so we didn’t want to waste a single moment of the time we were given. When I think about it, I doubt that we gave any thought at all to taking pictures. Of course”—she sniggered—“things might have been different if we’d had a camera.”

  “Minor point,” I said as she nodded and smiled.

  My mother’s stories of my father were like a romance novel of a courageous young soldier whose love for his country was an overpowering force in his life. She described him many times as a hero who was driven by a warrior’s spirit that was only satisfied by the relentless pursuit of freedom for those who were unable to fight for themselves. As a true champion for the underprivileged and downtrodden, he left the comfort of home to travel to sundrenched deserts where men were blinded by powerful sandstorms and many fell victim to the intense heat that surrounded them. His heart beat to help others. He never quit, and he never gave up hope as he continued to return again and again to the battleground until one day when he didn’t come home. My mother’s stories about my father were epic and often beyond my comprehension. But I soaked every one of them in and embraced her memories as if they were my own. To me he was bigger than life, and no one in my eyes could ever live up to the man who sacrificed his life for others.

  It seems strange now, but I had never asked my mother for a detailed physical description of my father. I don’t know why. I certainly never suspected that she had intentionally withheld this information from me. But the need to know him overwhelmed me, and my mother knew there was no escaping the task she had avoided until now.

  “Do you want me to paint a picture for you?” she asked.

  “Oh yes, please!”

  She closed her eyes as her nostrils flared to take in a deep breath. “You don’t deserve this,” she whispered as the air left her lips.

  I asked her what she’d meant by that, but she brushed me off and pulled her chair closer to me. She sat low in the seat, her legs stretched out on the bed, arms folded across her chest. I thought she was ready to begin when she wiggled around again, this time with a deeply furrowed brow. It looked like she was trying to escape from a straitjacket, and an eternity passed before she finally leaned back into the chair, bowed her head, and took one more deep breath.

  “You’ll have to close those big brown eyes,” she instructed. “Breathe deeply, and let go of all your thoughts. Empty your mind of everything. Just pretend it is a blank canvas, and my words are the strokes of a paintbrush.”

  My eyes were shut tight, and I tried hard to follow her directions.

  “Don’t forget to breathe,” I heard her say, and I felt my face soften and my body relax as fresh air was taken in and then released.

  “Are you ready?” she asked.

  “I think so.”

  “Okay. Good.” She drew in a deep, quiet breath and then slowly let it out. “Imagine a man with long, wavy, chestnut-brown hair. It’s all one length and hangs just below his chin. He keeps it tucked behind both ears, but one wayward strand falls stubbornly over his right eye.” She paused for a moment.

  “I’ve got it,” I said, peaking at her with one eye.

  She gave me the thumbs-up sign, and I shut both eyes again.

  “Now look at his eyes. They are deep set and as blue as the deepest part of the sea. They twinkle like the brightest stars in the heavens and seem to dance in the moonlight. These are eyes that see only the good in all living things. They are happy, tender, mesmerizing eyes that light up the world around him.”

  My heart began to melt as I felt the love that he saw through his eyes and imagined he was looking at me.

  “His nose is long and narrow with a little round tip on the end. There is nothing particularly unique about this nose except that it has a way of flaring without the slightest provocation, as if it had a mind of its own.”

  This turned out to be the first of many revelations my mother would have about my father, and I heard her delight in discovering it.

  “And then we have his mouth.” She chuckled. “How can I possibly describe his mouth?”

  I opened my eyes to catch a glimpse of my mother’s face, which seemed years younger than I’d ever seen it. It was as though she had traveled back in time for a closer look at the man who had yet to be the father of her only child.
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  “Ah, ah, ah!” she said, catching me, and then signaled with her finger to shut my eyes. “We don’t want to lose what you already have,” she cautioned.

  I closed my eyes once again as she searched thoughtfully for the right words and then spoke them ever so slowly.

  “His mouth was inexplicably tied to whatever was going on behind his eyes.” Silence. “This often resulted in a sly, playful smile that curled up just one side of his mouth. It gave you the impression that he had a valuable secret held captive just behind his grin or that his lips were withholding the punch line to the world’s greatest joke.”

  I couldn’t keep my eyes shut any longer as I was certain there was more than words written on my mother’s face. I was right. She seemed lost in the memory of his mouth as she smiled and slowly shook her head.

  “And you could linger there forever,” she finally said, “waiting for the one-sided smile to open wide and fill up his face with dimples and ripples of pure, unadulterated joy that poured in and spilled out through those wonderful blue eyes.”

  I gazed lovingly at my mother as I lay in rapt attention, hanging on to her every word. Her knees were pulled close to her chest, and she hugged her legs, her eyes closed, as she gently rocked his image quietly in her arms.

  “That was one of the best things about him,” she said, “how everything in him poured out of his eyes. He couldn’t help it. Nearly everything made him cry.”

  I felt the sting of my tears as a smile took hold of my face. She stretched her legs out again and tickled my feet with her toes as she slipped down with her elbows on the arms of her chair, her hands folded across her chest.

  “It was delightful to watch for the first time or the hundredth time—the way the laughter would start as little convulsions in his belly. Ha!” she exclaimed, with a puzzled look. “I don’t think he ever made a sound.” She gazed curiously into the air for affirmation. “Nope.” She shook her head. “I can’t remember his laughter ever making any noise. It was more like a volcanic eruption that shook his body as it moved upward and then out of the very last place it could be released, which was, of course, his eyes.”