Links Across Years And Lives

20260313

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

She perched on the end of the bed and inspected her reflection in the old, worn vanity mirror, and tried to remember when people started saying “you look so much like your mother”. Had it really been once stress lines set in? That’s definitely how it felt.
When had she last been in this room? Probably the night of her leaving do, when mum had done a head of gorgeous french braids for her. She’d felt like a princess all evening.
How different the face staring back at her would’ve been, that decade ago. A confident young woman on the cusp of adulthood, itching to get out into the 'real world'.
She got up and opened the box on top of the dresser. Yes, it was still full of photos. Labelled and framed and stacked in tidy layers. The ones from her leaving do were near the top. Right by the photos of her graduating uni. Mum had been so, so proud about having raised a woman engineer.
Propping the teen photo against the mirror allowed for a proper comparison. Yes, no stress lines yet. Didn’t have big bags under her eyes. And perhaps this was petty, but that grin looked… air-headed. Naive. It made her want to tut and tell the young woman “you’ve no idea how lucky you are”.
When was mum’s first heart attack? She felt she ought to remember vividly. It had, after all, ripped a foundation of her world out from under her and revealed that the superwoman she’d always counted on was a mere mortal. But all she could say for sure was “while I was at uni”. Second year? Third year? Definitely not first. It hurt that she wasn’t sure.
Then again, she hadn’t known how serious it was. Not until it was officially Too Late, after that second attack and the rapid decline, when everyone in the family had to be briefed.
“I wish you’d been honest with me at the time.” She whispered to the person-shaped absence filling the room.
She understood why. Not wanting to worry her, not wanting to distract her from her studies, not wanting to cause a fuss… all very mum reasons. And “we thought she had years left” was fair enough. It wasn’t like mum had been old.
Bad genetics, the doctors said. And stress.
That’s right, she’d come in here looking for those test results. Dad had no idea where they would’ve been put. Mum had always been the one who organised everything, and after she… went… dad didn’t have it in him to try and learn.
He was getting better at it. Slowly. But this room stayed in its “she’ll be back from hospital any day now” limbo.
Instead of looking through the drawers where the paperwork was kept, she looked through the box of photos again. There weren’t many of mum. She was usually the one holding the camera. Ah, here - her forty-third birthday. The one nobody knew would be her last.
She tenderly set the photo against the right side of the mirror, opposite the graduation photo, her face perfectly between them.
A frozen moment from a past which now felt so distant it might as well have been lived by someone else. And a glimpse, she hoped, of her future. She did look to be at the, as it were, midway point.
Hard to believe that, back when people started saying “you look so much like your mother”, she’d secretly been horrified. Silently swore that she’d ‘take better care of herself’, have fewer wrinkles and such. Remembering that made her cringe. And want to take her younger self by the shoulders and shake her and say “One day you’ll be glad to have that link. To be carrying a reminder of your mother with you wherever you go”.
One day. All too soon.
The resemblance was definitely getting stronger. Not just in the stress lines and under-eye bags and “I’m done with this shit” resting stare. It was also in the shape of her face, now the youthful roundedness had receded. The way her eyebrows strongly framed her eyes. (It was so strange to see the heavily tweezed delicate shape she’d been painstakingly maintaining, ten years ago.) Her glossy bouncy hair which loved braids almost as much as it loved getting in the way if left loose.
She really ought to start putting it up more. Properly. It was too easy to slide into doing messy buns without thinking. Now that there was no longer someone else always ready to help her sort it out, and spend ages getting beautiful arrangements just right.
So many hours spent in front of this mirror getting pampered. A face very like hers smiling back at her in the reflection, asking “What about this?”. Though all the products lining the dressing table were probably long expired, she ought to take a note of-
“Are you alright?”
Dad’s worried voice jolted her back to the present.
“Oh, yes. Sorry, I hadn’t found the paperwork yet…”
“Did you get dizzy?” Dad stepped into the room, anxiously scrutinising her. “Or felt weak?”
“No, no, nothing like that.” She managed a reassuring smile. “I haven’t had any problems since that spell Tuesday. I just… got nostalgic and needed a moment. Not for my heart, it - well, I suppose it sort of was for my heart, but… not to do with…”
He relaxed and ruefully returned the smile. His gaze wandering over the photos she’d arranged.
“I keep meaning to get those sorted out.” He murmured, half to himself and half an apology. “Most of them ought to go to you. Or other people.”
“Let’s have a look through once we find the stuff from the hospital.”
“Yeah.” His smile turned pained. “You sound just like her, sometimes.”
“Thanks.” She said, and meant it.

Prompt was “Describe a character looking in the mirror, comparing their face now to how it looked ten years ago.”