I adore my wonderful mirror, but I hate the message it portrays

Five years ago, my mother made me the most beautiful mirror for my bathroom. The frame is expertly decorated with tiny mosaic tiles and small, inspirational messages on silky smooth pieces of ceramic. I adore it and it occupies prime estate over the basin in my bathroom.

But I never look into it. While that great gift represents absolute perfection, my face doesn’t. That gorgeous mirror highlights my own imperfections. It shows the many lines on my face. It focuses the attention on my greying hair and it’s impossible to ignore the dark lines under my eyes.

While I adore that wonderful mirror, I hate the message it portrays. It’s simply too honest. While others have no problem with brutal honesty, my own feelings are far too fragile for such a cruel approach. Particularly at my age.

Late at night, after I have avoided the unforgiving mirror by brushing my teeth in the kids’ bathroom, I sometimes battle to fall asleep. Am I just the human version of that mirror? Obviously not as flawless in appearance, but do I practise a cruel form of honesty?

This question keeps me awake for hours, with the result that I have even more wrinkles and dark rings around my eyes the next morning. And then I have to wait outside the kids’ bathroom to do my morning ablutions away from the staring eye of my beautiful, cold-hearted mirror.

Tonight I’ll think about my own honesty again, thanks to a discussion I had with my friend Helen this morning. “People are terrible,” Helen said. “They only judge me by my big breasts, not my intelligence, personality, sense of humour…” “Hmmm,” I replied.

She was right… they are enormous. “Are those… uhm… your own?” “Yea, of course they’re my own,” she said shocked. “I paid for them myself. Every cent came from my own pocket.” “Do I understand you correctly?” I asked. “You paid a fortune for those, you had a painful operation… and now you’re complaining that people notice them?”

I didn’t get a clear answer, but the rest of the conversation was uncomfortable. But not as uncomfortable as a message I have received later the day. It was from my mother. Apparently she had made me another mirror, for the children’s bathroom. My own medicine?