Glancing

GlancingEO

#prose, #glancing, #family

I am writing this piece sitting on my couch, eyes absorbed by my screen. Even if I would like to, I could not have gone outside for a stroll. I have a curfew, together with the rest of the country. So I challenge myself to a walk of the eye.

When glancing at something we look at things briefly, it is the eye that swiftly moves over something, it is the eye that is walking. Virginia Woolf’s glances take us on a journey. When something catches her eye it transports her through a world of associations, taking the reader with her. Everything becomes a window into something else.

But what I find is that there is no need to look. I sit here surrounded by objects so familiar to me. I know that behind me is my grandmother’s closet, high and heavy. I feel the weight of the closet, as I’ve moved it around this room so many times. I do not have to look inside it to know that on the second shelf from the bottom, in red marker, Edam is scribbled in my grandmother’s spiky handwriting. The door is adorned by an oval mirror, a little chipped at the bottom from one of its many journeys.

This closet was bought by my great-grandmother when she got married in 1916. It lived in her bedroom only to be passed on to my grandmother when she got married. It then moved with my grandmother throughout her life, from Edam, where it got its mark, to Voorschoten, Ommen, and Boskoop. After my grandmother’s death, my sister took it with her, from student house to student house, and from city to city, having to leave it behind only for a move to New Zealand. She then lent it to a friend, until it finally arrived at my home.

I glance at myself in its mirror. The same mirror I looked into five years ago, and everyday since. I think about my great-grandmother who used to look in this same mirror more than a 100 year ago, my grandmother 60 years ago, and my sister 10 years ago. What this mirror might have witnessed! It must have been exciting in my great-grandmother’s marital bedroom, where babies were made and born. But what I remember are the quieter times. When it must have gotten the occasional glance of my grandmother shuffling through the house in her slippers. A silent house, a woman alone. Reminiscing of the times when it was busy, with her five children flying through the house. To my sister sitting on the floor with her friends drinking and getting ready to party. To now be a witness of the daily routine of my partner, myself, and our son.

Just to be sure, I take a look inside the closet. You have to lift the door a little bit to open it. It always makes the same screeching sound. When I open the door the mirror gets a glimpse of the rest of the room. The occasional diversion from its normal static view. I push away the books that lie on the second shelf from the bottom. Is the marker really there? It takes only a glance for me to see that the red marker is not red, but rather green.