100 Years in the Mirror

Several years ago, I inherited the old pump organ, purchased by my grandparents in 1913, a hundred years ago. My mother, Erma, was born in 1920 and when she was three years old, she climbed up on the old swivel stool (still part of the organ) and played her first song. She played by ear, and from that moment on she could play any song she heard.

There is a beveled mirror on the top of the organ, part of an ornate backing that includes fancy scrolls and rolled pillars, shelves and special places to set old fashioned oil lamps. I imagine my grandmother, Minnie, as a younger woman, looking into that mirror as she dusted, tended her children and, maybe, took a quick glance at her image before company arrived. She had eight children and I’m sure they all gandered at themselves in the beveled glass as they grew up. I can imagine that my mom smiled in the mirror many times when she sat at the organ and entertained friends and family with her remarkable talent. As a child, visiting my grandparents, even I peeked at myself in the mirror a few times.

 

My grandmother watched as age settled on her, seeing her young face wear into wrinkles and tracks of time in the mirror. After she passed away, the old organ with the mirror was left to my cousin, Albert, who took it to Nebraska. About ten years ago, he made a trip to Idaho and brought the organ back to give to my mother, who in turn, gave it to me. When it was set up once more, my cousin looked into the mirror one last time before he left. Then my mom saw her image in the beveled glass again and her young face had become old.

Today I stopped a moment and looked into the timeless beveled mirror and realized that I was also getting old and now, more than ever, resembled my mother, who resembled her mother, who resembled her mother. Our images blended into one.

I wish I could see all the relatives who peeked into the mirror over the last one hundred years. I wish there was a camera inside that could have snapped their photos; all the aunts and uncles, cousins, grandparents and great-grandparents whose faces gazed for a brief moment into the mirror on the organ.

My children and grandchildren have looked into the mirror, that shiny square of glass that has reflected generations of my family and also the images of their everyday lives. It could tell wonderful stories of the last 100 years of family history if it could only speak.
© 2013 Linda Gatewood