I guess, generally, I didn’t follow Mom’s advice. I’m much more likely to follow my daughter’s. She’s now at the parenting age, and I won’t be surprised if she starts in on the experience soon.

My mother is alive and well, and she comes by here at least once a week for tea. She still has disparaging eyes. Just last month she told me she thinks my hair is thinning, and she suggested I wear it longer and bleach it a little, to hide that.

I must admit it got to me. I asked my daughter for her opinion. Now, I should remember that she has occasionally shaved all or parts of her head, following her idea of fashion. I should bear in mind that I’ve usually disagreed with her choices in attire, although never enough to make it an issue unless to tell her she was sending an inadvertent message to my peers. But even with all of that, I’ve got to admit I was stunned and overwhelmed and gratified beyond words when she told me my hair is fine: I’m the most beautiful woman she knows.

“Come on,” I said then.

“No. Really.” She looked at me, and she said the words slowly and distinctly. “Mom. Listen. Someone asked me just last week: who’s the most beautiful woman I know. And I said you. Really.”

So now I look in the mirror and I don’t know what to trust. I see an aging face, ripply around the chin, reminding me of what I never liked in my aunt’s face and my mother’s. And I also notice an attractive presence. My image is like one of those little cards that changes its picture as it catches the light at different angles. I’ve discovered that I can’t trust my eyes when it comes to witnessing my own visage. I’ve decided to stop trying to see my face, to let those photons wash through me until I begin to fill with a pattern. And the view in front is starting to refract as much as it reflects. It begins to include the view in back.

[She was a beautiful infant, unwanted but loved. Her poor weary mother had five babies in six years, followed by four abortions, and then her, an exotic Chinadoll of a child: raven-haired, porcelain-complected, almond-eyed, round. She looked like no one else in her yiddische Brooklyn family.

Her mother was then an elderly thirty-five. She taught her to be busy, and to fear pregnancy. Her father was just starting to make money; he was seldom around except on the Sabbath, when he tended to indulge his pretty daughter.

Her siblings, four brothers and a sister, protected and parented her in their joint and several ways. The brothers were variously sheltering and zealous. Her sister was the closest to her in love and in age, but she was homely and jealous, and only taught her to distrust women.

She had many aunts and uncles, and a score of cousins. The family was orthodox, so the men didn’t touch women except their wives and daughters, and very young relatives, like her. Two of her uncles exposed themselves to her before she was six. She always did think penises were ugly.]