From the Relief Society Magazine, July 1968 –

Aunt Elly’s Mirror

By Mary Alice Moore

That morning I was at the kitchen table writing to my folks, when my husband banged in through the back door.

“Guess I’ll begin plowing that west forty this morning,” he announced.

“Yeah?” I managed vaguely, without looking up.

“Be time to plant now before I’m ready.”

He stood there waiting for me, I knew, to show interest in the west forty, but I went right on with my letter. “. . .it seems like six years, instead of six months, since we moved out here. Sometimes I’m so lonely I could plain die.”

The back door opened and closed. Ron had gone to his plowing. Quickly, I pushed away from the table, went to the window. He was standing at the back gate, looking at the west forty. What a handsome man he was, tall and strong, the active, out-of-doors type. He belonged here in Wyoming, on the land. I was selfish to expect him to spend his life back home in an office, at a desk. I wanted to go to him, to crook my arm through his and walk with him to the barn. Instead, I turned away, went into the living room, stood in front of Aunt Elly’s mirror.

From our home in Massachusetts, we had brought to Wyoming only two pieces of furniture, my piano and Aunt Elly’s mirror. Because she had no daughters of her own, Aunt Elly had given the mirror to me, I loved it and had insisted on bringing it to our new home, although reaching from the floor almost to the ceiling and filling the entire space between the fireplace and the west wall, it looked entirely out of place in our little house, too big and too elegant.

I swung through my exercises in front of it, along with the teacher on television. I danced, pretending I was back home with partners lined up waiting for me, clutching a pillow to my body. In Aunt Elly’s mirror I could see my books on the shelves Ron had built for them, and, of course, my piano. What if we were ten miles from Rincon, the nearest town? And five miles from a neighbor? Could be I wouldn’t have too much in common with the people out here if I did know them. And, goodness knows, I had plenty to keep me busy right here in my own little house.

Right now I must finish my letter, then bake a cake, then, I decided, I’d put up a picnic lunch and eat with Ron down at the west forty under those trees along the river; make up to him for this morning. With a final look into the mirror, I went to the kitchen, sat again at the table, and went on with my letter.

The next Friday, when, as usual, we went to Rincon for supplies, I had an airmail reply. Trudy’s wedding date was set for early in June. “After all,” Mother wrote, “she’s the only sister you have. She’d be brokenhearted if you were not here for her wedding.”

After dinner that night, when Ron was settled by the fire, his long legs stretched out to the blazing logs, I perched myself on the arm of his chair. “Could we go to Massachusetts for Trudy’s wedding?” I begged.

“I can’t,” he said without a minute’s hesitation. “I’m way behind with my work now. But there’s no reason why you can’t go. I’ll take you to the plane in Cheyenne any day you say.” Then he reached for his paper.

“Well!” I exploded, bouncing up from his chair. “I guess you wouldn’t even miss me around here!”

Ron pulled me down onto his lap. “Of course, I’d miss you. How silly can you be? But you can’t let Trudy down. When do you want to start?”

Back home, the wedding was followed by two weeks of family dinners, parties, dances. Then one night I knew I had to see my husband. When I told my family at breakfast I was going home the next day, if I could get a reservation on the plane, my mother said, “But how can you? Ron wouldn’t know to meet you in Cheyenne.”

But I had figured that out in the night. “Tomorrow is Friday. Ron never fails to go to Rincon on Friday for supplies,” I explained. “I’ll wire Mr. Gross, at the store there. He’ll tell Ron.”

In Cheyenne, Ron was waiting at the plane. In Rincon, when we left the store we passed the little white church. I’d gone there a few times and the people had been friendly enough, but it wasn’t like church back home. I hadn’t been for weeks now.

When we were almost home, Ron glanced across at me with that secretive, boyish look on his weather-brown face. “I have a surprise for you,” he said.

Had he put up the extra pantry shelves I’d been asking for? “What is it?”

“You’ll see when we get home.”

We went in at the back door. In the kitchen window, between the ruffly white curtains, my red geranium was in bloom. How wonderful to be in my own house again!

“Come in here,” Ron called from the living room.

From the doorway I expected to see myself as usual in Aunt Elly’s mirror on the opposite wall. Instead, the whole out-of-doors looked in at me; the side yard, the white picket fence, the trees, the plowed fields, even the mountains beyond.

“Like it?” Ron asked, smoothing his big hand along the unpainted casing of the new window. “It’s not quite finished. I did it at night. I had to hurry. But see how much lighter it makes this room?”

I crossed to the new window and stood beside my husband. Two children were coming toward us, along the edge of the plowed field.

“They’re the Gilligan children,” Ron said. “They come this way from their school bus.”

“Who are the Gilligan children?”

“They’ve moved into that place down by the river. One day while you were gone the man came over to where I was plowing. Seems like a nice person. Look up the canyon to your left. See that little white house on the side of the mountain?”

“Y-yes.”

“Gilligan says a family lives up there, too, and that some people have moved in down the river from his place. He wondered whether we neighbors could get together — have a pot luck — get acquainted.”

He glanced toward my piano. “If they met here, we could have singing and maybe dance.”

Now the Gilligan children were passing our house. They saw us at the window and waved back to us.

“Why couldn’t we have a Sunday School here for the children,” Ron went on, “since we have the piano? You taught in the Sunday School back home.”

I went into the bedroom to take off my coat. In the excitement of the new window, after that first realization that it was missing, I had forgotten Aunt Elly’s mirror, had forgotten to ask what had become of it. But there it was, flat against the wall at the foot of our bed, only the upper half of it visible. For one instant I resented Ron’s having poked it off here in the bedroom. How would Aunt Elly like that? And how could I live without my mirror? How could I see myself from head to toe without it? Then I knew Ron was right to cut the window in the side of our house. Instead of seeing reflections in Aunt Elly’s mirror, my books, my piano, my own selfish way of life, I could look out now and see the trees, the meadows, even the mountain — a world I had scarcely known was there. Now I could watch for the Gilligan children coming from school. I could look up the canyon and see the little white house on the side of the mountain.

Ron stood in the bedroom doorway. “How would you like to go over to Gilligans’ this evening?”

“Let’s, Ron. We can talk to them about the neighborhood party, and about the Sunday School.”

Ron came to me, put his strong arm around me. “you don’t really care about my taking the mirror from the living room, do you? There was no other way. . . .”

“Care, Ron? I am deeply grateful.”