Mom-In-The-Mirror Symdrome

It’s one of the classic - nay, absolutely cliched - middle aged moments. You happen to catch an unexpected glimpse of yourself in the mirror and you see your mother looking back at you.

This has to at least a little bit unsettling for everyone, but for those of us who really never looked like their mother at any time in their entire life it’s downright traumatic. Because there’s no doubt whatsoever that what we’re seeing in the mirror isn’t about resemblance, it’s about age. We’re looking at our own mortality.

The last time I looked like my mother was back in the 50s, when I was a toddler and she was making us those matching mother-and-daughter sundresses that were such a rage then. Still, there are late nights and early mornings when an unplanned confrontation with my reflection is like looking at a strangely Photoshopped portrait of Mom. Not Mom as she is now - 86, thin, and frail - and certainly not the Mom I grew up with, who was voluptuous and fiery. This is a different mom; the mom, I suppose, that I fear I’m turning into.

But really, the mom aspect of the reflection isn’t what bothers me. It’s the me part. What I actually see is an aging woman with her guard down; dark circles under tired eyes, surprisingly silver hair, and wrinkles that somehow become invisible when I look in the mirror on purpose.

Most unfamiliar of all is the expression, which is apparently how I look when I don’t think I’m being looked at; brow a tiny bit knitted, lips just slightly compressed, serious to the point of downright somber. If someone showed me that expression in a psych test and told me to interpret it, I’d say the person was gravely concerned about something. Concerned … and maybe even a little scared. And old. It’s like a surreal photo-manipulation, superimposing Mom’s age on my face.

Usually when that happens I’m so shocked and appalled that I turn away immediately, though sometimes it strikes me so funny that I find myself laughing - and oddly enough the moment I smile that strange woman goes away, and I look like myself again.

I think a lot of the shock value can be attributed to the fact that it’s a rare person who has a really accurate mental picture of him or herself, especially over 50; most women see ourselves as ten pounds heavier than we are, and I think just about all midlifers see ourselves as twenty years younger. It’s kind of a generational variation on body dysmorphic disorder - midlife age dysmorphic disorder. I think my own mental self-picture is probably outdated by a good couple of decades, an image from somewhere in my late 30s or early 40s, when strangers frequently mistook my daughter and I for sisters.

I’ve never met a midlifer who doesn’t have the occasional mom-in-the-mirror moment, and I even remember hearing my own mother and her friends talk about it when I was a kid. Therefore I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s (a) perfectly normal, and (b) probably inevitable. But that doesn’t mean it has to be depressing or even unsettling. Every experience can be put to work for our benefit, and so far I’ve found MITH symdrome really useful in a couple of ways.

One, it helps me develop acceptance of who I am now. I don’t think it does anyone much good to dwell on the fact that they’re aging, but it does everyone a world of good to get OK with whoever they happen to actually be. As long as the photo of myself I’m carrying around in my mental wallet is me at 42, I’m missing part of who I am at 58, and that’s my loss. And having a big disparity between who I am and who I think I am is going to lead to perplexity and incongruity, to say the least. How I look isn’t the biggest part of my self-identity but it’s an undeniably important part and having it be 20 years out of date can’t be a good thing.

And two, those moments give me compassion for the woman in the mirror … whoever she may be. Youth has to be the most unconsciously overbearing state in the whole human repertoire; when you’re young you really can’t even vaguely imagine what it’s like to be old, and you have zero ability to empathyze in any real way with weakness, slowness, or frailty. Youth is bursting with life and excitement and vigor, and it just can’t understand an existence where those things are at a premium. Youth expects that same vibrancy from everyone and everything, and is unintentionally callous toward anyone or anything that doesn’t have it.

That kind of youth lasted a long time for me - too long. It’s only been recently that I can really put myself into another’s place, if that other is weak or frail or slow. I’m none of those things, but I’m weaker and frailer and slower than I used to be, and though that’s a loss for my body it’s a gain for my spirit. Realizing that I’m aging (and nothing brings that into focus like those MITH moments) makes me kinder, both to the rest of the world and to myself.