What The Mirror Revealed
It was just there, behind me; an entire past I could not recall, I wouldn't know what it was about until years later. A past life or an ancestor coming through time to visit me? I didn’t know for certain but, there it was, every time I looked into the mirror.
It didn’t really begin with the mirror, it began when I was younger, with strange sounds, flashes and scenes I could not identify. There would be times when I would look out of the window; the wooden sill would appear as grey stone and the yard outside would display itself upon my fragile young psyche as rolling hillsides dotted with hedgerows. I would hear the hoof beats of horses, in the distance, as if someone were riding towards...our...castle? One day I looked down in thought, when I heard that sound and my eyes fell upon my arm, a woman’s arm, clad in satin and lace; my delicate hand lay resting upon the window sill, almost as if I were anxiously awaiting for someone to arrive.
Then, rainy days would find me in wonderment; I would hear those hoof beats when I looked outside. Horse’s in the modern-day suburbs? No way, there wasn’t a horse for miles around. Still, there it was the loud clip-clop, clip-clop that only I could hear; I guess people thought that I’d gone insane? I wondered about it at times, as well.
Rainy nights weren’t any easier, not only did I hear the sound of hooves but, there were images; flashes of a time long past, beautiful old wooden coaches would appear, stopping before buildings. a man carrying a pole with a candle-lit lantern, nodded at the driver of this horse-drawn vehicle as he passed, one overcast night.
What was happening to me, I wondered? What was this that I was experiencing? I didn’t understand at first. Oh yes, I talked to people about it, my Mother, friends, prefacing it with, “This might sound a little crazy but...” Sometimes people would look at me as if I were crazy; other friends would direct me to a book or relate a similar experience that either they or someone they knew had told them about.
I began to read about something called, “cellular memory”. Biologically, memories stored in cells of parents or ancestors, can be handed down to offspring. Wow! How cool was that? I thought. This process included non-genetic knowledge or information and I wondered, could that be the explanation for what I was experiencing that others had called, psychic experiences? That sort of thing had happened since I was a child and continued more and more as I became an adult. It wasn’t just with ancestors or people; similar things had happened with pets and other people’s animals.
I knew that the animals, others species, couldn’t be in my genes...or could it possibly be? No, of course not, I was human, with no other genetics than bipedal humanoid ones. But was there possibly some truth to what friends said about psychic activity? Was it real? After all it defied everything I'd been taught in school about science and physics. No, most likely that was not the explanation. At any rate, these events continued well into the present but, that’s altogether, another story. Anyway, it wasn’t many more years into my adulthood, that these events began to add up to something very interesting.
When I was in my twenties, my Mother was working on her family tree for my Uncle. He’d wanted his children to know about their ancestry and Mom, thinking it a good idea, took it upon herself to delve into the past and work on her Genealogy.
She knew that her family was from the British Isles but, didn’t know a lot about them there, as her family had been in America for several centuries. Since she didn’t drive anymore, I found myself taking her around to Genealogical libraries where she’d do her research. At times, I found myself helping her in her research, digging through miles of microfilm and through musty antique volumes for information that might provide leads to anyone in our family tree. That’s when the strange events in my life really, ramped up.
I might be walking across campus in the rain; that clip-clopping sound came to my ears again with no horses or coaches in sight. I might be driving home from somewhere, stopped at a light and suddenly the daylight might become the blackest night.
Then, the in the mirror a face would appear. I even did a self portrait one night, before my bedroom vanity mirror; it was me but, it wasn’t me! Right there in front of me, as I brushed my hair, my face began to take on a different look. I heard, Clip-clop...clip-clop... Then the image of a lighthouse appeared behind me! There it sat, atop a craggy rock cliff; ocean waves banging against those rocks; I could hear them.
I grabbed charcoal and my sketchpad and dashed off the face in the mirror. Who was that? She looked a bit like me, younger, a teenager. When done, I stared at the portrait, glanced back at the mirror then at the portrait again. This was almost too much, then I glanced back in the mirror one last time and she was gone. She was dressed in that same silky dress with lacy sleeves. Her hair, dark like mine, flowing down upon her thin shoulders. She was a young woman, I’d guess about thirty years of age.
Things intensified, I would see her in store mirrors, as I passed or in dressing rooms. Every rainstorm, the sounds of horse hooves on what looked like cobblestones. That row of buildings that the coach always stopped before...who was in that coach? Why did they stop there? I wondered.
In my real life, I continued to drive Mom to those libraries where she searched diligently for the traces of her heritage. She found the Scottish side of her family tree, a portion of the Irish side. There were a couple of ancestors that she struggled to locate in the many records she’d shuffled through. They just seemed to disappear, then it happened.
One night, as I sat before the TV, a show aired that told of a woman who’d been unjustly murdered. She was a lady in a Scottish Castle; she and her husband, had been murdered by King James V, for treason in 1537. They were innocent and after their death’s the truth had come out.
I made notes; I could hardly wait to tell my Mom about what I’d heard. That’s when I began to put things together. I began doing my own research, I found the ancestor, I got copies of the documents from her trial and was appalled because they read like Joan Of Arc’s trial! My God, my ancestor was treated with such disdain and disrespect; framed for something neither, she or her husband had done!
Around that time that the sounds, visions, psychic flashes or whatever you call those experiences, ceased. I wondered, was an ancestor trying to communicate her story to the only person who might pay attention? Had that person been me? It seemed so amazing that I told myself it wasn’t. I can’t be certain but, it’s a co-incidence that I had no further experiences, for a long time.
One day, years later, I was at work. I walked into the empty women’s restroom and there in the mirror, I saw her! I blinked, she was gone. Was she perhaps saying hello or thank you? I’ve thought about her often, wondered if she was just a sad soul that needed to tell her story. I suppose that I won’t know in this lifetime.
While strange things still occur, I have not seen her again, nor have I heard the sounds, seen the visions or had the eerie feelings that visited me in the past. She would have ridden around in a horse-drawn carriage or coach; there would have been cobblestones beneath the horse’s hooves, at times, as she traveled. The sensations I felt of damp, dewy nights, she musty smell of the damp roads, she would have felt and smelled too.
Was it cellular or genetic memory, perhaps psychic experiences, maybe even a ghost? Perhaps our ancestors memories are embedded somewhere within our very cells. All that I know is, I was not dreaming, nor would I trade anything for having had, the experiences.
Written 12-22-19
Copyright, 2019, M.L. Kiser
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