When parents talk about having a child who is ill or struggling, nonparents often take the wrong message. They think, Thank God I was spared all that pain. If I can’t order up the precise specifications for my child, the condition in which he emerges, the choices he’ll make, if I can’t be assured that he’ll skirt the dangers that await him, maybe it’s better not to have children at all.
Those of us who know the airless terror of the 10 steps between the second you first glimpse your child’s surgeon through the glass doors and the moment he’s standing in front of you, delivering the verdict—we don’t think this way. Each time one of ours is ill or in pain, we think, Thank God I am here for him.
If you had not pointed out the reflection, I would have been hard put to discern the reality. Amazing!
Laurna – I know! I took it and I can see it just because I know it’s there. An interesting angle.
Fascinating!
Tom
Tom – 🙂
Am I blind?? it’s like I think I can see it? but then I’m not sure – tips please
Alison – There’s an angled piece of sort of corrugated gray metal that’s actually framing for the mirror. If you look under the juice bottles on the top shelf at the shelf labels, you’ll see a yellow and white one that says $2.49. Right to its left is a similar label, and you can see that the numbers are reversed. On the bottom shelf (in the bottom left of the photograph), the red-topped milk (?) cartons are distorted by the angle of their reflection. In fact, the whole left edge is distorted. Those are the biggest clues as to what you’re looking at – but it’s sure not obvious, to my eye.