By the time you have began to read these words that I have written for you Olaf, you will have a basic knowledge of how the mirror works, how you look into it and what you see in it is a reflected image of yourself and whatever is around and behind you. What you might not know at that time is that what causes the image to reflect in a mirror and project the image you see in front of you are rays of light coming from objects in said image that strike the smooth surface of the mirror and shine back to you at the same angle that you are viewing it from. A reflection is not only seen in a mirror but in a window, a piece of polished metal, or in a calm body of water that you peer into like Narcissus did before he inevitably fell into his own reflection as he could not take a break from looking at himself. You have seen mirrors and reflections all throughout your life, whether it is when you brush your teeth and wash your face in the morning and hopefully every evening as well, while you walk past the car windows before entering to take a trip to the Oregon coast with us in the summer and fall months, or as you stare into an inactivated phone screen as you wait for that text message or phone call for just a little bit longer. But at this moment in time, you are laying on a play mat on the ground that is designed to look like a jungle floor that is also adorned with a hanging stuffed toucan, a pink flamingo with two green plastic rings hanging under it for you to grab, a jungle cat that jingles as you kick it with your foot, and a monkey hanging directly above you that plays “You Are My Sunshine” when I spin the mechanical gear in the back of it for you. Also attached to one of the four arms that affix to each other above the play mat is a small mirror in which you have been staring all morning into while your mother pumps breast milk and I eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and drink coffee before I leave for work. I watch you as curiously as you watch yourself in the mirror, laughing out loud as you look flabbergasted by what you see in it: a baby, quite like you, looking the same way at you that you are at them. At nine weeks old, I am not sure that you understand that that is who you are or what you look like or if you just see it as a peer, a baby in the sky looking back down at you. I am reminded of my first cat that I had as a child that I could call my own. Your aunt Kelley wanted to name it Pigpen because the cat was so small that we fed it wet cat food from a small ramekin in the bathroom downstairs and the cat essentially dove right in and chowed down only to raise it's little head back up covered in about half the can worth of food attached to its long black and white facial hair. At dinner that night, I fought over the name. It was not because I didn't like the name Pigpen or that it was not a fitting name, but more so because I had an obsession with naming this kitten Demon. I am not sure where I came up with this name or why I was so adamant about naming it Demon, but I made my point that this is what its name would be. I remember putting this kitten in front of a mirror for the first time, hearing the low growl emit from its mouth while arching its back into an aggressive formation that I have always called “the spooky cat” and showing its fangs. It did not understand that it was looking at itself reflected back at it for it only saw a stranger, a cat in the house that it did not know was there and that it was trying to ward off from its new territory.

Mirrors can create a large quantity of emotions inside of a person who is looking into one. Not only do they see themselves on the other side when they meet the eyes of their reflected person but they also begin to see their own skin, they see inside of themselves, and the mind starts to race. There is a sudden rush of sadness, disappointment and despair that can swallow a person like a rogue wave on a warm summer night when one stands naked in front of the bathroom mirror, poking and prodding their bodies with their curious but worried digits, comparing and contrasting from ten years earlier to what they see before them in the mirror at this time. Questions are now to be asked, and self-deprecating statements are now to be thought. Where did this paunch come from? I haven't eaten that much more than I use to. Why does my upper left arm shake more when I move it than my upper right arm? My breasts use to be more perky but now they hang low and flat down my chest and abdomen. When did I start sweating so much under them? I wish my cock was larger. What is going on with my chin, and why is it not as defined under these wrinkles as it use to be? I use to be, what happened now that I am no longer? I hate what I have become, I must change. Or the narcissist, who stares deep into the mirror to analyze every aspect with wide glistening eyes and the red cheeks from the smiles that they produce at every nook and cranny; they can still, and most likely will, believe that even they have not done enough to become who they want to be. The bathroom mirror is as volatile to a human being and brings out as much vitriol as the oft described worst appliance in the bathroom, the bathroom scale, as not many people in the world enjoy knowing the weight that they currently reside at. The average human being is most fragile and alone while staring deeply into the mirror that hangs above the sink, a looming presence returning the image of the person's past sins, extra slices of pizza, lost loves and constantly nitpicked imperfections back at them on a daily basis. Not only this, but the person who looks in the mirror may not recognize the person that is looking back at them. In the mirror, we see a face that we recognize as our own, we see ourselves. But what is your self? Sometimes, looking into a mirror can be a lot like looking at old photographs in a photo album or in a shoe box that a person holds their personal mementos in and keeps up on a shelf in the back of the closet. I have many photographs of myself, especially from early childhood, that in which I see a child who I have been told is me, who I can understand is me when I see certain features that I still have like a lazy eye or a goofy smile, but I do not know who that person is. I don't know what my mind frame was at that time, why I was there or where I was exactly, nor do I know who I was. I don't know how I thought or what I thought about; all I see is a still image of a boy sitting on an upside down bucket under a tree. I was that boy, but really, who was that boy?

However, the mirror is used in many ways that don't directly concern the human condition. A camera uses a mirror inside of the body to reflect light coming in through the lens up to a prism, which consists of other mirrors, that bends white light and can turn it into colored light before it reaches the viewfinder on the camera which you look through to see a preview of what you are shooting at that moment. A laser, or light amplification by simulated emission of radiation, energizes electrons within special glasses which respond by releasing a weak laser pulse. Mirrors are used at both ends of this laser glass amplifier in order to cause these photons to reflect and travel back and forth through the glass which stimulates more electrons to drop to a lower energy state and emit even more laser photons. This ends in an amplification in the production of photons that are of the same wavelength and in the same direction. The mirrors are basically used to allow the photons to clone themselves and through coherence, they phase into space and time causing the light to create an extremely bright beam such as in an everyday laser pointer. Mirrors are used while decorating a room in order to reflect the light, as now we know they do, and thus create an illusion of open space in the room which expands how large the room feels to the average person. If you ever walk into a dance studio such as one used for ballet, with the beautiful smooth wooden floors and the large feel to the room that goes with them, behind the stationary handrail called a barre that the dancers use to provide support for exercise and training you will be treated to a view of a long wall of mirrors that are used not only to analyze every bit of the dancer's moves from a 360 degree view but to create the sense that they are in a place much larger than them, much larger of a room than they believe that they are currently in. Mirrors can be used in wildland firefighting to shine at a helicopter pilot who is overhead and above the dense tree canopy the firefighter finds themselves in in order to designate the right spot for the pilot to unload their bucket of water that they have just filled up from deep in a lake five miles away or a single engine air tanker pilot to drop their large load of deep red fire retardant. Mirrors and reflections are in and used in everyday life, they are all around us, and most of the time you won't notice them as you walk past. But when you do, you cannot help but view yourself in them.