“How’s your back?” I asked.
She smiled at me through the reflection.
“Better.”
Dad appeared in the doorway.
For once, he didn’t say,
“You’re perfect the way you are.”
He didn’t tell her she looked beautiful.
He didn’t tell her what she should see when she looked at herself.
Instead, he asked,
“How do you feel?”
Mom studied her reflection for a moment.
“Like I’m seventy.”
Dad laughed.
She smiled.
“And like I finally did something good for myself.”
Beside her reflection sat the old vanity mirror.
And the photograph of Grandma.
The picture itself hadn’t changed.
Grandma was still standing there after her mastectomy, smiling between her daughters.
What had changed was what the photograph meant.
