A Passage

She looked at herself in the mirror. It was the same face that she saw 5 years back. Nothing had changed. She was the same her. The same black curly hair. The hollow cheeks and one dimpled chin. The crocked teeth. She was nowhere close to perfect. But she knew that she had grown up. The mirror told her so. The slight wrinkled lines under the shadow of the eyes told her so. Her daughter instinctively clutching her hand in the dark told her so. Her mother’s slight leaning on her when they walked told her so. Her feet impressions on the sand beside her daughters told her so. The men’s eyes told her so. The pain that her father allowed to filter through his voice told her so more than anything else.

Was she the child anymore? Or was she the parent to three kids now. One is not born a woman, one becomes one - the image of herself in the mirror told her so.