The Mirror

Rubena Sinha
Oct 3, 2021
3 min read

Updated: Oct 22, 2021

When I was a little girl, I flunked my math course.

At that time, in my time in India, long ago, we couldn’t advance in school without passing every subject in that grade. All my friends in my class were going to Grade 8, another school! I was devastated. I was so sad that I didn’t want to talk to anybody. I didn’t want to do anything, I didn’t want to see any of my friends. They were all calling on me, but I didn’t want to see anybody.

Now, when the end of the school year comes, there’s a big festival – all the students, teachers and family get together and they have games. Everybody comes to join, and it’s a wonderful time. I didn’t want to go at all, but my father told me to come – “everyone will be there and you’ll feel better!” he said.

He kept urging me to come, so after sitting under my favourite mango tree in the garden and taking some time to think, I decided to go

When I went, I saw everyone so happy, and having so much fun jumping and racing – all kinds of games were happening. Then came speed walking! All my friends started yelling at me “Ruby! You’re such a fast walker, you should join!” Finally the pressure was so high that I had to give in.

There was something that happened though – even though I was not really very competitive person, I had this tremendous desire to WIN. My whole body wanted to win that race. The starting gun went off and the next thing I knew? I won. I won the race.

The prize was a small mirror. I took the mirror with great happiness.

I went home to tell my mother I won…but nature had other plans. There were trees all over the place in my town, and the roots of the trees sometimes broke ground and made obstacles. As I was running home, I tripped, and fell.

My mirror broke.

I came home to my mom, and I showed it to her, and said “it is broken, but I won. This is my prize.” My mom just took the mirror and said “I know you did.”

Time passed, we all grew up, got married. I came to Canada with my husband. When you come from one country to another, you get really sad. All your life, you live one life, and then you had to let everything go. When I arrived in Winnipeg, it was February – so much snow, so much sadness for leaving my family and my life behind. I had never seen so much snow in my life, and everything was new and unfamiliar.

I got so depressed, I couldn’t even move. Every time my husband went out, I thought “the snow will devour him, and he will drown. And then what will happen to me?”

After about 6 months (or maybe it was a year), my husband said to me “you can’t live like this. We have to get you back home to India.” I was so excited! I packed everything and got ready to go. After a long journey back I finally reached my parent’s house.

I was so excited I started looking everywhere – what changed? What didn’t? I was so excited, I couldn’t stop running around. I didn’t even have jet lag, I was so excited.

Finally my mom came and said “Stop!"

"Calm down, and come with me to the bedroom!”

And hanging on the wall, beside her dresser, was the broken mirror.

I looked at it – I didn’t know what to say. “It’s still here?!” “Yes,” she replied. “That day, I knew how much courage and tenacity it took for you to face everybody and win. I remember. So when you came home, I thought I would remind you that you have the courage to go anywhere, to live anywhere, to do anything.”