I remember the first time I was in a house free of mirrors: at my grandfather’s shiva, when I was ten. The mirrors in the house had been covered in accordance with Jewish custom, and I remember how jarring it was to look for my reflection and not find it. It took a while to lose the habit of looking in those mirrors. I would go to the bathroom and be surprised, and then relieved, to see a dark cloth instead of my own imperfect face. I felt that I’d been somehow absolved of responsibility for my appearance. For a few, precious hours, I almost forgot about how I looked.
