The Sparkle of Truth by Janet Perez Eckles  

“Yikes! You scared me,” I screamed feigning fright. “Who’s that!” I look down at the three-foot little person wearing a mask framed with wild hair, black, purple, pink and shades difficult to pinpoint. The features distorted by a huge lumpy nose, droopy eyes and a mouth revealing jagged teeth gives a new meaning to the word ‘ugly’.

A muffled, “Trick or treat” wafts from behind the mask. “Goodness, you really scared me.” I chuckle as I drop hard candy into the orange plastic pumpkin that he grips from the black handle.

Those are memories of times my little boys also dressed in strange costumes, and dashed from house to house with their daddy trailing behind. I stayed home greeting the neighborhood trick-or-treaters. But now, years later, Halloween masks resemble those I’m tempted to slip on. They come in handy to cover the real me. So often in my life I’ve worn masks, perhaps not as horrid as the friendly trick-or-treater’s, but an effective masquerade nevertheless.

When people ask me how I lost my sight, I give the routine answer: A disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa deteriorated my retina and took my sight. A simple question followed by a simple answer. But when they ask about how I dealt with the unexpected tragedy, that’s a different story. I’m tempted to pull down the mask over the front of my heart and give a bland answer.

"It was tough at first, but in time, I adjusted.” Underneath that mask, however, is a whole different script with the real answers: “I wanted to die, I hated my life, I wanted to give up, and wondered if my little boys would survive with a mommy who couldn’t see.”

There’s a Bible verse that says, “Let your no’s be no’s and your yes’ be yes’. I thought I’d give it a try. When asked a question, I’d spill information that reflected what truly stirred in my heart. Here are the results: when my words are strung with honesty without omissions, deletions or embellishments, I can breathe easier. When the mask is off, the air is fresher and the view is clearer. When it comes to sharing my feelings or relating events in my life, I’ve developed a motto: Don’t omit the negative nor squelch the positive.

Not long ago, a good friend called and asked about my writing. I started to blurt out that it was great, moving along fabulously, and my agent is working on a possible submission to a publishing house. But then I gulped and remembered that masks are stuffy, binding and often ugly. Instead, I decided to rip the mask off to pull out the truth: though my agent is working for me, I’m furiously laboring on the first edit. Writing a novel is grueling, it’s demanding and at times, the work is so hard that it makes me wonder if I’m really supposed to be doing this.

Ah! The feeling of telling the real scenario with honesty is like opening the window to a stuffy room and letting the fresh Spring breeze come in and caress your face. So, what about you? Is there a mask that keeps others from seeing the real you? There’s no trick to removing it, and the reward is painted on the reflection in the mirror that sparkles with honesty and truth.