Life in Mirrors

by Grace Pappadellis ’29 on September 24, 2026

Opinion

Not one human is the same, not their outward appearance, their everyday actions and choices, their innate beliefs, their developing mindsets, or their preclivities and aversions. Even identical twins—I was close with two sets for a long time, and I still speak to one counterpart of a set several times a week—are vastly different in the way they interact with others and how they conduct themselves in the world. However, their innate similarities have the ability to shine through the permeable curtain of inseparability, presenting as identical, indistinguishable qualities, as if they are complete mirrors of each other.

Aside from biological relations, there are obvious commonalities between friendships, strong, long-lasting friends especially, as well as astounding differences that raise the question of how two people can possibly get along with such disparities. I had a close-knit, long-term friend group in high school, and although we all shared the same sense of humor and liked the same pizza toppings, we were wholly different people in our heart of hearts. If it is coming across that we were incompatible friends, then I am failing to convey my statement. We were on the same moral wavelength. We all valued the people around us, each other, and understood how to be empathic and show up for one another. With those principles, we rarely faltered. Regardless, each one of us had completely different passions, lifestyles, hobbies, things that caught us on a line and drew us in, slowly and thoroughly, carefully capturing us in ways we could never truly explain to each other. Although we showed interest in each other’s hobbies, listened to each other’s stories, asked questions, and even participated in the same activities, we could never mirror each other. We could never match up in the way we had hoped, even with maximum effort, though we cared enough about each other to try. It’s impossible to break the inexorable pattern in which humans grow a liking—or loving—for each other and attempt to mirror one another. I have learned that you cannot become someone else in order to display your utmost affection and dedication to them, or what they love, or what they commit themselves to every day. In companionship, we strive to fit together, like a sailboat on the surface of still, calm water. Like stacked spoons. Vines climbing up the side of a building. Wind in an open field. As if we are seamless counterparts wandering about, our sole purpose being to find our other piece. As if we look in the mirror and see the other person, or we see each other, and we are the same.

There is no truth in standing in a room full of people and finding even one person who is the same as us. Or standing on a crowded beach, or on a chaotic college campus, or in a bustling city. Humans build their identities and curate the self they want to put forth in the world by experiencing things. Experiences are perceived differently by each and every person, down to every minute detail. Details we could never articulate, sometimes too microscopic to notice ourselves. This does not mean that people don’t share similar experiences, or reveal situations and outcomes to each other that are strangely akin. In even more otherworldly, individual experiences, a person can find themselves seeing people they once knew in new people they have met. I have sat in new classrooms and seen a boy and a girl who sickeningly reminded me of a boy and a girl I once sat in a classroom with–and was very close to–in elementary school. Similar mannerisms, similar smiles, similar intent stares while listening closely. People I don’t know, unknowingly mirroring people I once knew, but don’t know anymore. We mirror each other without trying. When we put too much stock into trying to connect with one another based on finding every shared similarity we can, we lose where motivation is rooted to connect, the authentic ability to understand another person because they are interesting to us, not because they are the same. We cannot truly resonate with someone when we think we recognize all the words they say, the actions they take, and feel like we are staring into a mirror. Yet, it is invigorating to come across a person who fits into your life because you see things the same, your perceptions seemingly align, but the process of figuring that out is at a slow, gradual pace. Stories absorbing into each other’s skin. No rush to see yourself in another person when you first realize you are recognizing features, faults, quirks, and feeling that unbridled desire to know someone inside and out.

Regardless of this thought process, whether you find it completely garbled or strongly insightful, it should be obvious to everyone that embracing our individuality and allowing authentic experiences to unfold for us will only strengthen our ability to understand one another. The newfound lessons we gain from experience will equip us with the skill to see similarities, appreciate them, and nurture an empathetic, diverse relationship without latching onto a person with an identity we simply do not have.

Where Am I, and Where Are You?

by Grace Pappadellis ’29 on January 29, 2026

Opinion - Entertainment & Society

My best friend from back home will forever be my best friend from back home. When we are married with children, have moved away to where we’ve always dreamed of living, and have filled our households with homemade meals our mothers taught us to cook, artwork obtained throughout our travels, and beloved albeit deteriorating furniture from our first apartments, she will still be my best friend from home. I will look at her across the dining room table, adorned with flowers from the garden and a lambent glow from candlelight, and I will see her running through the backyard of my childhood home in her bathing suit, sunburnt and covered in grass. I will see her wrapped in a sleeping bag with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream, the Christmas lights strung along the ceiling of my basement dangling over us. I will see her on prom night, our senior year, winding light pink ribbon around my bouquet of flowers that had disbanded in the pouring rain. My heart will ache with love for her, adoration, and the scent of her—fresh-picked lavender and faint incense—will pull me back home, to where we grew up, together, all at once.

It is an extreme challenge to separate people from places, faces from memories. You can separate yourself, move away, begin a new period of your life, but those connections—the scents that trigger emotions, the songs that remind you of specific people, and even a mere mention of a saying you used to hear all the time—they’re irremovable. As people—especially observant, empathetic people—we commonly practice making associations between feelings and places, usually related to a person you have vivid memories with. Regardless of where I am, or how long it has been since I’ve been back home, I will always remember the smallest things—what some might call the most trivial details—about people, and it doesn’t take much to remind me. The soft veil of sunlight over the tops of the trees, perceptible through the hallway window, brings me back to long hikes in early spring, obscure places with my family, being young and dragging my feet, but I was always gaining something. The air always felt light and delicate in my lungs; my brother’s lapis blue down jacket kept me warm, never letting me down. My brother and I would make crude jokes as we leaped over the roots of trees and skidded across wooden bridges over rippling creeks. We’d watched too much Cartoon Network, and our humor was infused with the clever yet slightly inappropriate humor of The Amazing World of Gumball. One memory trickles into another, and before I know it I am a little kid again, hiking, sledding, dancing to Lady Gaga, or eating hot dogs in the tiny shop I had no idea I’d work in one day.

No matter where you are, you are with all the people you’ve ever met. Your new friends may share the same smile lines as your oldest friend, or a guttural laugh similar to your father’s. Your ex that occasionally crosses your mind may appear within a restaurant menu or scribed in the lines of a new book, words they once said, or phrases you’ll never forget. Sometimes these reminders are like whispers, a gentle call to memory, growing latent in the back of your mind. Other times, the memories rattle your brain. They are rapturous, or miserable, or so overwhelming they are indistinguishable. Regardless, you’ll never shake people from your life. Your memories may become less fervent, less relevant to the time, but one way or another, you leave a mark on everyone you meet, and they’ve left something for you.

It is imperative that you stay in touch with those who are in different places; the ones you have inevitably separated from, yet they remain just as important to who you are. People make up each other—I have learned things from my childhood best friend that I’ll never learn from anyone else, created irreplaceable memories with new friends, and been loved by my family in a way no one else ever could. No matter where I am, I will remind myself of where you are, and when I’m unsure, I’ll let my memories guide me to you.

To Friends of the Past

by Mariela Flores '23 on September 8, 2022
Portfolio Staff

Portfolio

two children hugging — photo creds: pixabay

You were so special. Like a beam of something good sitting next to me in every classroom, every space, every inch of the world as if we owned the air that we breathed in.

You were so good to me. With words that wrapped me up warmly, just like a hug. With belly laughter that only you knew the sound of. With talking about futures neither of us knew how we would get a hold of––I sit here somewhere that feels too much like the past, waiting to know if you are close to your future. I hope you are well.

I hate mourning you while you are still alive, living a life I thought I’d be a part of. I hate watching you grow from afar––I try to reach into the pixels and write something good, something clever, algo bonito. It doesn’t matter anymore. I know that.

I’m not angry, I’m not even sad, you’ve let time fill that wound with new laughs, new people, new warmth, new futures, new stories. Still, I miss you.

I wish you would have let me know it was the end of us. The end of catch ups in between brand new classes, brand new people, brand new lives.

But you will fade into my memory, like a dream you wake up from after a deep sleep. You will fade like the friends before you and the ones who’ve come after.

I think of you now and then, you’re like an echo in the air, you’re only with me briefly.

I just hope you are well. I miss you, and I just hope you are well.

Smoking is a Bourgeois Concept

by The Cowl Editor on September 30, 2021

Portfolio

two hands holding cigarettes — Photo courtesy of pixabay.com

by Taylor Maguire ’24

Snow wrapped Manhattan in a thick blanket of white. Floating flakes latched onto my brown coat as I walked across the street to Fifth Avenue. The coat belonged to my Aunt Esma whose unique eye color I inherited. Walker, a ghost from my past, once described my eyes as the color of a pond being struck by lightning, although government officials simply recognized them as the color blue on my identification forms. Walker and I met for the first time sophomore year of high school on the day of Thanksgiving in Central Park. A place that collected pieces of my scraped knees and strangers’ cigarette buds. A place where you could hear the echoing music from ice cream machines and the faint cries of irritated and sweaty children coming from every direction.

I don’t remember why, but I was angry the day that we met. I stole my father’s pack of Camel Lights in a moment of retaliation, and left the house before my Aunt Esma arrived with the turkey. Wide-eyed tourists waiting for the parade clogged up crosswalks, and fallen leaves buried the streets in a sea of gold. Believing I had escaped the suffocation of people, I had just begun to light a cigarette when a voice startled me by the park’s Alice in Wonderland Statue, saying,

“Smoking is a bourgeois concept made up by the government in order to control the population, so therefore I cannot support this vice of yours.”

Up until then, Walker was a walking myth to me at school. One that occasionally sported sprinkles of acne along his forehead, and had a poor attendance in anatomy class. The thing about Walker was that he was pigeonholed to his mother’s image, and everyone feared him. He ate alone at lunch, but was smothered at Upper East Side parties by the knockoff Marilyn Monroes of our grade. Walker had brown locks of curls with matching doe eyes. He wore forest green converse and oversized navy blue crewnecks.

“When I smoke I feel like a character from Slyvia Plath’s imagination,” I replied back.

“Didn’t she kill herself?” Walker retorted.

“She stuck her head in an oven,” I replied dryly.

The comforting hands of our high school seemed to weave us together after that encounter. The friendship continued to grow after he sat next to me in Dr. Sabol’s English class. We spent summers together sleeping on twin mattresses at his beach house, arms and legs mangled under goose feather duvets. We peeled sunburned skin off each other’s backs, and swapped secrets as if they were the rarest form of currency.

When the Thanksgiving of our senior year arrived, Walker had bought us a pack of cigarettes at a nearby bodega and took me to the Great Lawn.

“You never smoke,” I said to him that day.

“No, but this is a special day because this is the day where we discover which college will be taking you away from me.” He said it quite seriously. The only thing I could do was let him light the cigarette that dangled from my lips.

“I’m not going anywhere. We’ll stay friends while we’re at school. Did you decide where you wanted to go to college?” I replied.

“Oh please, don’t act coy. My mother’s life plan for me is very limited. Starts with me attending one of the Ivy Leagues and ends with me living amongst the people who worship their mundane jobs, their towheaded children, and their Toyotas with extra gas mileage,” he said spitefully.

“You don’t have to do any of that, you know,” I reminded him. He lit his own cigarette and looked back at me.

“It’s easier said than done. Your accomplishments stem from your very own elbow grease. Mine are mirrored by my family’s name. I’m merely a shadow of their achievements.” Neither of us spoke more about the subject that day. Walker slipped in and out of my life much like a feral cat who invades every home it charms its way into. We wrote letters to each other for a while, but soon I stopped seeing my name written in his handwriting on baby blue envelopes. I forgot about him completely until I saw his mother’s name in the newspaper last week under the obituary section. His photograph was projected right beside it, where he stood beside his towheaded children who he mentioned with such contempt years before. He has wrinkles now, his bright doe eyes have become jaded, and his mounds of brown curls include waves of gray.

I light a Camel Light now, walking by the Alice in Wonderland statue while Lewis Carroll’s characters continue to be buried under spools of snow. The park suddenly falls into a deep silence as the landmarks of my childhood freeze over.