5.12.11

I Have My Mother's Eyes

Recently Deirdre pulled out the photo albums in search of a baby picture for the high school yearbook.  Deirdre is a senior this year and needs a "before" shot to go with her senior portrait.  It's amazing how much they change.  And how much they were always the same.

Out came the older albums from when Yours Truly was a baby.  It's funny.  Deirdre remarked that my baby pictures look like a mix of Finola and Maeve.  On the next page, she claims that she's looking at herself in my baby picture.

Maybe that's why I have a difficult time remembering which our my babies' picture I'm looking at without checking the date.  The females' looks in my family are strikingly similar.  My children look like me.  I look like my mother.  My mother looked like her mother.  If there were an extant picture of my great grandmother, she would probably look just like the rest of us.

A distant cousin sent me a photo he found in his mother's things.  His note was short, "Guess who this is in the picture."  I wrote back, "I know that's my grandfather.  But based on the date, my mother wouldn't be old enough."  He answered, "It's your grandmother."  Once when at my maternal aunt's house, she was showing photos from some event.  I swear the woman in the picture was my mother.  Except that she had red hair.  My mother was the one with brown hair.  My aunt has red hair. 

There are photos of my parents in my living room.  First-time visitors always want to know at what Old Timey Photo Shop we had them taken.  Now even my husband is beginning to look like my father at a younger age.  There is truth to the old wives' tale that the longer people live together the more they resemble each other.  And apparently their in-laws in Mr. Gaelic's case.

[Title taken from this.]

2 comments:

  1. When I look in the mirror, I often see my grandmother...we all live on.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It is weird how some people so strongly resemble their ancestors and others not so much at all. My Mom hung a picture of her grandfather with his Civil War medal pinned on his coat and everybody - even I - thought it was me at first glance.

    ReplyDelete