Family resemblance

Have you reached the point in your life yet where you look at your hands, or your nose, or your what-have-you, and say to yourself, “Oh my gosh, I look just like my mother”? Or your father, or whomever you least expected (or wanted) to emulate as a kid?
Gather ’round, people, and behold! For I have seen my dear departed father, and he is alive and well in my own hands. Yes, that’s right. When I look at my hands, it’s as if my dad is standing right in front of me.
It happens especially when I’m driving. Luckily I didn’t also inherit his habit of straightening curves! I also get a touch of arthritis sometimes in my knuckles, just like he did.
On the flip side, I’ve got my Mom’s feet. I remember it like it was yesterday … Mama loved to tell the story of how she had flat feet when she was a kid. That is, until my grandmother sent her off to summer camp. The prescription? Grammy had a doctor write a note allowing Mama to go barefoot all summer to strengthen her weak arches on the lake rocks in Maine. I’m not sure about the validity of that theory, but apparently it worked; Mama’s flat feet never returned.
I, however, am a tenderfoot. Once I walked on an old tin can and cut the heck out of my heel – some summer vacation that was! So I still have the flat feet I was born with (a.k.a. “collapsing arches”). I also have bunions like Mama had, but I haven’t worn what I call “cruel shoes” for some time, thereby avoiding the surgery she had to endure. But every once in a while when the weather gets cold and damp, those painful little protuberances make their presence known. Oh yes, you better believe they do.
Thanks a lot, Mama. Actually, that’s a complaint department I wish were still open! But in this game of genetics, you play the cards you’re dealt. I’ve got a couple of pairs – a better hand than some.

The eeriest thing about being my parents’ daughter, and I think my sisters will back me up on this, is how I take after Mama and Daddy’s mannerisms. They’ll say, “you sounded just like Daddy right then!” Sometimes I catch myself shrugging my answer to a question, simultaneously conveying my ignorance of and apathy towards it – a pure, dyed-in-the-wool Daddy-ism.
I look in the mirror and see Daddy in my smile, my forehead. A friend of mine happened upon an old photo of him at 17 years old. She thought it was a picture of me at a costume party!

I feel sorry for folks who don’t know who their biological parents are, if only because they’ll never see that mirror image of themselves, warts and all, that could give them some insight as to who they really are and how they got that way. If I’m sometimes aghast at becoming like my parents, I just think what the alternative would be, and I’m grateful I know my heritage.
Playlist:
1. Family Tradition - Hank Williams Jr.
2. Seein' My Father in Me - Paul Overstreet
3. Daddy's Hands - Holly Dunn
4. Family Affair - Sly & the Family Stone
5. I'll Be Your Mirror - The Velvet Underground
6. Tell Me What You See - The Beatles
7. Living Together, Growing Together - Burt Bacharach
8. We Are Family - Sister Sledge
9. Watcha See is Whatcha Get - The Dramatics
10. Look At That Face - Barbra Streisand