genetics

"Doesn't she just look like Julie?" 

My dad said that to me countless times as I was growing up.  He would show me pictures of his mother when she was younger and a great grin would spread over his face.  He thought I looked so much like my Grandma Gunnell, with our brown eyes and brown hair.  For most of my life, I didn't see it.  Not until I became an adult, after my teenage years, after I got over my insecurities about the way that I looked.  I will admit that I didn't want to look like her.  I thought she looked very normal, and of course, I wanted to look beautiful.

"There are accusations going around about you," my uncle said to me one evening over my Grandma Gunnell's kitchen table. "Everyone says, of all her grandchildren, you look the most like her."  He said this just days after she passed away.  

I was 25 years old, and a brand new mother.  Henry was not even two months old when we lost her.  My body had just completed the process of bringing another life into this world.  It had been pushed to the line that separates life from death and had brought my son to the earth.  My limbs and curves and movements felt completely foreign and new to me, and yet I knew and loved my body better than ever.  I was so grateful for the power and the capacity for life.  

On the day my grandma died, I thought of her when I looked in the mirror. I thought of her brown eyes as I applied mascara to the eyelashes that frame my brown eyes. They are a soft, golden, honey brown.  My own brown hair reminded me of her brown hair.  It's wavy and frizzy and fine.  

I am so grateful to have pieces of her with me.

I try not to think of myself as pretty or ugly anymore.  My looks have nothing to do with that.  The features on my face and my limbs and my curves are a gift from those who came before me, a mark of their sacrifices is making it possible for me to be here. Each part of my body connects me to someone whose body is literally a part of mine.

My dad feels a special bond with my Charlotte because he thinks she looks so much like his mother.  My older bother says that every time he sees Charlotte's face, he thinks of our Grandma Gunnell.  And I see it now.  I see the resemblance and I see what a beautiful thing it is.