Family resemblance

The other day as I was dropping Clementine off for daycare, she was in the best mood (this week that was rare for mornings, when she was usually busy honing her grumpy I-don't-want-t-be-awake teenager impression). I let her out of her carseat, and she danced around the driveway and shadows in the yard, running and jumping and humming herself a sweet little song--she was a one-girl parade, and I couldn't help trying to capture that moment with my camera.



Of course I couldn't get it quite right; I never seem to be able to get those specific, perfect facial expressions, those hammy or super-serious looks, those moments I think about when I'm not with her: the quintessential Clementine. What I did capture, though, surprised me. Her profile. While I know every inch of her head, I don't think I've ever studied it from this angle before. And I certainly haven't ever seen so much of my family in her as I do in this picture.



People are always saying she looks like me. Or that she looks like Nate. Or that she looks like both of us. I rarely see it; to me, she looks like herself, her own little creation. There are times when she cries that I think she looks like my mom. And sometimes when she laughs she looks like my niece Abby (damn if those two thoughts don't say a word about my family), but as I was examining these driveway photos the other day I began to really see all of us. So I pulled out an envelope of old pictures my mom asked me to scan and got to work. My mom is one of three sisters, so there is no shortage of baby pictures form that side of the family--not that I always can tell who is who. But in these, I see echoes of my darlin' C, the beginnings of a face that she has made her own.





I can only wonder (and fear) what else, what other characteristics, attributes and quirks, she shares with the babies in these pictures (and click any of them if you want to see more). Certainly she will one day know some of their stories, but so much is lost (in my family in particular) from generation to generation. Was I not paying attention when my Grammy Fran, gone for years now, was talking about Herbie and Mamo (who are, I think, her parents)? How is there so much I don't know? When my dad's mom was dying she took me to the town in eastern Pennsylvania where she grew up and told me all sorts of stories. Why didn't I write them down? I can't even remember whose piano shop once stood on the roadside there--her dad's, grandfather's or uncle's? Why didn't I write any of it down, and will I ever be able to find those landmarks while C is the backseat, wondering when we're going to do something fun?

Some of this is the strangeness of family. My mom and her one living sister fight all the time over many things, most of it stemming from the hole in their lives my Grammy left. To bring up our family history is to open old wounds--it's not worth the risk of a blow up, and they do share bits and pieces from time to time. I guess I just need to gather them up. On my dad's side, there is just silence. I know we can go back to those places, my grandmother's house, the Pennsylvania countryside, the attic where our family treasures still are. But I don't know how to do that without seeming greedy, like I'm after things more than just stories and memories.

I wonder how much of being out of touch with who our family is in a historical way comes from distance in addition to the strangeness. From the moment I left for college I haven't lived near any relatives for more than a few months at a time. These family stories, the tales and the memories, tend to be shared slowly, memories brought on by situations, happenings. It's hard to squeeze that into the circus-like, family-gathering atmosphere that marks almost all our visits to relatives. We're so busy greeting and meeting and catching up, who has time for the distant past? And is it really all that important in the scheme of things, when there are stories about Clementine people haven't heard, when I want to hear all about what the people I love are doing?

I didn't mean to wander into the melancholy, especially on a Friday before a holiday weekend. Let me leave you with this, my new favorite picture of my mom (unless it's actually my new favorite picture of one of my aunts--I can't tell):