Aren’t you just the spitting image…

Not of my parents, but of my sister. Three of my siblings have fairer skin that tends more toward burning than tanning, and three of us have darker hair (Well, it used to be darker. Now it’s whiter and receding.) and have more olive-toned skin. It isn’t often that someone says I look like any of my aunts or uncles. My mom says I remind her of my dad’s sister, but my sister says no. My mom’s memory isn’t trustworthy anymore. (For the longest time, she insisted that I had a picture of my grandfather holding me. He died two weeks after I was born and he only held me once, so a picture was very unlikely. We finally figured out she was talking about a picture of me with my uncle when I was two-years-old.)

The way I most resemble my parents is that I rarely sit and do nothing. If I’m watching TV, I’m writing, or knitting, or embroidering, or something. My hands need to be busy. In theory, the occupation needs to be productive. Every evening, my parents would settle into their chairs for television, and my mom would get out her knitting or crocheting. She was always working on something. Other than the evenings, my dad was never idle. Living and working on a small, family dairy meant that there was always work to be done. I suspect he needed some time at the end of the day to wind down.

I’m not sure if this is always a great trait to inherit. It is wonderful to be productive and finish projects, but there is also anxiety at not being able to work on something. I took my kids to a movie last week and was worried about how I would pass the time. I survived but fell asleep through the middle of the movie.

Patty’s post reminded me of another way I resemble my dad. In his high school yearbook, his class named him the most likely to write a romance novel. He never wrote a romance novel or a novel of any kind, but he did write out his World War II experience and helped publish two books about the local history.

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