The other day I was putting something down on my dresser and my eye caught the picture of my dad cradling a rather pudgy baby sound asleep in him arms.  The very proud grandpa was beaming, holding his first grandchild.  Then my eye traveled to the school pictures of my other two children – and I was stopped dead in my tracks.  The tilt of their heads, the gentle smiles, the twinkle in their eyes….they are the spitting image of my father!  I had never seen this before but the resemblance is uncanny.  My middle son looks exactly like him, but with hair.  I know in his youth my dad sported an Elvis-like head of hair so it is even easier to see the connection.

I was so excited by this revelation that I pulled the pictures off the dresser and went in search of my kids to show them this incredible sight.  The first I found was my daughter, who said, “Really?  You think I look like him?”  She agreed that her brother did bear a close resemblance.  I shook off her nonplussed attitude, figuring its just not cool for a 14 year old girl to be told she looks like her 84 year old grandfather.  I marched into her brother’s room in gleeful anticipation.  Once I succeeded in pulling him away from the video wargame he was commanding, he glanced over at the pictures and said, “Really?  You think I look like him?”  Oh come on now – they are practically twins!

Discouraged, I went back to my room to return the pictures and then tried putting a picture of myself next to my dad.  Hmmm…just not seeing it.  I am sure there are those out there who know me and my dad and would be shocked that I couldn’t see the resemblance.

So what is it in us that does not see ourselves as others do?  Like the anorexic who sees themselves as fat even though they are a walking skeleton, we have implanted in our brains some sort of image that may not actually jive with reality.  Our vision of ourselves is influenced by the opinions of others as well as our own self-talk.  We can literally convince ourselves that we are not what appears before us in a mirror.

I know that I have gone through so many physical changes in my life that it is difficult for me to have a clear picture of what I look like.  Even more telling are the internal changes and how that affects my vision of myself from moment to moment.  I have trouble at times believing that anyone thinks I am attractive and at others I am feeling downright sassy.  Add in teenage hormones and it is no wonder my kids can’t recognize themselves.  The person they were in that school picture a few months ago is practically a stranger by now.

Maybe in a few years my kids will be able to look back and see their resemblance to their grandfather.  Who knows how long it will take before I do.

Tags: relatives, resemblances, seeing yourself

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 1:02 pm and is filed under personal growth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.