I'm sitting here at my desk ignoring the stack of work I need to be doing and staring at a picture of my daughter taken roughly a month and a half ago. In it she has the biggest smile - so big it makes her squint a bit and show off those big pinchable cheeks of hers. The light catches her little bits of baby hair making it obvious that she's a redhead. Replace the lavender and pale green plaid dress she's wearing with something more in vogue during the early '70s and this is a picture of me. There are times I look at Meg and I see traits from other people - when she stares in wonder her eyes get large and round, looking more like her father's brother's eyes than either of ours. There are times when you could swap out her pink outfits for blue and think you were looking at her brother at that age. In this photo, wow, in this one she's my twin. When this particular roll of film came back I found myself studying Meg's features more closely. I still see bits and pieces of other people, but more and more often I get that deja vu feeling.
Its eery to look at someone else and see yourself. Not just pieces of yourself, but your whole entire being. And not just someone else, but someone 31 years younger than you are. She's an entirely different person. Her little independent will and personality already evident at a mere 3 months of age. We're different people but we're also already so much the same. More importantly though, we've bonded and that's the one thing I love most about being a mother to an infant. There is nothing like seeing a child's entire two-foot body light up with pure joy the moment you enter her line of sight. The way she kicks her feet and flaps her arms in happiness, while she coos and smiles at me just melts my heart, especially because I feel the same way.
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