"Do I know you?"

One of the strangest parts about being a teenager is coming to the "I hardly recognized you" stage. I imagine this hits people at some time or other, but it's been really weird to have more than one person say that they had no idea who I was. Like Aunt June, for instance, having just come back from Thailand, saying she would have never guessed who I was had I not been with my family. While it's kind of funny, it's also an odd feeling. Do I really look that different? I wonder. Have I changed so much? Did (or worse, DO) I look that bad? What's more, I saw Aunt June only a year or more ago. Do I really look like a total stranger? How unsettling!

Family resemblences are also a fascinating thing to me. Like when Jeff came to bibleschool I couldn't resist saying to him one day, "Has anyone ever told you how much you look like Amy?" It was true! Or there are some people who at one point I could never tell the difference between, but now they're as different as night and day. Elizabeth and Katherine as well as Steph and Kim are examples. I still remember being with the latter's family and guessing which girl I was talking to at the moment ("Kim, right?" Um, no). Or even looking at a picture of Aunt Ali as a little girl and thinking how much it looked like Cara--that also happened to me when I was looking at a picture of Mr. Steve D. when he was young and he looked just like pictures of Isaac! Wow, family resemblences are incredible things. It's as if a certain face never quite dies out, as it's being reproduced from one generation to the next with very slight variations in between. Imagine looking at a picture several generations old and seeing yourself!

Actually something like that happened to me. I didn't actually look at a picture and see myself, but someone told me that I look kind of like my mom's father. I'd never heard that before, but I thought it was kind of precious because I never met my grandfather. Even so, I've always had a special regard for him, and everything that was his or that my mom says about him is dear, like knowing someone wonderful. Call a little silly if you will, but since he died when my mom was a teenager his memory has remained sacred in my mind for her sake and his. Just another person I'm looking forward to seeing when I get to heaven! So as you can see, although the compliment of looking like my grandfather is a strange one, it's also kind of an honor.

Believe it or not, I have also been told that I look like people in my immediate family. Once a complete stranger at an ATI conference asked if I was related to Craig. Man, what can they see in me that's anything like him? His face is indeed quite the opposite of my own attractiveness. Should I be complimented or insulted? Does it prove that my features are "so. . . . masculine?" However, I've also been told that I look like Chad and Kendra, and most frequently, my mom. We had a picture up on our fridge of my mom's family when she was about eleven and people would come in and exclaim, "She looks like Kayla!"



In fact the other day I stopped in to visit Grandma Sweet with my mom. I haven't seen her for a long time I'm afraid, but seeing her reminded me how much I really like her, even though she wasn't feeling too well since she recently sprained her ankle. Since I hadn't seen her for awhile, obviously she hasn't seen me either.

"You look just like your mother all over again," she told me. Then, because she and my mom are always teasing eachother, she added, "Too bad you had to pick a face like hers!"

What can I say? I can't help it if I have my brothers' looks and my mother's smile. I am who I am. So just deal with it.

Isn't she beautiful? (and of course still is)
(um, my mom's senior picture didn't actually have that pattern on it, but it must be something about the pattern of the paper in her yearbook that the scanner noticed; I didn't know how to get rid of it!)

And in case you're getting scared, I don't really look that different!



This pic is just because I changed my profile picture so now you can take a look and see it better


p.s. In case anyone is wondering why I didn't nicely put up pictures of my other side of the family, don't be offended. I still love my dad's family--I just don't look very much like them.:)