Passing It On

I borrowed the title of this post from Larry Lehmer who has a blog called Passing It On. Lately I have been thinking about the many things I want to pass on to my children and grandchildren. There are many family keepsakes that I have identified, written their history, and want to pass on to my children and grandchildren. I also try to tell the grandchildren stories about what it was like when I was a little girl. I pass recipes on to my daughters-in-law, and I have begun writing the stories of our family history. One of the things that I had not considered was passing on family resemblance. However, a couple of summers ago I took a picture of my mother standing next to my brother's son. I did a double take when I saw that picture because my brother's son looked so much like my dad standing next to my mother.

Recently someone said that our granddaughter, Em, looks a lot like me. That surprised me because, of course, I cannot see the resemblance, but I had taken a picture of Em when she made her First Communion in April. Today I was going through some pictures my mother had of us as children. I found the picture on the right. Mother had written "Taken on Pat's First Communion Day" on the back of the picture. I was amazed at the resemblance to the picture taken of Em. We both seemed very serious on our First Communion Day. These pictures convinced me that we are also passing on a family resemblance.