the kid stays in the picture

so i was looking at some photos of my youngest daughter this afternoon. at least i thought they were of my youngest daughter. it turns out they were actually of my eldest daughter when she was about the same age as her younger sibling. it was my wife who pointed out this misunderstanding.

but with this information, for some inexplicable reason, came a swell of emotion. and i wasn't really sure at first why i suddenly felt the way i did.

as a regular reader of this blog you are already aware of my general attitude towards family snapshots. but this was different. because the emotion i was experiencing was not merely the mushy sentimentality that comes from reliving a poignant memory via the medium of photography. no, this afternoon i was swelling with emotion owing to an entirely unprecedented factor.

you see, for quite some time now i have been of the opinion that my children herald from opposite ends of the familial spectrum. simply put, the two are nothing alike. in terms of appearance, attitude and personality, my girls couldn't be further apart. but today, for the first time ever, i stumbled upon unmistakable evidence of their common ancestry. today, in my seven-year-old daughter, i finally sensed manifest traces of her two-year-old sister.

and make no mistake, i am in no way attempting to deny my childrens' individuality by acknowledging this revelation. nor have i fallen into the trap of seeking out similarities amongst my offspring where none may exist in the first place. but i do take some comfort in the fact that today i ultimately came to recognize the shared bond between sisters, between my girls.

"to the outside world we all grow old. but not to brothers and sisters. we know each other as we always were. we know each other's hearts. we share private family jokes. we remember family feuds and secrets, family griefs and joys. we live outside the touch of time." - clara ortega

hard to get out of my head: