"Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us we see the past, present and future."
Gail Lumet Buckley
I often look at Parker and Mason as being very different from one another physically. Parker is dark-eyed and dark haired, Mason has bright blue eyes and lighter hair and skin. On the surface, it seems a night and day picture.
Yet paging through my images of grandson soccer earlier this week, I found an image of Mason during a recent soccer game. Intently focused on the ball, he strains to move faster with his tongue between his teeth and his face serious and sober. I realize that there is something familiar about this image--that I have seen it over and over in soccer captures of the last few years. The planes of his face, the set of his shoulders--in all of it, I see the same elements as in Parker's face and body as he runs down a soccer field. In that one brief moment of recognition, their shared genetics stare at me from the screen and the brothers' images become interchangeable.
It surprises me. I don't know why it should--often in rummaging through family photographs taken today as well as years ago I see the faces of the people who belong to me. Nathaniel as a young child looks very much like my father at 5 or 6. Parker stands with the same stance as Nathaniel and I very much resembled my late Aunt Betty when younger.
It is true that all of this is encoded in our DNA, very much the stuff of science and the random luck of the genes. For myself, I love the feeling of continuance that I have when these small moments jump at me from a picture or the screen. The past and present coalesce in the faces of those I love and a small moment of grace occurs.
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