Look at the photo above. Do you see how much we all look alike? The noses, eyes, face shapes, and smiles? I am amused whenever one of my granddaughters says someone told them they look like their mother and they don’t agree. I understand because I used to feel the same way. I thought I looked mostly like my Daddy and I was proud of it. As I got older, the mirror showed me my mother’s features.

I used to say that my three oldest children looked more like each other than either myself or their father. My two younger daughters looked so much alike as children that they could have been twins if not for the three and a half years between their ages. As they got older, their features changed and the resemblance lessened. Now their faces are growing back toward each other again. I see myself more in them also. There was a time when I thought my oldest daughter was the one most like me, but that too has changed.

Even though I, like them, hate to have my picture made and seldom like photos of myself, this picture has become one of my favorites. In it, I can trace the resemblances of three generations and, since I see my own mother in my mirror, add that resemblance back to the fourth one. I find it especially meaningful this week as we move toward Mother’s Day.

Yesterday afternoon, my middle daughter started the celebration for this year with a bouquet of beautiful yellow roses. She gets some such for me every year because she knows yellow roses are my favorite. It has become a tradition for us. She brought them early this time because she saw them in the store and thought that particular bunch was especially beautiful. She said she was afraid, if she waited until Sunday she wouldn’t be able to find others as nice. There will be other tokens, phone calls and cards, but this gesture is a memory that I will cherish because it says she wanted to give me the best possible.

I love my all my girls (and my boys too, but this is about the feminine side) and am very proud of them. They are strong, independent, and successful women. They have raised beautiful daughters who are on their way to becoming the same. I only wish my own mother was still here to enjoy them with me.