Who are you turning into?

My family history is kind of weird. My great aunt on my mom's side traced our heritage back to when my ancestors came over on the boat from Holland and Germany, respectively. In this history we learned that I was named after an ancestor who was burned in the Salem witch trials. And that I am very closely related to Joseph Cornell.

My dad's side is a crap shoot. I know I have a lot of German and American Indian on both sides, but I am pretty much just a great big giant mutt. I am OK with this. While it would be cool to have some sort of nationality, I guess being the definition of an American is OK by me too. 

My mom has dark hair and olive-ish skin. 

My dad is fair haired and pale. 

My sister takes after my dad's side of the family 100%. She has an actual ass and hips. She has very pale skin and pin straight hair. She had acne as a kid. 

I am like a piece of plywood with boobs and a beer belly. Finding jeans that do not make it look like I just shit my pants is nearly impossible. Stretch jeans are my friend. Which then cause muffin top. My body type is stupid. I have fair skin on my face and somewhat darker skin everywhere else, although it is getting fairer as I get older. There was a time when I did not know what sunblock or sunburns were. I could be in the sun for 8 hours and never get anything but more tan. My hair is a curly/wavy/god damn fucking mess. I have it super short now because it is much more manageable this way. One might say I have a bob. I have never had more than one pimple at a time in my life. 

I just recently started noticing all of the mannerisms the boy shares with his mom. When they tell stories, they have the exact same hand gestures and this weird head nod thing that they do. They don't really look all that much alike, but they have similar tendencies. 

I can't look at my hands without thinking of my mom. You could take a picture of both and I am not even sure the two of us could tell them apart. 

At what point do you just resign yourself to turning into your parents? At some point you just give up and give in and embrace the crazy, embrace the genes that inevitably will make you compulsively buy wooden snow men at Christmas and Longaberger baskets.

My sister and I are two totally different people. Or maybe we are two people who just don't understand each other, because when you put us in the same room, fuck if we aren't just shorter, paler, younger versions of our mom. 

Thoughts like this make me want to have kids. It's the curiosity of what they would be like, who they would take after, what they would do with their lives. It is interesting to see my sister, the chemist, struggle to relate with my dad, also a chemist. I consider my dad to be one of my best friends despite our minds working so very differently. 

The point is that I am turning into my mother. I even find myself dressing like her...the mom outfit I had on the other day was shameful. And I don't want to turn into my mother.

But, I am one terrible cardigan away from wearing track suits and tennis shoes all day while complaining about how much my foot hurts.

Ugh.