Family Resemblance

I have this drip on the end of my nose that hangs there from June through to October.  I know you've noticed it. Some of you tell me, "Anna, you have a drip on your nose." Others of you, too polite to point it out will subconsciously wipe your hand under your own nose, perhaps hoping I will pick up the social cue. For the record I do, but there is no point in me wiping this drip off my nose. It will come straight back.  I am like those poor African children you see on the adds with their faces covered in flies.  You want to yell at them, "yuck, brush those flies away kiddos!" but they don't because like me, they know it is fruitless.  I tell you this because this drip I've had every winter for 15 years, I inherited from my Dad. 

I used to tell him all the time, "Dad, your drip is hanging," and because my Dad is of the generation that carries a hankie, he would graciously pull a rumbled checked hankie from his pocket and wipe it.  Then in my late teens, it started happening to me. It is something about the shape of our noses, and I am waiting to see if any of my offspring have inherited it. 

Family resemblance is something I've been thinking about a lot this month.  

I was so spoilt to have spent a weekend at a hotel in Auckland with my older sister Kathy. We do love being mums but it was a welcome change to be kid free and sleeping in till 10am, ordering room service at 11.30pm, enjoying pampering ourselves and wiping no ones butt but our own for a full 2 days.  It was just what the doctor ordered, for both of us with our many hats of wife, mother, teacher etc it was nice to just be Anna and Kathy for a while.  

I love her to bits this big sister of mine. But we don't really look that much alike,  and we have quite different personalities and taste in things but it was obvious we came from the same parents when we noticed stuff about each other over the weekend. 

She pulled me up on the drip.... of course. But a new one to me was when she noticed I talk in a posh voice when talking to strangers. I know this is something my Mum does but I never knew I did it as well. I pulled her up on telling random shop ladies our whole life story. (I'm telling ya Kathy, she is paid to look interested,  she really wasn't.) This is something else our mum did on occasion growing up while I quietly died in the background.

And then there is the Smith family, with quite possibly the strongest most dominant genes you have seen anywhere. My 3 children are a case in point. 

 But take a look at Marcus with his Dad and big brother at his Dad's 65th birthday last week.  There is no question they are all from the same tree.

Marcus' Dad is a quiet gentle man, despite his stature and he has a great mind that is always on the go, he has very specialised hobbies.  Morse code, recreating a 1960's British Naval Radio room in their garage to mention a few.  I use the term eccentric with fondness because I know he would find my hobbies as eccentric as I find his. And while I struggle to understand much of what he explains to me or find BBC or his taste in classical music to my liking,  I love HIM, the man to death, and through all my smiling and nodding he knows that. 

However I have to chuckle as I watch my husband, his youngest, inheriting these little 'eccentric' traits. This photo is Marcus tonight, completely focused on making his own guitar pedal. 

He could just buy one, but those genes in him, tell him to work it out, to research, study and problem solve the whole electrical circuit thing and do it himself, even if it takes all night and for no other reason than it interests him.

Funny little thing these family resemblances. Tell me some of yours.