Personal: Names and Faces

Babies....You gotta love 'em. Seems like I've been around the little buggers ever since I was one. Everyone I know has at least one. I am old enough now that even their kids have kids and so on and so on. Even in my own life, travelling roads far less travelled and filled with twists and turns unseen, I have managed to have one of my own...and she has a few of her own and so on and so on.

I was looking through an old box the other day, where I habitually keep all the photos that family and friends have sent me over the years, and I became aware of something quite fascinating. Over two and a half decades of baby pictures, sent by who knows who from who knows where, have accumulated in that box. No names written on the back on any of them. I know that some of these are the parents of others in this box.

You often hear cliche' phrases like"He has his fathers eyes", or, "She's the spitting image of her mother when she was born". But none of these kids look like anybody I know. I am not complaining. It is nice to be thought of when the announcements are made and the photos are flying. New fathers stand taller, sound stronger, and even strutt a little when the rugrats first arrive. New mothers get all Madonnaesque and seem somehow saintly when they hold, feed, and just cuddle their babies. I love seeing this...even in a 4by4 glossy buried in the bottom of a dusty old box


There is a special bond betweem mother and child. No one can deny this and only a fool would try. Artists throughout the centuries have attempted to capture something of the essence of this bond in their works. The image of a mother with her child is iconic, and strikes at the very heart of the human condition. We are all drawn to these images and the emotions they inspire in us are sublime.

I just received the latest photo, soon to be deposited in the dusty old box, of a dear friend with her new born. How sweet it is.

There is an expression that goes, "A face only a mother could love". So before I put the box away there is one question I am forced to ask of all those mothers who have sent me pictures over the years:

Whose baby is this?