There is a family resemblence

Hell, I am my mother!! 

    I find myself doing some of the same things she did.  For example, whenever we passed a restaurant, she would tell us if she ate there.  Now I am doing the same thing!  And trust me, I've eaten in a lot of restaurants!  I say almost the same thing:  Oh, I (we) ate there once.  She did it all the time.
     She loved to take pictures.  Remember, this was in the film days.  A lot of times her pictures came back and it would be of a group of people from the neck down!  I get them in the frame, but I also take a lot of pictures.  I put them in albums and shoe boxes, just like my mother did.
     I remember after she died, I went through a photo album and there was a picture of a man at Leisure Village, a condo community for adults where she lived the last 20 plus years of her life.  Many of the pictures were labeled.  Neighbors, friends, relatives, all identified in her scrawl (which looks like mine).
      But this man's picture stood out.  He was neatly dressed, it was summer, he had a big smile and he was standing in front of her unit.
     She had written on the back:  "Who the hell is this man?"
     The fact she saved the picture of a guy who she had no idea who he was reminds me of all the pictures I have saved that really are meaningless.
     Like the man sitting in a chair at our Skare Court. house, petting Emily's first greyhound.  Jackie and I have no idea who he is.  If he wasn't sitting in our house, I would think we got somebody else's pictures.
     Like the man in my mom's pictures, he is neatly dressed, pleasant looking, and obviously at ease in our house.  I haven't written anything on his picture.....maybe if I had when I took it in 1998 I would know who he was.
     When we did a Tuna show and I was Vera, I wore a blue dress.  When I came on stage I could hear my entire family gasp.....it was if Mom had come back to life in the middle of a show!!
      She had a little red patch on her forehead that looked like dry skin.....I have one also, it's just not as prominent.
     Jackie spends hours trying to balance the check book.  I share my mother's belief:  when you get a statement from the bank, that's how much money you have.  After three years, close the account and move to a new bank.  Why spend hours trying to find $3.95?  She rounded checks off to the nearest 10.  But she didn't always round the same way.  $24.95 could round to $20 or $30.  Nobody could figure out her checkbook.  But when someone did get it balanced, her estimations were always pretty darn close to what the bank reported.
     I would love to have had more time  with her.
     Another similarity....she was a sentimental gal.
     I guess acorns don't fall far from the tree after all.