Squinting to See the Faces

My mother’s eyes, my father’s nose and teeth. My father’s curls, his earlobes, my mother’s upper lip. My second-grade face still resides in my 64-year-old face, that expectant smile waiting for something. My second-grade face in my niece’s second-grade face, and, now that she has grown, in the face of her son. My laugh lines are all my own, though my dead father’s laugh still comes from my throat. In my younger niece, I see my aunt, my mother’s sister. And in my sister, I see my paternal grandmother when she was a girl, long before I could have met her. We find the picture—it’s shocking: my sister playing dress-up in sepia. We find a picture of my mother at ten, which could have been me at ten. My maternal grandmother hated to have her picture taken. But here’s one in her blue satin dress at my mother’s wedding, her hand covering her face. Her hand is my hand, chubby palm-creases and long piano fingers. My iris was once my mother’s iris, her hazel flecks now mine. Neither my sister nor I—nor my mother when she was alive—could wink with our left eyes, much as we tried.