Not Me

Here's my girl on the playground at school on a late Saturday afternoon three weeks ago. She'd been dying to show me her mad monkey bar skillz, so we decided to go on the cool, cloudy day just before the rain came.

I snap photo after photo--always--because you never know what you're going to capture in one frame that you might miss in the next. I like to see pieces or sometimes the whole picture, but the pieces often tell a story that you'd lose in the big picture.

In this photo, I saw something I rarely see; a part of Natalie I love so dearly but can never quite put my finger on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Before my baby girl was born, we didn't know exactly what we were going to get. We'd been warned about chances and percentages and offered super-sonic ultrasounds and specialists opinions, but we still didn't know for sure what we were going to be getting ourselves into as new parents again. Before knowing I was even pregnant, I dreamed of a red haired baby girl named Emma; my baby girl. I dreamed of her, saw her, without even knowing, she had come to me and revealed herself.

Emma changed to Natalie and we damned the odds and decided to fall in love despite her skewed test results and because she was ours.

Around 10:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 4th, 2000, I heard her voice before I could see her. Her voice, stronger than her brother's and much more insistent, was telling me to take her, now, and so was the doctor.

I grabbed underneath her arms and pulled her out of my body. She was crying, madly, red, robust, and a "perfect 10" the nurse told us. She laid on my chest, in my arms, wet, slippery and only moments old.

I couldn't take my eyes off of her in utter and complete astonishment and relief. She was perfect. Every worry had been for naught. Every dream of mine had literally come true. I laid in my hospital bed and gazed at my daughter, at every little orange hair in her head, brows and lashes.

From that day, it has always been so hard to tell who she looks like or resembles in our family. It's so difficult to get past all the pretty just to see who it is, who can claim her and proudly say, "she got all my good genes." That porcelain skin, those orange freckles, that flying, flaming hair, those long, long legs...

~~~~~~~~~~~~

So I saw it the other day as I was inspecting my many, many photos of the same activity. I came across this one. And it hit me like a ton of bricks.

I know exactly who she looks like.

Daddy.