My Mom's Mom, and my Mom and I are part of a strong genetic code that I imagine stretches back until you could see someone with our face, cooking a fish over a fire in front of a cave while watching a toddler with our face playing in the near-by rocks.
Once I went to the attic in my great grandmother's house and I found a photograph with a woman pushing a wicker baby carriage. I was sure that it was my grandmother Grace until I realized that the writing on the back in faded pencil said that it was "great Aunt Margaret and Orville." so it was my grandma's face, and the one I see increasingly familiar in the mirror, but the baby was my grandmother's brother who was 8 years older than she was.
Then I posed with my husband in a rocky hillside and the photographer shot the picture in black and white film. A few years later my Mom found the picture and studied it with a wrinkle between her eyebrows. "what's wrong, Mom?" I asked. She sighed, "I can't remember ever posing for this picture with your husband." I laughed and assured her that she didn't remember it because it wasn't her, but she was right, I had seen pictures of her that looked just like I did in that moment.
Why am I sure that prehistoric toddler would have been playing with rocks? because all of the women in my family are rock hounds. If we loved being somewhere there is a rock from that place on a bookshelf or in a potted plant somewhere in our home and if there are children and water around, we are throwing rocks in the water, not gracefully skipping stones but making big, splashy cascades of water geyser out at us.
In fact, remember how I said, "Lance couldn't hear for five years? Well, the first word he spoke after surgery restored his hearing was a loud, screaming - "Blood! Blood!" as he ran from the river to the ranch house to get me help when the rock I was throwing at the Greybull River, shattered on a boulder and a chip rebounded and implanted itself in my wrist.
Hearing his voice was plenty worth the 45 minute run into town to get 8 stitches on a Sunday afternoon.
love the story. Maybe we share some genes: I've got pebbles all over the house and when I went through my mother's desk recently (it had been sitting untouched in my basement), I found odd bits of rock and thought "oh, I come by that honestly."
I have collected mostly rocks and shells from all my special trips. And I even brought home some dirt from the Garden of Gethsemane in Israel. So I don't know if you can claim exclusivity on this one! But I love the story and totally agree with how interesting habits and likes/dislikes can run in a family particularly with the women.
