Family Resemblances

When people see my mom and I together, we usually hear: "Wow, you two look a lot alike!" And we laugh and shrug it off, because we really don't see the resemblance. My mom has a somewhat olive complexion, dark brown hair, and brown eyes. She's relatively small-boned. I am as white as they come, with blue eyes, lighter brown hair, and a freakin' large frame. Sometimes, if I'm not wearing makeup (sorry Mom!), and I catch myself at just the right angle in the mirror, I can see a slight similarity in some of our facial features, but I never see the uncanny resemblance most people claim to see. Here's me and my mom. Judge for yourself:




My brother and I often joke that I'm adopted (we kid). We come from two dark brown-haired, dark brown-eyed, olive-skinned parents. My brother looks like them. Blue-eyed, fair-skinned me? Not so much.

I have always felt that I bore a stronger resemblance to my paternal grandmother. We are similarly fair-skinned, blue-eyed, brown-haired, big-boned girls. Today, I was messing around on my paternal grandfather's family genealogy website and I happened to stumble across a picture of Grandma when she was about my age, give or take a couple years. The resemblance seems much more striking to me.




Taking into consideration our facial features and our bone structure (which you can't see in either of our pictures), I see a MUCH stronger resemblance between Grandma (Dad's mom) and me than I do between my own mom and me. What do you think?