Family Resemblance

Left: My uncle and mother. Right: Me in the same dress my mother is wearing on the left.

A shy little girl walks out of the church service. She follows closely behind her parents as they make their way down the church steps, weaving through the crowd. It seems like they stop to talk to every member of the congregation. The little girl doesn’t talk to anyone. Her cousins have gone somewhere else. All the adults talk and laugh. Finally, someone notices the girl standing partially behind her Dad. Her blonde bob complete with thick bangs framing her oval face elicits memories of her mother as a child. Sometimes it is an elderly woman who exclaims with a smile,“Oh my goodness, well you must be little Kim Burandt!” Other times, the little girl hears “I sure know who you belong to. You look just like your mother.” from someone who is probably one of her parents’ friends. She doesn’t reply, only shyly smiling from her partial hiding place. The little girl doesn’t remember any of these people but they all seem to know who she is.

Elementary school portraits. Left: my mother. Right: me. 

By now, years later, it is a running joke that everyone in church will tell the girl she looks like her mother. In fact, if the comment is actually directed at her, there is usually the follow-up comment: “I’m sure you get that all the time.” She does. A few years earlier she might have thought it was annoying. But now, it’s such a familiar occurrence that she keeps a count of how many times she receives the comment—variations on wording don’t matter. When her grandparents reintroduce their grandkids visiting from Arizona, there’s usually a “Little Kim” somewhere in the response. Her cousin shares a knowing smile and a giggle with her every time they hear it.

My mother and I in 2012.

Her family has been returning to this scene for over 15 years now. Everyone is older and fashion has evolved; yet nothing about this scene has really changed. The church congregation crowds the upper and lower lobby as they merrily converse and avoid stepping back out into the snow. Cousins watch over their own kids while the now great-grandparents catch up with neighbors. Her Dad is joking with a former teacher. Her Mom is laughing with a friend, the guy who played the Mayor and her husband in The Music Man, remember him? One of her parents’ friends remarks to another man, “That must be Kim’s oldest. She looks just like her.” It marks the third tally of the night. This year, she only overhears the comments, sometimes from several conversations away.  Three is the 2013 grand total.

When she shares the results, her grandparents, parents, and siblings laugh. Then they realize how small the number is. “You look like your mother” had always been a marker of her growth and connection to her mom as well as a deeper connection to the small town, even though she has never lived there. Now she has seen the phrase in a new light: it also signifies the relationship between her family and the actual people in the town. The people they know have influenced the tally each year. People have moved away, skipped an annual visit, passed away, or simply have not risked the icy roads this Christmas. “You look like your mother” honors a kind of family legacy, which links the familial resemblance with the past and a tight-knit community.