A Jen Too Many

There is a pink hobby horse leaning against the wall in a corner of my bedroom. It is right next to the the jewelry armoire that my husband gave me for Christmas early in our marriage. I had mentioned that I would like a jewelry box, and I showed him some pretty ones at Walmart. He decided that bigger was better, so got me a full fledged armoire.

In front of the armoire, impeding my access, is a box of old photographs that I am slowly (very slowly) scanning. It's taking a while because I am saving them in two formats - extremely large and detailed TIFF files that I burn onto DVDs and much more convenient JPEG files that I keep on the computer for easy access. It takes forever, especially since I have to type in all our known information about each photo. I got stalled when our DVD burner died; we have a new one now, but I've been putting off getting back to it. The days just go by so fast and I'm always left at the end of the day with a list of things I meant to do.

One of the photos is of my mother-in-law when she was a little girl. My husband pointed out the other day that it could almost be a picture of Youngest Girl Child. YGC has the dimples, hair and eyes of the oldest of my two brothers, but the shapes of her face and eyes are just like her grandmother's.

Oldest Girl Child just got her hair cut in a bob. She's been growing it out for quite a while, but when YGC went in a few weeks ago to get all her long hair cut off*, she got so much attention that OGC got jealous and decided she wanted to do the same. It took my breath away when I saw her, and even two weeks later I am amazed at the resemblance to Cannwin. There'll be times when she'll move a certain way, or I'll see her at a certain angle, and it takes me right back to Cannwin's childhood. (Of course, her father looks at OGC and sees his family in her features!)

The Boy Child has always been a little double of his father. He's grown up taller than his dad (the height comes from his mother's side) but the resemblance is still strong. Even in personality they are very much alike.

I've been thinking about the similarities and differences between the siblings in my family lately. All of us are artistic. Of the five of us, four are writers, one is a photographer. We have two blondes, two brunettes, and one of us (me) who inherited our father's red hair.** Three of us take after the skinny side of the family and two us take after the, umm, sturdy side. We are all very tall, with one brother well over six feet. He's the only person I know who makes me feel short. We all have green eyes, although my blonde brother's eyes tend to change from green to blue depending on the light. He is also the only one with dimples, which I thought was very unfair when I was young.

We tend to be hyperactive and impulsive. We are all romantics. We tend to be very private. We all have a very strong work ethic, but all of us have taken / are taking a while to figure out where we want to be and what we want out of life. One of my brothers told me that he thinks, for our family, our thirties are everyone else's twenties. It takes us that long to find ourselves. I think he's right.

Unfortunately, while I might be emotionally and experientially in my thirties, my body knows darn well it's 10 years older. When I had my 40th birthday, everything started falling apart. I had to get reading glasses, my hair started going gray in large chunks, and losing weight got much harder. And that was just the obvious changes. I swear I'm creakier than I used to be.

Which is probably why I haven't gotten the pink hobby horse out of my room yet. Yeah ... that's why.
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*She'd been begging for awhile to get it cut. I've been putting it off because she was just so cute with the long hair. She has a very sensitive scalp, however, and was just miserable with the work involved in taking care of her hair, so I gave in and took her to get it bobbed. She loves it, although she is annoyed that she still does get the occasional snarl.

**Not that you would know that to look at me now. My gorgeous Titian hair gradually darkened over the years until I am now mostly a brunette with strong red highlights. The darkening is part of the package with the red hair. I color it red on a regular basis, which doesn't restore my former glory, but does appease my vanity!