For as long as I can remember, people have told me that I look just like my mother. It happened again today via a Facebook post for her birthday. Someone who has never met my mother commented on how ‘you look just like your mother!’ I have heard it before and have always worn that compliment with pride.

I have admired my mother forever, modeling myself after her kind, gentle demeanor, trying to be as patient and accepting of people as she is daily. Everyone loves her; she’s not controversial, she is quiet but remains steadfast, she contributes positively to her community and church, and she adores her family, especially her grandchildren, who she now follows on social media. She is a constant in all our lives.

I was raised in the same small town as my mother, a place I cherish as much as she does. It was not unusual for some of the ‘old-timers’ to mistakenly call me by her first name; an honest mistake but not a mistake that offended me. I was built like my mother, had the cadence of my mother as I walked about the neighborhood, and had the same inflections in my speech as my mother. At an early age, I could have been her twin, so similar did we appear and sound on the surface.

Until recently. This concept of who I am, who I resemble, and who I take after has shifted slightly, and I am adjusting to accept these undeniable facts.

With my own children off to college, I have more time. Time to spend with my mother, time to spend with my father, ….and time to spend with my sister, often separately but occasionally all of us together. With these recent gatherings, several things have been revealed, and they have rocked the foundation of what I believed to be true about my family and myself. The nature of our genetic make-up is not so clear-cut anymore.

These new observations have unveiled several new discoveries: I have a smile like my father’s, I have a mischievous nature like my father’s, I like a strong drink, not unlike my father. We are kindred spirits who like to start the party early and end the party late, and we are both scrappy athletes who can occasionally have a chip on our shoulders, although, thankfully we have progressed to outgrow this character flaw.

Along the same path, what I have observed recently in my sister was even more shocking. She was more like my mother than I had ever realized, and I never saw it coming.

My sister looks like and is favored-by, simply because she looks like them, my father’s side of the family. She works well with my father on projects, she has patience with him like no other member of the family, and she gets him like no one else I know. Yet here she was showing up to resemble my mother. I was so confused!

This dear older sibling appeared calm and quiet and demure and serious – JUST LIKE MY MOTHER! And now she was moving/walking/shuffling like my mother. Was she an imposter? Was she somehow taking my place? How had I not noticed this before, or ever?

Of course, these similarities have most likely been here all along; it’s just taken a lifetime to notice them. Some traits we can pick and choose while others have been pre-determined for us; learned behavior (modeling my mother’s polite demeanor) versus innate qualities (inheriting my father’s smile). I see it with my own children as they are a healthy combination of their own father and me. It keeps life, and holiday gatherings, interesting for sure.

As I settle in to the reality that my sister and I are also combination packages, I ponder where my brother fares in this newly discovered mixology of DNA. While I have my preconceived notions on his blueprint, that unscientific experiment may have to wait for another day.