{"id":2223,"date":"2020-12-04T05:38:05","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T13:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=2223"},"modified":"2020-12-02T05:42:27","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T13:42:27","slug":"two-sides-of-the-family-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2020\/12\/04\/two-sides-of-the-family-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Sides of the Family Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each night, as I sit on the edge of the bed slathering my face with Neutrogena Night Cream, I can\u2019t help but wonder if I\u2019d started slathering it on years ago, would I look decades younger now? The truth is, the answer is no. The way I look and am now was charted in my DNA decades before I was born.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m always amused when someone mentions the words \u201csomeone of your stature\u201d when they\u2019re doing an introduction. I\u2019m sure they\u2019re talking about my reputation as a writer, but I can\u2019t help but think about my physical stature which is to say six-foot one. All too often someone meeting me in person for the first time will blurt out, \u201cYou don\u2019t look this tall on your book covers.” Of course not, because for cover photos I\u2019m usually sitting down. From the waist up, I\u2019m not that tall. According to my husband, I have an extra six inches in my legs. (If you were to see my lanky fifteen year-old grandson, you\u2019d know that runs in the family.)<\/p>\n

And where did that tall trait come from? My father\u2019s side of the family. My great grandmother, Grandma Madsen, was more than six feet tall. So was her daughter, my Grandma Busk. The circle of permanently rough skin that gradually appeared on my forehead a few years ago and leaves a shadow between my eyebrows is something I remember from Grandma Busk\u2019s face. Fortunately, I didn\u2019t inherit her rectangular figure\u2014the curves came from my mother\u2019s side of the family\u2014or her essential mean-spiritedness. Grandma Madsen had a sense of humor. Her daughter did not.<\/p>\n

Humor, laughter, and singing came from my Anderson and Fromm strands of DNA. Nearsightedness came from both sides.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been cold and wet the last couple of weeks, so I\u2019ve been doing inside steps rather than outside. No, I don\u2019t have a treadmill. I have a complex many circled route that, in one stint, is good for 1900 steps, give or take, depending on whether the phone is in my hand or in my hip pocket.<\/p>\n

\"\"

The Shrine<\/p><\/div>\n

On Thanksgiving Day, I was walking the long straightaway down the hall when I looked at the scene at the end of it\u2014something our decorator created and calls \u201cthe shrine.\u201d It\u2019s a collection of my writing awards as well as a photo of the \u201creal\u201d Athena, along with some treasured horsehair baskets from the reservation. Overlooking the awards there\u2019s a photo of yours truly.<\/p>\n

In the early nineties, after my daughter, Jeanne T. returned from Arizona, her Mother\u2019s Day gift to me was a joint session at a local Glamour Shots establishment. One of the photos taken that day is the one you see posted here. For those of you who have never experienced a Glamour Shot photo shoot, here\u2019s what happens. You go there. They fix your hair, your clothes, and your makeup, and then they take the photos before the makeup has a chance to melt. The resulting prints are expensive, and if you want to use them for professional purposes, you have to pay even more. But with this particular photo, we did just that. In fact, this is the image that was posted on my website long ago when Melissa G. sent her very nasty but memorable \u201cbag over your head\u201d comment.<\/p>\n

So on Thanksgiving Day, I found myself being thankful for the very special gift my daughter gave me nearly thirty years ago. That photo offers a visual memory of how I used to look even if I don\u2019t look that way now, but it\u2019s also a very tangible symbol of a daughter\u2019s enduring love for her mother.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m pretty sure that generous side of my daughter’s nature came from the Anderson side of my family tree.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each night, as I sit on the edge of the bed slathering my face with Neutrogena Night Cream, I can\u2019t help but wonder if I\u2019d started slathering it on years ago, would I look decades younger now? The truth is, the answer is no. The way I look and am now was charted in my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-zR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2225,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223\/revisions\/2225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}