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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
July 2, 2006
Published as Family History
in a Gramma Letter dated July 2, 1996.
© 1996 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Bud & Eliz, Grape Leaves, 1990
© 1990 by Bud Grossmann
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FATHER-DAUGHTER LOOK-ALIKES
Tuesday, July 2, 1996
Dear Gramma,
Summer is here and I’ve got the haircut to prove it. Actually, since I like to get as much mileage as possible out of a good haircut, my barber knows what I’ll say—summer or winter—make it short!
Although I was getting pretty shaggy, I would not have gone for a trim quite yet, except that my eight-year-old daughter had to go to the bathroom. I’ll explain. Elizabeth had an ear infection. She and I were in a drugstore, waiting for the pharmacist to fill a prescription. Suddenly my child announced by word and gesture, “Dad! I gotta go bathroom...right now!!”
I grabbed her by the wrist and rushed her out of the store. The public restrooms were several stores away—next to my barber shop. A key is required, but I knew I could borrow one from my barber. I flung open the barber shop door, and found Eddie—my barber—relaxing in a chair and reading a magazine. He leaped to his feet and said, “Yes!” to the question he thought I was going to ask.
“Oh, you have time for me right now?” I asked. “Well, let me borrow the key to the ladies’ room, and I’ll be right back.” Liz got to the bathroom in time.
Eddie had never met Elizabeth. When I introduced her, he observed, “She looks like you, Bud. She has your eyes.”
“I hope that’s good,” I said, pleased but modest. I did not tell Eddie my favorite she-looks-like-her-dad story, but I’ll tell you, Elizabeth’s great-grandmother.
One day, when my little girl was just old enough to walk, I was holding her in my arms as I stood in a cashier’s line in a department store. The month was November. I had shaved off my beard for Halloween but had started raising a new one the next day. Lizzie, babbling and wriggling, was gleefully rubbing her palms across the sandpapery surface of my chin and cheeks. Ahead of us in line was a woman about my age who looked to be of Portuguese ancestry. Following us in line was a wizened and gray-haired woman who I am sure was Japanese.
The older woman reached across my daughter and me to touch the younger woman on the arm. “How old your baby?” she asked.
The Portuguese woman jerked away as though jolted by electricity. She glared at my child and then at the old woman, and indignantly declared, “That not my baby!”
I politely replied, “My daughter is thirteen months old.”
The old woman beamed. “That girl,” she informed me, “all over you!”
At first I thought she was remarking about Liz’s hands being all over my face. But the woman amplified her observation: “Same eye, same nose, same chin! That girl all over you!” She was saying, I then realized, That girl is you, all over!
“Thank you!” I said, with a chuckle of delight.
Then the old woman evidently caught the double meaning in her choice of words. With twinkling eyes, she looked at my squirming child and then at me and said, “That girl all over you, yeah. But you going put her on the floor, she going be all over this store!” She was right, I knew, and so I clutched my kid a little bit tighter.
Now, this story has a postscript, Gramma. I must tell you this: Frances and I feel a special pride and pleasure when we receive look-alike compliments about our kids. And that is because both of our children are adopted! If Eliz has my eyes, and if David looks a lot like Fran, well, I must say, The Stork did a fine job at the baby factory.
♦
We can trust you—can’t we, Gram?—to be cautious when you set off firecrackers for the Fourth of July. We wish you a happy holiday.
Love,
Buddy
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