I Thought I Saw A Ghost

Last night I got up in the middle of the night and scared the crap out of myself. Through my blurry night eyes and mussed up hair, I looked over in the mirror and thought it was someone else. I thought it was my mom looking back at me.

I think this is a natural occurrence in most women's lives. When they look back or hear themselves and think "Man, I'm turning into my mom." But for people who have lost their moms, this can be a satisfying and scary thing.

Honestly I was thinking about it today. Why now? I have a hair color that my mother never had. and I can never remember her having hair this long. After much thought I think I've nailed it down to a few things:

• I'm now getting to be the age my mom was when I was born. I'm in my thirties which is where my mom was when we met. (And by met, I mean she popped me out of her stomach-I was a C-section baby). So it's only natural that the pictures that I've seen are mostly from after that time. The memories I have are of her from the thirties and beyond.
  
• I have bangs now. It's a simple thing, but my bangs were pushed to the side in my night time slumber-induced rearrangement. This was the way my mom wore her hair for my entire life. So that contributed to the confusion.
• It was the middle of the night and I often scare the crap out of myself so I was probably making a bigger thing of this than it really was.

So, I take a little pride in having confused myself for a while as I think my mom aged well (minus the whole cancer thing, of course) and she was always cute. Honestly, if I ended up like her in even a very small way, I would ecstatic. She was a pretty great lady.