When my brother and I were younger, we\u2019d dogpile onto our parents\u2019 massive bed every bright weekend morning and laze around doing just lots of nothing: sometimes watching some educational videos Dad likes and other times just doing a lot of hugging and spreading of love\u2026or, well, kind of. Mostly we just didn\u2019t want to get up and get on with the day, but that sounds far less sweet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Comparing hand sizes is a common activity during these times, when we had nothing better to do. Mom has long, slender, lovely fingers while Dad\u2019s are big and fat and large\u2014in a lovely, warm, fantastic way. Jason has Mom\u2019s long fingers, except his are even longer than hers and almost spidery, in a way. I, on the other hand, get Dad\u2019s hands, except mine are not yet too fat and absolutely tiny. They\u2019re also terrible hands for pianists to have. I can hardly play a couple octaves in a row while Jason can do ninths and maybe even tenths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I cheat, sometimes, and line our hands up so my fingers will stick out above his so I can pretend my fingers are longer than his, but that\u2019s just it: pretend. It hardly changes a thing about reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My freckles are like Mom\u2019s, though, except my face shape is all Dad. And my hair curls like Mom\u2019s mom, but my eyelashes grow like Dad\u2019s family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My hair and my eyes? Black and brown, just Chinese through and through, all over the surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m an eclectic mix of all my ancestors. Everyone is; they just don\u2019t usually care past their parents or grandparents. Sometimes some might send in samples of their blood to test for their origins, but best I can tell, that\u2019s just curiosity over anything else. But really we\u2019ve all got our basic parts from primates of times long past. The bone structure and other monkey traits are so much more paramount than just the skin or hair color, so what\u2019s really the point in focusing on what part of you is who? Those parts that made up Mom and Dad now make up you alone, so it hardly seems to matter what parts of you came from where so long as the pieces are properly assembled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then, those pieces hardly matter either. Even when you\u2019re building a tower, it\u2019s the bricks all together that make the true result, not a brick alone or one sole wall that holds importance. With a human, those parts from Mom and Dad are only half the product. The other half of the tower is built in the mind and far more important than the bricks of the exterior. Of course, the half of the tower built inside is molded with help from Mom and Dad, so saying that what they give is inconsequential is misleading indeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The point, though, is that the pieces don\u2019t matter in the least.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I tell myself that when I start feeling critical about some part of me that I don’t particularly love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That thought process doesn’t help much, especially when the pieces in question are my hands, as they often are. Then it quite clearly does matter as the difference between octaves and ninths.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Except for when the pieces in question are your hands. Then it does matter as the difference between octaves and ninths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"