Finding Yourself in a Baby’s Face

The eyes were her mothers’, that was the first thing we knew. Home from the maternity ward I peered into Dubsie’s unfocused peepers and fancied that I saw a hint of blue, a sign of my Northman’s banner carried forward, but no, that was wishful thinking. Those eyes resolved into a profound brown and brown they will forever be. They are the eyes of her mother’s Dravidian stock, stewed in the equatorial heat of South India over thousands of years to the color of the fertile banana-plant earth, a genetic steamroller that flattens its pale Northern counterpart any day of the week.

The rest of the face we weren’t not so sure. A newborn’s nose turns up and the chin vanishes in order to accomplish the job of suckling. But nearing age two there’s things you know, and others you can guess. Her eyes are mummy’s but the wide isthmus between them is most certainly mine, you only need to look at us together, and same for the big ears that tick slightly outward when she smiles. She will have only me to blame for the vast prairie of her forehead.

The lower half of her countenance is, fortunately for her, mostly Mummy. Of those pert luscious lips there can be question. The smile, though, can be a big generic half-orange-slice like mine, occasionally tilted into a hint of Irish mischief. The smooth rounded cheekbones are what my wife’s family affectionately call Bollyballs.

The chin remains the subject of speculation, while the skin is a mixture of coffee and cream, with the only question being exactly how beautiful it will turn out to be. The eyebrows are a mystery. They are square, cartoonish little caterpillars like those of Barack Obama, or a muppet, which is why we’ve taken to calling them muppet eyebrows. On the crown of her head is the curly dark hair that comes at her from both sides, poor girl, and the ringlets pounce off in every direction.

I may have lost the eyes but I am increasingly convinced that I have won the nose. The Broward Nose, named after my mother’s side. It is a good nose, I think, neither long nor squat, starting straight but curving up at the tip into something pugnacious or cute, depending on who’s wearing it, and it has emerged victorious in every parental joust it has entered. The Dravidians have the eyes, but the nose is Davidian.