"You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby"

By Jerry Zezima

The Stamford Advocate

Ever since my second grandchild, Lilly, was born last month, people have been asking who she looks like.

It’s hard to say because babies change by the hour, and need to be changed just as often, but I can tell you this: Because Lilly is so beautiful, she doesn’t look like me.

Figuring out who babies look like is one of the great mysteries of modern science. People — especially parents and grandparents, but also aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors and complete strangers who happen to be passing by and can’t help but comment on how cute the kid is — see who and what they want to see when they see a baby.

If you ask me (you didn’t, but I am going to answer anyway), Lilly looks like her mother, Lauren, who is my younger daughter and is, no thanks to me, beautiful.

When Lilly’s beautiful sister, Chloe, was born three and a half years ago, people (see above) said she looked like her father, Guillaume, a handsome guy with a full head of dark hair, which Chloe had, too. Now, however, Chloe looks just like Lauren, right down to the blond curls.

When Lauren was born, everyone said she looked like me. When her older sister, Katie, was born, everyone said she looked like my wife, Sue. Now people say Lauren looks like Sue and Katie looks like me. I can believe the former, because Sue is beautiful, but not the latter, because Katie is beautiful and I, while not exactly Freddy Krueger, am not exactly Brad Pitt, either.

But back to babies, who are living (and crying, eating, sleeping and pooping) proof that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It has been my observation that they look like whichever side of the family is seeing them at any given moment.

These family members will always comment on how beautiful the baby is and will then add that the little darling has all the traits of either the mother or the father, depending on which one is a direct relative.

It becomes more complicated (and pretty weird) when the comments involve body parts. For example, someone might say, “She has your nose.”

No one ever said that about Katie and Lauren, thank God, because if one of them had my nose, she wouldn’t have been able to lift her head until she was in kindergarten.

Eyes are also big. Mine are. They’re bloodshot, too. Still, they are the feature that people most often ascribe to the mother, the father or, in some cases, the passer-by who turns out not to be a complete stranger.

“She has my eyes,” relatives love to say.

The truth is that if the kid has your eyes, you couldn’t see, which is likely to be the case because, the vast majority of the time, nobody else agrees.

Even if you’re right, you’ll soon be wrong. The baby’s eyes, nose, ears, mouth, hair, hands or feet, which you could swear are just like yours, will soon resemble someone else’s. Then that person will say, “She looks just like me!”

What is indisputable is that all babies, whether they are children or grandchildren, are beautiful. OK, so maybe some of them aren’t, but they’re not related to any of us. And if they are, they have my nose.

So go ahead and see yourself in the new addition to your family. Brag that the little girl or boy is the spitting (and sometimes regurgitating) image of you when you were a baby, or looks like you now, or has all the traits that make everyone in your family so good-looking.

Like a broken clock, you’ll occasionally be right.

But know this: My granddaughters, Chloe and Lilly, are the most beautiful children on earth. If anyone disagrees, it will, of course, get ugly.

Copyright 2016 by Jerry Zezima