WHERE DID I COME FROM?

One day, I fully expect Baby Girl to ask me where she came from. When that time comes, I hope to have an honest and forthright conversation with her - to the best she can understand - and fill in gaps in knowledge as she can process them. (No child of mine will believe you can't get pregnant the first time!) But, in the meantime, I sit and wonder where this little angel came from.

So much of this baby looks familiar: She has her father's expressions, sleeps in the same position as her uncle and Pops, has fingers that look like mine and the long eyelashes of both her father and me. But so much is unaccounted for: the olive colored skin that almost everyone remarks upon, her grey eyes and the Mongolian Blue spot.

It's weird. As I sit now and watch her nap (so much for my attempt to go to Mommy and Me yoga today), I have started to become curious about my family tree. According to Wikipedia and other sites, the incidence of a Mongolian Blue Spot is a minor skin blemish that disappears around puberty and while is is present in almost all babies of East Asian heritage*, is almost non-existent among Caucasians - except for those of Hungarian descent. Apparently the Hungarians mingled with the Hun population and therefore Hungarians tend to have these spots. The incidence among Hungarian Jews is even higher than that of the rest of the Hungarian population. Apparently, we are a horny people.

My maternal grandmother is Hungarian. When asked, she swore that we are 100% Jewish and that as far as she knows, no one in her family ever married someone of East Asian Descent. when I asked her if perhaps there was a non-marital dalliance with one of her ancestors and as East Asian, she giggled. She really liked the idea. Like I said, we are a horny people.

So, that mystery is solved. Whew, when I saw the spot, all sorts of crazy ideas ran through my head - she is developing back and blue marks (someone hurt her), she is sick, the hospital gave us the wrong baby (not like we were giving her back though!) and other insane ideas too embarrassing to be mentioned here.

Now to figure out where she got that lovely skin color and those grey eyes.


*Chinese believe that if you are reluctant to be reincarnated, the King of Hell prods and kicks you until you agree to go and that causes the spot. Husband's cousin told me that when they baby smiles in her sleep, she is reliving her past lives and shutting the doors in order to more fully live this life. The more she smiles, the happier her past life. Baby Girl smiles all the time when she sleeps, so I like the idea that she was so happy in her last life that she was a little reluctant for another go around.