6.09.2012

People who are related

By Alison Piepmeier


Self portrait
I know that very often Maybelle looks like a small, beardless Biffle. I'm happy to say that today I inadvertently got a picture that demonstrated the fact that she's related to the Piepmeiers. Check it out. Like me, I think she's got a wider mouth than her Uncle Trey, even though he's trying harder.

10 comments:

The Mom said...

I love that photo! I laughed and laughed. What a joyful, fun-filled picture!!

12:27 AM
Erica said...

My BFF Karin and I call that the "muppet smile"b/c that's how you know when a muppet is smiling b/c the puppeteer has to open his hand real wide. We both muppet smile a LOT.

12:40 AM
Erica said...

I just noticed I'm muppet smiling in the leetol pic by my comment!

12:40 AM
starrlife said...

:)

7:22 AM
Tawanda Bee said...

I laughed out loud, and I am wondering if there is some genetic connection somewhere down the line? My nickname in college was "tooth woman," and I can still fit my fist in my mouth. hmmm.

8:56 AM
Aaron said...

poor Trey :(

4:03 PM
Alison Piepmeier said...

Aaron, we need a comparison to your biggest mouth. Send a picture!

And Erica, I think you can do better.

8:28 AM
mary said...

maybelle is going to beat aaron. sorry aaron...

10:22 AM
Anonymous said...

Okay, this falls under the really-i'm-supposed-to-care-about-that-now-too??? category - one of the seventy thousand linguistic missteps that are invisible to all but the relatively small number of people they happen to impact - for which reason I almost didn't post it.

But I figured that since this blog has educated me on a dozen or so of these, I can throw this one out there without being your single most annoying blog commenter ever, so here goes.

Using the term "related," without a qualifier like "biologically" implies that everyone who is related shares blood. This reifies the already-so-problematic privileging of biological child/parent connections. As a mama who shares no DNA with her child - and yet who feels in every way related to his sweet little self - this kind of thing is a (completely innocent) reminder of what I'm told everywhere, all the time, which is that if I were really "related" to my son, I would look like him.

I'm pretty sure this is the kind of thing that only adoptive and other non-bio parents would notice, but I wish it weren't. I wish that when people meant to say that two people share a genetic connection, they would say so instead of using a term for familial connection that need not be exclusionary.

There. Annoying rant ended. :)

1:02 PM
Alison Piepmeier said...

breakingintoblossom, you are SO right! I actually had a tiny niggling awareness of that when I made the post, but I ignored it and posted away.

You're absolutely right that family doesn't ultimately have to do with genetic connections--it has to do with a decision to love each other and live together, support one another, etc. Biffle was adopted, one of my very very best friends is in the process of adopting, and one of Maybelle's first nanny-share companions was adopted. So I try to be more aware of collapsing "family" and "biological connection."

And let me assure you that, although Biffle's body isn't the same size or shape as his dad's, he has picked up about 11 billion physical and vocal characteristics of his dad's.

1:47 PM

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