favor

Who does he or she “favor” is the first question on the heels of – what’s the baby’s name. Everyone stares in wonder at a new baby and mentally traces the lineage as far back as they can with their knowledge of the families involved.

Favor is usually defined in much different ways, but this definition- appearance or face or facial feature fits exactly for who a baby’s face reminds you of. It’s not an easy task to take a face apart and start aligning the nose with Daddy and the lips with Momma and the eyes with Poppa and the forehead with Nana. We don’t know what color eyes he has at first, so that can wait. Of course, with any subjective endeavor, there are no clear rights or wrongs. If someone disagrees and states flatly, “he is the spitting image of his daddy”, what can you say? Nothing! Because just like beauty- “favor” is in the eyes of the beholder.

You know the phrase, “Love is blind”, well so might your vision be on how perfect your namesake is compared to others. To be honest, I see some of my own children in the faces of babies, that no one else could ever recognize or confirm. Perhaps, it’s the soft skin and that little lip quiver that melts my mind into baby jelly! We all know that new mothers forget all the bad moments of motherhood and replace those memories with only the good- that’s how they become mothers for the second, third and more times. Each time, they wonder how did I forget all these details- doctor’s appointments, weight gain, sleepless nights, crying babies, etc, etc. Simple, you look into that face that favors and reminds you of every good thing that ever happened to you!

So, when you are prompted to answer the question, ” who do you think he favors”, just speak from your heart. Time will tell….or maybe not.  I know of families who continue to contest whose side of the family that particular male pattern baldness is traced back to. You can’t do a predictive sketch from a baby’s face- or can you? The future flashed before my eyes and it was not pretty. We might not even use this charming custom in the next decade. We could download an app, insert a baby’s face and voila’, there would be a veritable line up of all the family likenesses all the way back to the dawn of time. Scary, huh?

Let’s welcome a new baby the time honored and traditional way.  We just claim he favors us and everyone we love. That’s the warm embrace of family- ‘he’s one of us’ and he favors us all!