My wide-set green eyes.

My stubborn, pronounced chin that no one in any of the family photo albums had ever matched.

She was thirty years ahead of me, a stranger on my parents’ welcome mat, but she was me.

Still folded around my baby on the carpet, I stared up at her like she was a mirror that had learned to walk.

My mother went paper white.

All the color drained from her face at once, like water from a sink.