Heritage

Heritage

Sometimes when I look in the mirror,
studying my face, as I used to
  when I was a young girl
  trying to find the grown-up me in the unformed reflection,
I wonder what parts of my heritage
    have contributed to the me I see.

Are the eyes from my French many-great grandfather?
Maybe the red tint to my hair from my Irish ancestors?
I think the mouth may be English; or is it Dutch?
The nose is definitely from my German grandfather;
  the cheekbones, from my Native American great-grandmother.

And then I wonder what from them contributed to the parts I cannot see.
Whose temper I inherited, what quirks I now show –
   where did they come from?

Still deeper –

I wonder how they like inhabiting me?
Most of them would be enemies of one another,
   colonizers/colonized,
   trespassers on each other's lands and selves.
(No wonder I'm so confused at times.
I'm not only my own victim, I'm my own victimizer.)

Do others wonder about these things?
Do they care what makes them, them?
Am I the only one who studies her face in the mirror,
 looking for the past in the present?

Maybe the unexamined life is the one worth living.

But then, how do you know who you are?