As Chloe has gotten older I have been startled to see how much she looks like Melinda. I think this is a very good thing; in fact, it’s a great thing, a tribute to them both. But it is surprising and disconcerting to think that the person walking down the stairs in your peripheral vision is your wife when it is really your daughter.

The resemblance goes beyond the physical, too. Sometimes the two give me the same look, or Chloe will make a gesture or movement that, to me, belongs to Melinda. So I really didn’t find it all that surprising when the three of us went exploring the other day and I got this picture. We were sitting in a café along the riverfront in Nantes (okay, I’m not in the picture but that is my chair between them). I got up to take a closer look of both the river and some cool public art. I turned around to find the two sitting like this and quickly snapped the picture.

They don’t even know I took it…