Red.

Chris and his mini-me.

I gave birth to a ranga, a ginger, a carrot-head or as I like to see it, a perfect Venetian blond little boy and I'm perfectly fine with it!

Hugo's coloring came as a not completely unexpected surprise. Throughout the pregnancy, Chris maintained that the redhead gene being recessive, the odds were in favor of having a brunette like his mother. My response usually was that recessive genes are recessive until they're not.

The thing about Hugo's hair color is that it creates a very instant likeness with Chris. In addition to his beautiful head of hair, the shape of his eyes is also Chris' and so with this unmistakable combination, anyone who knows Chris always exclaims how much Hugo looks like him (and therefore, not like me...).

It seems that this could bother me. In the past and more recently, I have witnessed on separate occasions a sort of frustration from women with this phenomenon of the newborn child resembling his father. Afterall, we do all the hard work so couldn't they at least look like us?

Most recently, a nurse who had just given me an injection commented on the ginger tones in Hugo's hair. I replied that he got it from his father, to which she said, in gist, "Oh don't you hate it when that happens?!"I joked that it didn't bother me in the least since I had picked the father after all.

While I said it in good humor, it was in fact exactly how I felt. What could be better than to see the man I chose to spend the rest of my life and raise a family with through our beautiful child? While there is no doubt Hugo will become his own person, totally (mostly) independent of either of us, I love the idea of observing and admiring this genetic thread from father to son and I love the idea that Chris can recognize himself in Hugo.

After over 8 years together, Chris has become completely familiar to me, in the most comforting sense. I recognize him at a level which is far deeper than his appearance. As soon as Hugo was placed in my arms, I felt that I had always known him too, instantly familiar and maybe his features played a small part in this. He might not look instantly like me but he looks like my soulmate. That's good enough for me.

In any case, while he was blessed with his father's gingery locks, the lottery of life still had the good sense of giving him my olive skin. It's one thing to play with fire but you wouldn't want to get burned!