“Who do you think he looks like?” people ask me about The Kid, and because I am indecisive I tell them “both of us.” But it’s the truth. It’s also true, though, that he looks like everyone. Several have mentioned a resemblance between TK and my own dad, and I see it–the first male born in an entire generation on my side of the family, with an expression on his face like, “Could you turn it to Fox News?”

It makes me think about all that my parents gave me, and what I want to give TK. Gifts from The Dad: the ability to speak fluent sarcasm; the knowledge that, and I quote, “life isn’t fair”; a sense of financial responsibility that saved my ass in New York several times (in conjunction with grace). Gifts from The Mom: introduction to Jesus leading to my salvation (solid!); skinny genes; the knowledge that I always had a soft place to land when the world was rough. Gifts from both: a refusal to settle for anything less than success, from spelling bees to career choices; unconditional love.

Gifts from neither: their height. (That went to The Sis.)

All of those gifts, by the way, have their human-twisted unpretty sides. Sarcasm can be mean; salvation can parade as false piety; frugality can turn into penny-pinching. And there were times, like when The Dad wouldn’t jump on the Jesus bandwagon or The Mom picked us up in a borrowed, run-down Bronco, when I cried out to God that these were not the parents I ordered. His reply, I like to think? “I know that already. I AM.”

My running account of The Parents’ strengths and weaknesses over the years has been transformed into a humbling gratitude as I’ve parented TK over the last nine months. There are things I’ll avoid doing myself; there are more things that I hope to do half as well. But beyond all that, beyond my own fears and weaknesses, beyond this human condition that amounts to a vat inching up higher every day with its fullness of imperfections, is the consistent work of grace on my behalf and TK’s. A grace that unravels my messes and reweaves them into beauty. A grace that, if it continues to be as faithful as it always has been, will create TK’s strongest family resemblance.