I looked at it. I turned it this way and that to see if different lighting or a different angle would help. I added a little shadow along the sides of the face. It wasn't any better. It looked rather like Ken's Aunt Rose. I finally shrugged, sighed, got out the fixative and sprayed it good.

      "It's me! What do you think?" The kids got the first shot at it.

      "Brrrrrrr!!!" Brian, eleven, shuddered and held his fingers up in a cross over the face. It was obvious he was pretty shaken. "That's not you! It looks like she hasn't smiled in, oh, a hundred years or so! If fact, she looks about a hundred. 'I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog, too (cackle, cackle, cackle)!'" He rubbed his hands together and the cackle was pretty convincing. I could tell I was raising not only a critic but a comedian as well.

      "The chin's wrong and the mouth's wrong and that's definitely not your nose. You've got this little straight nose here and your nose is a lot wider at the bottom." Elizabeth, thirteen, was wrinkling her own nose in distaste which just made her dimples deeper in her own beautiful cheeks.

      "Well, I don't care. It's a very nice picture. I'd like to see you draw a picture as good." Seven-year-old Garrett was, very uncharacteristically, the only diplomat of the group, "Even if it doesn't look at all like mom."

      "Why did you make it so . . . ugly?" Brian wasn't done yet. "You never look like that. Your mouth doesn't turn down like that; the corners turn up a little. I don't like it!" He was right, of course, I make a habit of turning up the corners of my mouth. I laugh a lot. At my age it's the cheapest, fastest face-lift I know of.

      When Ken got home, he got the next crack at it. After more than thirty years of marriage, he had looked at me a lot more than I had looked at myself so I valued his opinion of my effort. I pulled it out and held it up. "What do you think? Does it look like me?"

      "No," he said, "is it supposed to?"

      "Uh, yah." There was a pause while he squinted his eyes and looked at the picture sideways. "I was supposed to draw a picture of myself for my writing class . . ."

      "For a writing class?" He straightened up and looked at me in the same way he had just looked at the picture.

      "Uh, huh. I'm taking a class from John again this term."

      "I guess that probably explains it." He rolled his eyes.

      "Anyway, I'm actually supposed to draw at least four pictures of myself with different expressions to record how I react . . . how changes in emotion affect the way I look."

      "This is supposed to be you?"

      "Yah, that was the assignment. Quit screwing up your face like that. I already know it doesn't look exactly like me, but what's mostly wrong with it? How can I make it better?"

      "Well, there's something wrong with the lips here. See, you've got this little dipsy-doodle about the mouth."

      "Really? A dipsy-doodle?"

      "Not you, the picture."

      "Oh. I didn't know I knew how to draw a dipsy-doodle. In fact, until you pointed it out just now I'm not sure I even knew what a dipsy-doodle was. A dipsy-doodle. Wow, imagine that! What else is wrong with it?"

      "For one thing your hair is up in a bun . . ."

      "That's not what keeps it from looking like me. I drew it first thing in the morning before I even brushed my hair."

      "And you left off your moustache."

      "Oh, thanks a lot . . ."

      "And what are these lines down here?"

      "Well, it was pretty dark this morning when I was drawing. I took that old mirror out of the bathroom and propped it on my computer desk. I had to wedge my pen cup against it to hold it there and then I turned on this little light . . ."

      "You took my shaving mirror?"

      "Sorry."

      He rolled his eyes again. "And your point in all this is . . .?"

      "Well, it makes the shadows really dark and that's what makes those lines show up like that. Besides I had to tip my head down so I could even see it and that's why the chin is like that. Charcoal and printer paper aren't very forgiving, either. They make everything pretty much black and white . . . and . . . grey. What can I change, to make it better, though . . .?"

      "Well, your face isn't this, ummm, round."

      "You mean fat?"

      "Yah, that." He took the sketch and held it up next to me. I made my expression very serious and stared straight at him. He made this ridiculous face and lots of quasi-studious hmmm, hmmmm noises until I couldn't stand it any more. My whole face contorted, and I broke out laughing.

      He shook his head and grinned at me. "Probably nothing." He was just toooo kind. "The glasses are crooked and it just doesn't look like you. Maybe in ten, twenty years . . ."

      I was greatly relieved. "She does look familiar, though, doesn't she?" I asked. Funny how the picture became a person when it was no longer me.

      "Yah," he said, " . . . . it looks like Aunt Rose."