When I was little, I used to play dress-up.

It was nothing out of the ordinary. Like most little girls, I'd sneak into my mother's dressing room, slip into her high heels and do a rather inadequate job of smearing red lipstick all over my face. Thinking I'd done the job right Ñ and that lipstick was a warranted accessory for a young girl of six to wear to school Ñ I'd bounce down the stairs, clad in my school uniform and a few "choice" accessories, thinking I'd slide past my mother and onto bus No. 8 without notice.

I must have been crazy.

"Think again, young lady," my mother would yell at me, and I knew that was my cue to march right back up the stairs and put on something, well, more appropriate.

For years I'd watch my mother get ready for work or a formal dinner, eloquently painting on that lipstick, using the glosses and mascara and powders I longed to try for my own. I watched her rise gently by wearing the high heels my tiny feet wouldn't fit into; I watched her take a beaded purse that glittered in the low light of evening in our family room. And as a little girl of six, a little girl of eight, and even and older girl of 10, I was immensely envious, watching my mother transform into this beautiful woman for a night on the town.

But the appeal of dress-up was so much more than a simple playtime activity. There was a part to me that longed to grow up; a part of me that was tired of being six, tired of being eight, tired of being 10. Always ready to be older than I was, my mother's shoes would transport me to a time in the future when I'd get to be older, when I'd get to be smarter and when I'd get to be prettier.

When I'd get to be like her.

This past weekend, my mother traveled from Sandy Hook, Conn., taking a much-deserved day off from work to spend the weekend with me on campus. Visiting with several hundred other mothers for Saint Mary's Junior Mom's Weekend, as each pair of women walked through the doors to each event, it was not difficult to figure out the pairs. In each of the daughters there was a part of the mother — whether it was a smile, whether it was the way they walked, whether it was the way they talked in a crowd.

For me, admitting that I'm a lot like my mother has never been something easy. Immovably stubborn and fiercely independent, ever since those days I marched down the stairs in high heels, determined to go to school in shoes 10 sizes too big, I have always been determined to be myself. But as I sat at dinner Saturday and looked down at my feet, now clad in properly-fitting high heels of my own, I realized that I was more like my mother than I'd ever imagined. It's in the way we tell stories, it's in the way we laugh at jokes. It's in the way we dress up for an evening out — and the way we enter a room.

And I guess that's not so bad, following in her footsteps.

If only the shoes weren't so big.

• Following in her footsteps