Time Warp

I just went out to get my mail. As an aside, this is one of my favorite times of the day - I'm always eager to find a surprise lurking in the snail mail. Something more exciting than bills and junk. A Netflix movie is great, but usually expected when it arrives. A card or invitation is always a thrill.

Time warps? Yeah, those are a shocker.

I received my little brother's High School graduation announcement in the mail today, 10 years after I sent out my own graduation announcement. Uhhh, woah. How did 10 years go by so fast??

After I got married, my family went to Scotland with my dad's job for the summer, without me, of course. My brother was about 10 years old at that point in time. I left home after that summer without seeing them again, and haven't seen them frequently since. A few things have gotten me back home - a wedding here and there, a funeral, a very infrequent family vacation... I think I've only been back home maybe 4 or 5 times since I moved away, and never for an especially long time. Certainly not long enough or frequently enough to make my mental picture of my brother adjust to real life changes. So you can probably see how I remember my little brother. In fact, I tend to remember him exactly like he was when I was freshly married in this picture. And even that was almost a stretch, since I had left home for college almost 2 years before that, and was only back home in between school. He's lucky he's not permanently stuck in my memory as an 8-year old. No, he gets to be 10 years old forever. (Not so lucky for little sister Kaija, also in the picture. She's stuck as an 8-year-old, which is a little bit more drastic for a girl who's now 16 and looks shockingly different, from what I can tell.)

Not only is it always odd to hear his voice on the phone, but it's very shocking when I see his face in pictures, especially over the last few years, since I don't get pictures sent to me very often at all. And I haven't seen him in person for almost 2 years. He's now much taller than me now, and not at all how I remember him. This is the picture that came with his announcement today. It reminds me more of certain boys I used to gawk at on the bus ride home from school, with their jutting adam's apples, their long lean frames, and their "veiny", muscular arms....and very much not at all like the boy I remember him as.

It's difficult for me to imagine what life will be like in another 20 years, when I and my siblings are all in our middle years, and our kids are the teenagers, or already out of the house. I'm not sure how I'll relate to my own sisters and brother, with how infrequently I see them. It's easy enough for me to relate to Jacy and Melissa, since they were "grown up" by the time I left home, and have always been in the same life stage as I have been, with only a year difference either way. The only "catching up" we have to do when we talk or get together is a move to a new house, or what the kids are up to. With Megan, Dallis, and Kaija, it's almost like I'm talking to a half-stranger when I try to catch up with them. They are not who I remember them as, and you just can't flip a switch to make the mental images and memories change. At any rate, I hope that in 10 or 20 years, when my family all gets together, that we interact the way I remember my parents' families interacting at their family reunions. Like all they knew was each other as adults, instead of little kids. Although now I'm wondering if that was just my teenage mind projecting that onto them, and maybe they didn't interact quite the way I interpreted.

Anyway, Dallis, if you're reading, congratulations! You've done a lot of growing in the last 8 years, and I've missed so much of it. I wish I could be there for your graduation ceremony. Enjoy it, and this time in your life! The next 10 years will go so much faster than you expect it to, as I've come to find out.

And completely unrelated, I don't know why I bother buying my kids new crayons. They're always broken within 48 hours, anyway. :(