From Then to Now

Over the holiday I found some old pictures of myself. I look at my face, say in the picture to the left compared to the picture to the right, and I look exactly the same, minus the hair cut. Maybe a little more pronounced chin...sharper cheeks, but the same crooked smile, little face, and hooded eyes. We think we change so much from the little people we once were, but how much do we really? I wanted to be a nurse, a writer, a marine biologist. The writer in me has stayed as is; NYR #1 - write every day - though I have yet to write that longed for novel brewing inside my mind. The nursing goal is probably now my love of volunteering and community mindedness. The marine biologist definitely morphed into my lingering scientific interest in reading The Elegant Universe, Genome, A brief History of Time, and other such nerdy science books and my love of the show Nova and Doctor Who on PBS.



What's even stranger than me looking like me from over twenty years ago is me looking like my mother over FORTY years ago.
I guess that is one of the reasons people have children - to see themselves young all over again. It must be so weird to see a little you grow, make mistakes, be delighted, and sometimes change and learn things you never would have dreamed possible. I don't mean living vicariously through them either because even I've felt it - this strange transportation through time - when I've played with my nephew. Some how he makes me feel young (though I'm not very old yet) and brings back memories I've forgotten about from my childhood. Children are little time machines for adults to harbor safely for as long as they can.



Some where back there I also dreamed of being a farmer, which I hadn't recalled until I started "shooting the shit" with my parents about me and growing up. I hear the word farm and picture a big red barn, an old white house, expansive green fields, and cows, always cows. But I grew up on a farm, if I can believe it. It was a suburban farm, but a farm none the less. My dad raised Harry, a 350lb pig, in our backyard. He had his own slop area and little shed to go in. Later he even killed him and had him butchered into ham and bacon and pork chops and every other cut of pork our family could eat. We ate Harry for a long time...We also had turkeys, big ol' white ones like this here guy who my dad killed, defeathered, and prepared for selling around Thanksgiving time. But they'd be with us from chicks to maturity and had their own coop out back by Harry's digs. My dad was also a hunter and had many successful trips when he would come home with a deer in the back of his truck, its tongue lolling out of its mouth. The deer would be hung, gutted, stripped until it was a hanging slab of meat to be taken to the butcher's for cutting. My point was not to go on about my early exposure to death and animals, but more that seeds of my future aspirations have always been there since I was little. Too bad I can't say I had quite as good luck with my hair cuts...or my outfits...

Well, if anything, that's what growing up is for people - FASHION SENSE and learning from our fashion mistakes. I am quite thankful that I was not in my heyday in the 80s, so I merely felt a few traces of wave bangs and tight rolled jeans when I was cool in the 90s. Who knew though if I'd kept my day glo apparel and earrings I could totally wear them again last year into this year?

I can't go back to being a carefree and innocent little me, and I don't think I'd want to if I could. The older me has managed to keep a silly side and a love of life and fun that my little me surely inspired. It would be kind of neat though to see what my little me would say to the older me, sort of like back in middle school and high school when teachers would have you would write a letter to yourself in the future, seal it up in the class time capsule and bury it for later? (or in an envelope they'd give you at some set date, whatever is cooler) I guess I could pretend speaking words to my future me was the intent behind my prepubescent journals, but I'd have to really stretch to make gushing over Jordan Knight in some way relevant to my goals and self today.

Here's a guess, my little me would say (maybe not in such grown up phrases) - worry less. think less. play more. see my parents more. give. dream. color. hug more.