Friday, October 28, 2011

Who do you know?

I want to know this girl.
As I was looking through the photos to send for my Grandma's funeral, I found many pictures of her as a young woman...  she's riding horses (fast!), wearing a letter sweater (she told me she played basketball with boys' rules), and with people I don't know and never will know.  Then the photos jump forward to when she became a mother, then a grandmother.  I got to thinking... how cool would it have been to know her when she was young?

(Commence rambling...)  And then I realized, unless you grow up with someone, like your sibling, you only know a person based on who they are during your more specific interaction time in life.  Okay, that sounds stupid, but let me elaborate.  I look at photos of my parents when they were young, and I have no idea what they must have been like.  I hear stories (which you can't accept as 100% truth!), but there's a part of me that wishes I could KNOW them at that age.  I want to know what their interests were, what their fears were, what their friends were like.  Were they like me?  What did they worry about?  Did they think about marriage, kids?  Did they imagine a different future for themselves?



And what about people who know me?  If they met me before I moved to Indiana, met me in high school, met me in college, met me after college... I was a different 'person' at these times in my life.  The people who've stayed in touch with me, they've seen me grow and change, but it's interesting that you can feel you 'know' someone and even love them, but not have known what they were like as a kid, or even as a young adult.  I wonder what my kids will think of me someday, maybe even my grandkids?  Will I just be the adult, the old lady, or will they wonder what I was like when I was younger?

If I had a time machine, I would spy on my grandparents and parents when they were younger.  I'd watch as the stories of their lives unfold, Back to the Future style.  But I wouldn't change a thing... life is too good when you let it happen all on its own.

Do you know her?

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