Family, old and new

While thirty three may not yet be old, it’s no longer young either.

And while I may look less than the sum of my collective years, I often feel vastly in advance of them.

It’s now, that marriage, a home and canine responsibilities rear their heads that I find myself revolving 180 degrees and thinking about the actions and events that led me here.

I’m not going to dive headlong into all the days and years leading up to this point, but it’s worth taking a few minutes, maybe an hour, every now and then and seriously pondering the meaning of your life to this or that point.

I sit here, in our apartment, surrounded by the dust and debris of construction and reconstruction and gaze at the photo frame across from me.

Staring right back at me is Me, a younger me, the one from 13 years ago, the one from 17 years ago and the one from almost 30 years ago. He still looks like Me.

In one image he looks sun-flushed and drunk, in another, he resembles a teenage motorbike enthusiast and in yet another, he sits with his Father to one side and his now estranged Brother to the other.

There’s even one photograph where his Mother and Father encircle him- despite his far greater height and hug him. Him, this late 20’s, chubby faced individual.

Now I sit here and I stare back. There are smiles on every face I see and in my new family I am overwhelmingly lucky enough to see these smiles again.

The smiles in the photos are gone now, but I look at them and I remember them and I know they are still smiling with me.