By: Emily Eileen Moreshead
So I graduated high school 18 years ago today. June 4, 1999. Seeing last century’s numbers flash on the screen is a little jarring. I’m not old, or rather as old as other people but it’s nostalgic to remember life’s milestones and suddenly be transported to an easier day and time. One of my nephew’s graduates today, June 4, 2017. And he wasn’t even born yet on my graduation!
I see my nieces and nephews grow up and mature and become life affirming adults in a world we cannot comprehend. I worry about them and don’t often take stock of the realization that I was their ages once too, thinking and believing that anyone my age now was ‘out of touch’, ‘uncool’, or just didn’t understand my world. We understand. We were there.
If you ask me where I was in any given year growing up, I would respond by mentioning life’s travels. No, not physical traveling because in my childhood they were sparse, but traveling in my mind. In 1993, I became an aunt for the first time. I was 12. By age 33, I was an aunt to 6 nieces and 7 nephews. Amazing! These children now range in age from 3 years to almost 25!
Life can bring us so much joy, frustration, happiness and pain but rolled into one mix, they make our beautiful batter called self. Our world, personified. There’s an old car commercial that reminds us, ‘on the road of life, there are passengers and there are drivers. Drivers wanted.’ I think that’s a pretty great adage, don’t You?
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