My only living grandparent is 89 years old and he’s seen five grand-children graduate from college: my brother Olin, me, my cousins Bell, Herb, and now Nellie.
It’s been years since all of us have been together. Though we grew up only hours apart (a short distance in Montana terms), now we’re spread out by states and restricted by the bounds of adult responsibility. Work often prevents Christmastime travel, and group visits become fewer and farther between. None of us knows if the next time we all gather will be a happy or sad event—a wedding or a funeral.
But we were happy Mother’s Day weekend, excited for Nellie to start her new job in Alaska after graduation. Before I came back to Colorado I got to visit Herb’s apartment in Seattle. He showed me videos from 1986 he recently converted to DVD.
On screen I saw the five cousins out in the woods roasting hot dogs. Olin, the oldest, at 8 years, tended the fire, poking it, gazing deeply into its blaze, oblivious to the rest of us. Nellie, the youngest, at 1, sat with a bare bottom sucking her thumb on her mom’s lap.
Pictures help remind us of memories, but they don’t capture the way our younger selves moved, talked, related, and reacted. Now, 21 years later, it was amazing to see how we still have the same facial expressions and mannerisms (although we’ve decreased the likelihood of picking certain body parts in public).
We are still the children we were—sometimes expectant, sometimes reluctant, we bicker, we get excited, we try, we fail, we cry, we try again. We grow up to be bigger versions of ourselves. I still want the same things—to belong, to feel safe, and to be known and loved.
Uncle Monte asked “Who’s this?” when he pointed the camera at us. I said seriously behind my blonde scraggled hair falling in front of my face: “I’m Carrie Jo, and this is Bell.” She said with a big toothy grin, “Daddy, you know who I am!”
Yes, he knows, but he wants to hear it from us.
Back then I would tell my name, where I lived, what I liked do. But I did not know then who I would be today, and I still don’t know who I will be tomorrow or what will happen in another 10 or 20 years.
Though unknowing is a vulnerable position, I don’t think I’d move into knowing if I could. As we glance back at the past, may we remember that our Creator knows who we are, and we can trust Him to help us write a good story that’s so much fun to look back and see—whether it’s at age 89 or 29.
