We just got back from a lovely trip to celebrate Brixton's birthday with family and friends. And the whole time we were in Chicago I was seeing things with double vision. Seeing my kids play with the toys I grew up loving. Seeing the people who knew me as a child. It's so strange but since I moved to Seattle when I was 22, there's a very clear line. One city holds my childhood and my past. One city holds my young adulthood and my present.
But the places we leave never just stay there do they? Buildings are torn down and new businesses open. The park I used to hang out in after school is being renoved. People are growing and changing jobs and getting new glasses and having babies. But I can't help but see it all through the pantina of my memories. A layer of what used to be on top of the layer of how it is.
Children are like this too. When you see the face of a child, you see them, of course, but you also see the echoes of your own childhood, you feel the ripples of other children you have loved. I'm sure that when my own kids are grown, I will still see traces of their baby selves in other faces.
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| Four Generations! |
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| Hanging with the second cousins, Bella and James. |
One night while we were there, I had a splitting headache. I went downstairs and my mom rubbed my back. The feel of my mother's hands soothing away my pain is such an ancient and deep reassuarance. And afterwords, she told me she was channeling the sense of her own mother's soothing hands.
This is the way we pass it on.
2 comments:
very sweet! i love that your mother would rub your back to help you feel better - my mom would've offered me a bottle of tylenol *ahem*
It's double vision for me too, for all of the things you mentioned and so much more. Especially love the pictures Michael took of U and B sitting on the stairs with the pictures of you and him in the background. I do feel a strong level of "connectedness" that runs through the family. It's a beautiful thing.
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