My brain is mush. A friend from the States came by for a pit stop visit. We hadn’t seen each other in four or five years. I lasted visited her in NYC. She arrived in Luebeck yesterday afternoon and we talked straight through until the early hours of the morning. The birds’ song was already announcing the new day. Now, after a few short hours of sleep, I am awake but not alert.
I was nervous about seeing her again, for not other reason than bruised vanity. The last five years have not been gentle ones with my outward appearances. I’ve become grey, I’ve gained weight, and I’ve lost form. In other words, I’ve gotten older. I worried that she would take one look at me and say, “OMG, what’s happened to you?” and instead, she took one look and said, “What’s happened in your life and in matters of the heart?”
A decade in an adult life is meaningful, but it doesn’t make you into a different person. I realised this when introducing my children to my friend last night. She hadn’t seen them in eleven or twelve years. Not only are my children physically unrecognisable, they have developed into different people. I laughed at the difference between their development and mine. The changes from a four-year-old to a sixteen-year-old are enormous, between forty and fifty just a shift in gravity.
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