A conversation once had about waiting until the kids went to college before considering certain changes floats through my head and I hear promises made and promises considered.
Might have had that discussion in 2008 and 2013 if not other times as well. Makes me wonder if it was serious, if things really changed and a half dozen other things.
People are entitled to change their minds but sometimes those changes or lack thereof make you scratch your heads and wonder whether they were ever serious.
And sometimes things happen that remind you of changes you have to make regardless of whether it is alone or with others.
This life often moves faster than we expect and or realize and just when you think you have figured out what to do the moment to move on it has passed and you have to pivot or let go.
Thought about it all and more while crammed into a basketball stadium watching my daughter walk across a stage to grab her diploma, Pomp and Circumstance playing on the loudspeakers and a million whispers rising all around.
Yesterday I was on a plane doing that mad dash to New Jersey to try and do something to help my mother while Dad lay unconscious on life support.
Triple Bypass And Birth
The long time readers know Dad made it and that he spent a little bit longer in the hospital. Two days after his triple bypass I called him and told him about his new granddaughter.
Eighteen years later we’re in that aforementioned basketball stadium except the we doesn’t include his physical being.
Come July it will be 4 years since he walked through the cornfields to see what lay on the other side.
So I looked at his grandson, my mom and aunt and then the stage and thought about the connection to the past, present and future.
If ever a moment reminded me about how easily life can turn on a dime that one did.
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One of my cousins shared a picture of my grandmother with her parents, grandparents and cousins from the early 1920s.
Grandma must be somewhere between seven and 10 which means she is a couple of years away from meeting my grandfather though I doubt she was thinking about boys then.
Anyhoo, it occurred to me that her grandfather, a man who died thirty some years before I was born would probably be surprised to learn that two of his great-great-great granddaughters have plans to go to med school.
Since he was born around 1851 or so it seems fair to say that probably would be a surprise to him. Don’t really know what he would think, all I have are guesses.
But my grandmother would have been quite pleased, she missed celebrating this moment by twelve years, but so life goes.
Thought about her too not just because of the picture but because I was thinking about whether there was any critical advice that I haven’t shared with my daughter.
Undoubtedly there is some but it doesn’t mean we can’t spend a moment thinking about what it is or ought to be.
Dad would tell me not to get too excited because she hasn’t already got ti she might not ever get it. He was right but that doesn’t mean I won’t take a moment to see if I can come up with any more tricks.
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For the moment there are 938 members of extended family here though that number might be a small exaggeration.
Really it feels like 922.
Some of them have helped me remember some of the promises made and promises considered in more colorful and interesting terms.
Can’t say where this is all going or provide definitive direction because it is not all me but I do know the ride ought to be interesting even without the details.
And now there is a new graduate who has thoughts, plans and ideas of her own as she builds a life I will be part of but in very different terms than the first part of her life.
It went so fast.
