and when it lives, it gives it all it's got

I just returned to Wyoming today from a weekend of family holiday festivities, if you want to call them that.  I guess I wouldn't necessarily say they were festive, but it was an altogether nice break from swimming and it's always nice to see my family.

It's weird because I usually only see my family about twice a year -- my mom's side more, because we go to Michigan a few times over the summer, but for my dad's side, we usually only see them on Thanksgiving and Christmas.  It doesn't feel like an entire year has passed since I've seen my family last, and we pick up pretty naturally where we left off, but it's so bizarre to pick up so naturally when 12 whole months have passed since the last time I've seen them.  It's like starting a conversation and then picking it back up as if it never ended, only to have had a change in perspective in the time between.

So much happens in a year -- it's been four years since my cousin Lindsay got married, and I remember so vividly the day in 8th grade when I played violin at her wedding, as if it were only a few weeks ago.  And this year, my cousin Tim has a new baby, Carson.  My other cousin, Erin, remarked that things were changing so much.  And it was weird, because I was just thinking about how five minutes ago I was playing violin at a wedding without a single thought of college or even high school in my head.

And now my cousin has a baby, most of them have graduated and have jobs, I am going to college next year, and some of my grandparents can't remember the question they asked me ten minutes earlier.  Am I even going to go out of town next year for Christmas and my birthday? Because if I only have a five day break where I can come home, I don't even know.

The mental state of my grandparents is startling.  I come back each year and it is here where I notice the most has changed.  My grandpa tells me stories over and over again; my other grandpa sometimes doesn't even remember my name because my sister and I are the only of his grandchildren that live far away.  It's weird how our brains start to deteriorate; how we start to rely on others more and more simply to survive.  It's ineloquent, but getting old scares the hell out of me.

I don't want to have kids who will grow up to think I am a technologically challenged embarrassment, who will push me away because they think they know better than me.  But more than that, I don't want to lose my ability to think, to write, to recognize the people that I love.  My dad's dad was an English teacher; he wrote so many poems that were cute and funny and beautiful.  And now I look at him and see a fragile old man -- I mean, I see more than that, because he is my grandfather, the father of my dad and four other kids, the beginning of my family -- but I speak to him and I can tell that his mind is leaving him, when he asks me how old I am now two times in a row, and I have to smile and nod and tell him that I am seventeen, while inside my heart is breaking.

I guess I can't really think of a resolution to this post besides the fact that I shouldn't really be afraid of getting old, because I still have so much life to live ahead of me.  And even if my brain starts to fail me, even if I start to forget the names of the people I love, I still have the chance to start something beautiful.

via julia carleton