looking back

I was digging through old photos last night. It looks different now, of course. I had to hook up an external drive, and wait for Abbey to be home to give me her password for my old computer, since I don’t have the right cords to hook up to my new one. (That’s me, tech genius.)

It’s time to turn in photos for Dylan’s 8th grade farewell ceremony and all that that entails. We have the option of providing a kindergarten and 8th grade photo. Of course, the easiest ones are the school photos, but we all know those don’t always do the best job expressing who are kids are or what they’re wearing day to day.

I found, instead, a photo of him playing a ukulele at our friend Joe’s house. Dylan’s eyes look almost neon blue, and he’s wearing pajamas, which happens when you are visiting friends out of town but also when you are someone who really values being cozy. In his eighth grade photo, we had a little back and forth regarding what he liked versus what I liked.

I found a photo of him at the Kansas City Zoo, birds perched on his arms while I took the photo from outside of the enclosure (birds landing on me? no, thank you). He’s laughing. I remember the day vividly. Instead, he chose a photo of him lounging on the oversized Adirondack chair at the Ron Jon store in Cocoa Beach. Like most of his photos from this year, his hair is growing out. He’s wearing a sweatshirt and smiling with his mouth closed, obscuring his braces.

He looks every bit of his fourteen and a half years.

It’s a strange thing to look back on old photos, especially when you keep them in a not-the-simplest-to-access location. Facebook memories pop up every once in a while, but for the most part, we’re busy moving ahead and don’t always take the time to wallow in old hard drives and cloud storage locations.

I wallowed a little yesterday. Those days were hard, physically hard, with chasing and feeding and rocking to sleep — or not — and never having the chance to finish an adult conversation, let alone devour a novel in a single now. Now I can do all of those things, but I don’t have a chubby set of fingers reaching for mine or apple red cheeks laughing at just about anything at all.

As a writer, I hate cliches, which is (of course) a cliche in and of itself, but oh my goodness. It all goes by in a blink.

(Guess whose kids are getting extra long hugs tonight?)