I ran across an old photograph of my brothers and me when…I think…I was only three…immediately I asked my self…”Is that three-year-old in the photo really me?”
Certainly it was me on the day that photo was taken…but to say that IS me…well…I think I’d be mistaken.
Even though I’m not sure when that photo was shot…not sure exactly when…I think Alice in Wonderland would agree…I’ve changed a million times since then.
Yes, that was me in the photo…with ears only a parent could adore…but that was me at 3…I imagine I changed a lot by the time I had turned 4.
And 5…and 6…and through my teens and all my other years combined…until I reached the who I am today…my who…at 69.
That is the allure of old photographs…that make them both wonderful and bizarre…they capture the who we were for a moment in time…but not the who we are.
One who…who was essential…but a who we’ve emerged from…important because it helped create the who we have become.
I noticed in that old photo I was smiling…grinning ear to ear…and I’m proud that smile has been handed down from who to who and year to year.
I guess if I have one small bone of contention…it would be that my whos had been a little taller…or at least…knowing how’d they would one day grow…that my ears would have started out…a little smaller.
But let me say this to all my future whos…
as each who adjusts and rearranges….
I’m okay with my ears getting larger…
as long as that smile never changes.
response
thought provoking poem with a sweet light touch