My sister keeps this picture of the two of us (I’m the tiny one) with our Dad just about 32 years ago exactly. In this photo, my Dad is essentially the exact same age I am today, he’d just turned 32 and was living two miles from the house Scott, Dee, and I currently call home. He had a mustache and wore classic T-shirts (I remember appropriating that T-shirt in Jr. high school and wearing it through my grunge years) and he was just a young dude who probably had no idea what he was doing, but he sure as hell seemed like the most brilliant and protective safe person I could ever meet. I was pretty sure my Dad knew everything growing up, and he never gave me reason to believe otherwise. There’s just something about a Daddy cuddle, even a 32 year old image of one, that makes me feel like everything is going to turn out okay.
I have an eidetic memory (if you’re not familiar, it’s similar to photographic memory but it extends to sensory details and beyond) so my childhood is still quite vivid in my own mind. It’s strange to maintain such clear memories of my youth and be able to look back on them with adult perspective. In it’s worst moments, it fills me with anxiety because I remember what it was like to feel safe and protected and I want nothing more than to go back. In its best moments, I have an opportunity to understand my parents better as people now that my extensive memories can be analyzed through a mature mind.
And watching Delilah spend time with her cousins, my big Sister’s girls, it’s like for the first time in a long time I don’t miss my childhood any more. I’ve got a new childhood to enjoy and make magical now. And I’m starting to realize that that is one of most the incredible perks of being a parents.
{my doppelgänger Mom and I, also in the summer of 1981.}
Do you understand your parents better now that you’re an adult? If you’re a parent yourself now how did you relationship shift after you had kids of your own?
One Reply to “Getting Old Is Super Weird Sometimes”