I digitized a box of old photographs a few years ago. There is one set of photos of me attending my wife Jenn's graduation from a masters program. She was my girlfriend in those 1993 pictures. I have a shock of dark hair and we look so young. We'd be engaged a year later.
I showed these digitized photos to Jenn. Her mother was in a few of the pictures, and Jenn said "She's probably the same age we are now." That statement really struck me. All of a sudden, I felt like I could see the cycle of life, the edges of the wheel of time.
Jenn's statement changed my frame of reference. Those old pictures now present another kind of understanding for me. Our parents were "old" in these pictures, but we are now their age. It's an insight that should not have surprised me. Relative time goes in both directions, and it makes me grateful to properly see that now.
