Grace and Panache

When you're a kid, it never occurs to you that you are currently creating your past. Heck, I can barely remember this as an adult.
Grownups tried to warn me with their whole "When I was a kid..." but when you are eight, even Christmas to Christmas and birthday to birthday seems like an unfathomable distance, let alone the realization that you won't always live in the same house, have the same friends, or play in the same backyard.

Somehow that inescapable truth hit me like a ton of bricks... 2009's last punch on the way out. Jim and I were up in Pasadena to welcome in the new year, and somehow our spontaneous date turned into an even more spontaneous jaunt to my childhood home. Unsurprisingly, everything looked smaller, and yet still exactly the same. There was the rolling picket fence across the driveway that my dad installed to keep us kids from accidentally chasing a ball into the busy street, the river rock wall with geraniums that my dad and Grandpa built and the bike path that went behind our house. Jim and I parked the car and walked along the trail. We used to have a garden behind our back fence, but it now more closely resembles a jungle. I tromped through it and stood on the spot where my four year old self asked Jesus into her heart... back then it was just a tomato garden, now it's just a spot where my 26 year old self tries to catch a glimpse of me when I was Jamie's age. So bizarre.

We stood on our tiptoes and peered over the back fence into the back yard. Jim acted like he was committing some sort of crime, whereas I felt just as "at home" as I always felt there. I'm sure the neighbors or police would have understood. I could have pitched a tent right there on the spot and never moved. I miss the fact that all my people are growing old, and changing. I'm changing. I know this year will bring good changes along with the bad changes.

I pray I have the grace to survive it.