Today We Fall Back in Time

Today we fall back in time. Time eludes me. Look at this picture of me when I was fifteen. I don't remember the photo. Back then we didn't have Facebook and YouTube to see images of ourselves uploaded by our friends. People took pictures of you and often you never saw the results of the developed film.

So I don't remember the picture, but I do remember feeling the way I look in it. No cares, giggly, full of what ifs.

Becky, May 1986 (photo by Kristine Matlock)

It's a good reminder that I wasn't always as miserable as my memory leads me to think. I guess my movie buff colleague was right. Maybe I wasn't so Allison Reynolds after all.

Memories are weird. I forget I stuck dinner in the oven an hour ago, but I can recall in vivid detail moments of my life as far back as when I was sitting in my high chair at the dinner table with my big family.

I look at this moment captured of me when I was fifteen. It makes me smile to remember how that moment felt.

Even though time tells me I'm turning forty-one this month, and my joints and energy keep nagging at me too, I still feel fifteen. I look at this picture, and that feels like me. Me now. Not some different me twenty-five years ago.

And to think Katie will be fifteen in another ten years. How can that be? As my mom is fond of saying, "How can my kids be getting so old when I'm so young?"