My First Day

In preparation for a move to Muncie, and after quite a few weeks of procrastination, I did some spring cleaning through a few old, dust-ridden boxes hidden deep away in the basement of my old house. While most were filled with toys, baseball cards, and other typical childhood keepsakes - which had now accumulated that all too familiar cardboard box smell - I found a bit of myself again.

Sure, the grade reports, action figures, and video games evoked a sense of nostalgia, but it was the bottom box among the mountain, with frayed ends, torn flaps, and a rip so prevalent at the bottom that I had to lift it from underneath to keep its contents from giving way, that caught my attention.

For the first five minutes I was taken back. I began to separate the photographs. Old, black and white photos in this pile, family from Pittsburgh in that pile, childhood school pictures in a third. Then I found a picture of my mother. I knew it had to be mother based on the condition of the photo (washed, old paper, and a fashion long lost to the 70s), however the face was my sister's. Most times, one can look back through old family photos and discern which relative they receive their eyes or hair. I looked and saw just my sister. While the resemblance between my mother and sister wasn't so profound, from that point, I looked at the photographs with a different perspective.

Most prominent physicists date the age of the universe at 12 billion years - give or take two or three. And, whatever theory you subscribe to nowadays, one thing is fairly agreed upon - it’s expanding (in fact, at a steady, accelerated rate). Needless to say, the 30 or so year-old photos put a dent in the universe roughly equal to what an electron puts in a building. But goodness, to me those photos seemed ancient. It was like looking at a family that wasn't mine. A history that had little to do with me, and a part of my mother that realized of that I knew little. Through the course of the hour, I realized that, with all the excitement in my life lately, I had forgotten to slow down and reflect.

Life has a funny way of slowing you down. I subscribe to the following theory - each day should feel like your first day of school, even if some days you're tardy.