I have a Time Mirror

My boys are just a day short of being 13 years apart. (Unsolicited advice: if you are going to have a baby at 39, he should come with a 13 year old brother.) My older son is a senior in high school, and getting ready to head off into the great big world. My older son is not quite five, and will be starting kindergarten in the fall.

When I look at each of my sons, I see not only him, but a mirror of the other at a different time. I have such clear memories of my older son at almost-five. When I dry off younger son after a bath, I remember doing the same for my older boy, and him responding the same way (my drying technique is almost guaranteed to induce giggles in a four year-old.) When my little boy wants to play super-heroes I remember older son bounding through the house wearing nothing but a towel around his neck like a cape, proclaiming himself SuperNaked!

When I see my older son, playing with his little brother or working on a paper for school or blessing the sacrament at church, and when he gets mail saying "Congratulations, you have been accepted..." or "We're so pleased that you'll be attending the School of Mass Communications at..." I see not only what he has accomplished and become, but a vision of the potential for growth and change in the younger one. That growth and change is inevitable.

It seems a shame, somehow, that such valuable things as memories are preserved only by something as fragile as my mind.