The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

I’m celebrating the start of the Holidays and Thanksgiving weekend with not only my immediate family this year, but also my extended family for our first ever family reunion on my mom’s side.  We’ve had a great time hanging out, reminiscing, catching up, and of course, eating!  Our Thanksgiving dinner was quite a feast, and I’m happy I was able to restrain myself and not go too overboard on the turkey, stuffing, cranberries, yams, etc.  Tonight is a Filipino fest, so I need to save some room for more indulgent eating!

As I hang with my parents, siblings, and cousins, I realize that it’s quite amazing that as much as time goes by, it doesn’t seem like years have passed at all.  My cousin EJ has two beautiful kids and this is the first time I’ve met both of them, and his oldest daughter is almost 4 years old!  Yet, as we sit at dinner and talk, we fall into the same routines and carry on like no time has passed.  We lose sight of the fact that I’ve been in California, and he and his family have also subsequently left New York City to settle in New Jersey, among the other myriad changes that have happened between the two of us.

I watch this same phenomenon with my mom as she catches up with her cousins.  She and her two closest cousins carry on about their lives like they were still in high school in the Philippines.  They were the three musketeers growing up, but they’re now all over 65-years-old and live in the United States in different states with three separate lives, yet get them all in the same room, and no time has passed at all.

Strange thing about time.  As I scan our reunion booklet with all of our family members and the past photos, I see our family generations: past, present and future.  And time continues to move forward… but those young photos of our older family members are real.  Their personalities are still intact, but yet we’ve all grown older.  And that’s the truth about life.  Time will continue to move forward, we will all continue to grow older, but get us all together in the same room, and time hasn’t moved at all.