generations

Before I left for Uganda a year ago, my brother brought his daughter to California to see me off. My niece was not yet two and had only started to walk and speak.

A year later, she is running and chatting, quite a different little person than the one I last saw at LAX. She has favorite colors and food preferences and mood swings and the cutest little mug. She nows knows how to both pose for and foil a shutterbug.

In a week, I will see the grandfather who I last saw in 1996, who, then 85, had both the towering height and commanding demeanor to induce fear and submission in small (and not so small) children. My brother warns that grandfather looks much older and is much more frail than I'd ever known this family patriarch to be.

I spend much of my time with people in the prime of life, during which a year or a decade makes some but not very dramatic differences in one's physical aptitude or appearance. But those at the bookends of life remind me that life keeps moving and growing and changing everyday, every year. We should do likewise.