Guest Blog by my daughter, Julia

Julia Cox

10/29/17

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to see people age that are right in front of you? We look upon these peoples faces that we have known for as long as we have lived and just graze over the tops of their surfaces. We don’t take in the lines and bumps that have come with time. We skip over the sun spots and the creases that begin developing until one moment we stop for a second, maybe because of an old picture or just because of the silence and we realize that time has taken it’s toll. We see the sun and wind that these people loved so much has changed them as much as it has changed us. We see the lines from the giant smiles and laughs that they have shared over the years. There are creases from nights of worry and stress and there are scars from the work they put hours and hours into, trying to grow their lives from the tiny seeds that they started from. The bones we feel when we hug them have been broken and weathered, and the hands we hold have held many more before ours.

I looked upon my families faces and saw something I had never seen before. I saw the years. I saw the many years of work, and pain and stress that have built them; the tears that have streamed down their faces after losses and being beaten down. I saw the wrinkles around their eyes, from squinting in the sun or from those fleeting moments when their smiles would reach so high they would just barely touch the corners of their eyes. For the first time in years my eyes hovered upon these faces that were once so familiar to me and realized that they weren’t so familiar anymore. In these moments of trying to capture these once so familiar faces I saw the effects time had on them. Time knew them so much better than I and had been working on them while I was just barely glancing over them. Time was showing me that no matter how hard I tried it would always win. But, time also showed me how much beauty it brings. My mother’s sun spots remind me how much she loves being outside and how she was always dragging us on different adventures. My father’s wrinkles on his hands describe the hard work that he put in to give us the best lives we could possibly have. My brother’s wrinkles around his mouth shout out that he has always been one of the happiest people I knew, and he always smiled with his entire face. My boyfriend’s scars are a reminder of his recklessness growing up and how much he loved to cause trouble. These faces that I have known for such a long time, now tell stories that can only be heard if we take the time to hover upon these pieces that have been added over time. If we don’t take the time to recognize these pieces, then we miss out on the beauty that time has added and the story that they are telling us.