Is that me?

Hi neighbors. This was a busy week! I had a lovely visit with two of my cousins (and their husbands) this week. One cousin I hadn't seen in more than 40 years.

That seems pretty difficult to believe to me. Karen and Brenda, my Ohio cousins, are sisters. They brought photos of their families, including photos of their other three sisters.

When I saw these snapshots I said, "There is some thing wrong with your camera! These folks look like old ladies. You are all around my age and I know we all look like the teenagers we were the last time we were together." We all had a good laugh at our own naiveté.

It is strange that we hold a mental image of people based on the way we remember seeing them. Time passes in the real world, but not in our inner image of ourselves and others.

We didn't waste much time looking at each other any way -- we were much too busy talking.

You might want to dig out those school yearbooks and look up the photos of some of your old classmates you haven't seen since graduation. Then go check them out at the next class reunion. They look like strangers! But then, one will say a familiar phrase, give that certain toss to their head, laugh that great laugh you remember about them, and it's like you're all old pals again.

Although they say we are as young as we feel, I think most of us would say we think of ourselves as the same person we always were.

Who do you see yourself as? What age do you cling to as your mental image of yourself? That's the whole problem with growing old. The mental image and the real body tend to drift farther and farther apart.

Then you do what my cousins and I did; ask each other "when did we get so old?" Fortunately, we cousins are all interested in genealogy. Maybe it's the shorter distance to our own destiny that triggers that other 'biological clock.' You know -- the one that says, 'check over your shoulder ... you've topped the hill." Genealogy is a good way to prove life goes on -- and we are all tied together from way back when to far into the future.

I heard a song on the radio the other day about a man who said he wants to be remembered as a "good neighbor and a good man." Don't you ever wonder what people will say about you when you're gone? Another cousin (yes, I have a lot of them) sent me an e-mail joke that said, "If you ever think no one will miss you when you're gone -- forget to pay two car payments." From genealogy I've decided that people in the past appeared to have thought more about how they would be remembered than we seem to do today. "What would people say?" was a common exclamation.

Today people don't seem to care what other people say. Dress, manners and social skills seem very relaxed almost to the point of becoming missing altogether.

"What would people say (or think)" might be a good thing to ask ourselves about our own lives.

Maybe our own notion of ourselves isn't the same view others have of us.

I remember my Home Economics teacher in high school giving us a simple guideline for choices we might face in life. She said, "Never do anything you wouldn't want your mother to find out about." That seemed to work pretty well back then, but I'm not so certain it would work for some people today at all. Of course, it didn't work for everybody back then either.

It seems that no matter how society tries to identify right and wrong these days, there are many shades of uncertainty in the land of "situation ethics." That's a term created by we Baby Boomers for those that don't recall.

Until the next time friends remember we don't really need mirrors on the wall or photos to help us see ourselves as we really are. Most of who we truly are is reflected in the eyes of our family, friends and maybe most clearly -- in the eyes of strangers.