December - Christmas again!

So today is the 22nd December, the Anniversary of my Father's death in 1990. 25 years ago - almost half my life. Now Mum is gone too and another chapter in this cycle of growing up starts. Everyone has people in their lives that they think will be around for ever.
As children we live in the moment, existing from one to another moment like stepping stones across a pond; only really looking at the stone we are on. The moment pauses and we feel every day lasts for a week; the future is not important, the now is.
As we age, we begin to look forward, wishing our lives away, wanting to be older, to be a part of a group, to be accepted. We want to be older, allowed to drive, go to pubs, pick up girls etc.
Then when we get to a more mature stage and we can do all of these things, everything flips and we begin to want to regress to an earlier time. To be younger.
Then we might have children of our own and begin to have a sense of our place in a family history. We also begin to understand that we have little or no significance in the wider world. I am at that stage now, I have a sense of being in a long line of men in our family stretching back in a long unbroken line and which will - hopefully - stretch out in to the future. Across time and space, across generations, each one of us a link in a chain to those before and after.
A pedestrian time machine, one day at a time.

​Merry Christmas.