The Future

(I'll be backblipping for a while...)

My sister M and I spend a day and a night in Corpus Christi, a city of some 320,000 inhabitants in coastal southeast Texas about four hours by car from Austin, so I could have some time her three grandchildren, son, and daughter-in-law. They came to the hotel where we were staying, which had rooms opening to an interior atrium that housed a pool, as well as food and drink for both "happy hour" and breakfast.

I am this delightful trio's great-aunt, and cannot even begin to imagine what their lives will be like when they're 71, my present age. E, on the right, will be 9 in December and is the tallest student in her class. Both of her parents are tall; she gets her blue eyes from her mother. Her brother A, seated across from her, will be 5 in November, and her brother R, hiding from me, will be 3 that month as well. They have my nephew's wonderful brown eyes. I've added informal portraits of all three in the extra photos.

I've been thinking about my maternal great-aunts, born in 1880 and 1890, and my  paternal great-aunt, born in 1898, who would have had no inkling that their great-niece would, at age 71, be typing on a wireless keyboard and sending photos and words into the air, for want of a better description, to be read almost instantaneously by people on several continents.

I cannot venture even a guess as to what these three delightful children will be able to do at my present age!

Blip 1984