My, you've changed...have I?

This morning I had the great experience of seeing one of my old friends again. Actually, their whole family. The eldest daughter is about two years younger than me, and she and I were very good friends when we were really little. I have many little memories of running down the street to her house and playing together, one involving my first encounter with strawberry milk. When I say really little, though, I mean really little; I think her family moved out by the time she was four or five, maybe. We'd kept in touch for a while after that, but then they went to live in Colombia for a while, so it was kind of hard to keep track of them. When I heard who we were going to see today, I had these flashbacks of her and her sisters, and for some strange reason I imagined they would look just the way they had when I'd last seen them. Irrational, I know, but that's what I thought. All I can say is that I'm glad their parents hadn't changed much from the image in my memory, because I hardly would have recognized their children otherwise. Holy COW. I mean, I always knew Sophie was cute, but now she's sort of "blossomed". Same with her next oldest sister. The youngest daughter is a lot older than I remember, and I'd completely forgotten about the little boy, who's now seven.

Seeing them all again was great, and it was so easy to just chat with them, so in that sense nothing much had changed. I loved it. But it made me think, how much have I changed since we last met? I think it's harder for people to detect changes in themselves, because obviously they live with themselves every day, so the changes are more gradual to them. But when you're away from someone for a long period of time, sometimes they seem starkly different, at least at first. Usually though, you come to find that they're the same person on the inside that you used to know. This happened to me another time at the beginning of this last school year when my friend came back from Mexico after 3 years. At first I didn't recognize him, but once we got talking, I realized that he was the same guy from elementary school, just in a different mold, a taller one. :P

So, that's my rant on people and change and time. Now that we've tracked them down again, I think we'll be visiting our old friends again soon. At least, I hope so! There are so many stories to be told to fill the gaps of the last few years... :)