corner view

corner view :: bygone

Notre Dame / Paris
November 2006

I remember this photo at Notre Dame and many of the details of this trip to Paris with these friends like it was yesterday. In fact, it feels like just yesterday that we were all at the mercy of the "Hallinator," whose mission was to walk across Paris and back, but I'm afraid it is from a bygone time.

There is nothing that marks the passing of time for me like the life transitions of young people in my life. Obviously, my daughter is no longer a two year old in a stroller, but more telling are the other two kiddos in the image.

One, who was our trusty navigator on this trip, is on the verge of graduating from the US Naval Academy at Annapolis and has just received his first ship assignment in Japan (the same place he was born!) and the other is off studying education at a college in Pennsylvania. She will undoubtedly be a fabulous educator some day, just like all of the adults pictured. (We are teacher people. Most of our friends are teacher people, too.)

They were both just kids (one in middle school and the other just barely a high school freshman) when we met in Paris during Thanksgiving break of 2006. In many ways this is the way I remember them because we moved away from them not long before this reunion...frozen in a bygone era.

(Really... I don't think I can use the word "bygone" without being sentimental and cliche'-filled. Can you?)

And the adults in this photo...why we haven't changed a bit...this was yesterday, wasn't it?


Corner View is a weekly appointment shared by people around the globe, an appointment started in the spring of 2009 by Jane in Spain and currently hosted by Francesca over at Fuori Borgo. We welcome you to join us; next week's theme is "slow."