Growing Up

This past May, my older brother graduated from college and already secured a job as a high school math teacher. This week, two of my younger cousins are graduating from high school. In the Fall 2012 semester, my younger brother will be in eighth grade. As for me, I will be a junior in college. Needless to say, I'm feeling incredibly old.

It's cliche to say, but I feel like it was just yesterday when I didn't have a younger brother and my older brother and I were four- and six-years-old, playing in our backyards making mudcakes. I don't know when my brother grew up from the boy that used to chase me around the house and became an intelligent gentleman, ready for the "real world." The cousins that are graduating high school are the same ones I would play in the kiddie pools with and the ones with whom I refused to share my candy. And now I'm going to see them walking down and accepting their diploma, something I did almost two years ago. How did they catch up so fast? I think the person that is making me feel the oldest though, is my little brother. I was seven years old when he was born and so I saw him like my own personal doll. I always call him "my baby" and to this day it hasn't changed. He's already 13, a teenager, and he's always going to be my baby. I think back to how my life was like when I was an eighth grader and I refuse to believe the experiences I had are the same ones my little brother is already going through. He's just a baby, I think to myself, there's no way he can be going through that. But it's true! I'm so close to graduating from college even though I can still clearly remember my very first day of high school. In no time, I'll be sitting through three eternal hours to watch my little baby accepting his diploma. I have no idea where the time has gone!

It's bittersweet looking back at the old days.