Eighteen Years...How Did that Happen?

Is this a hint of what it'd feel like if I had a child of my own reach adulthood?

I've never felt this way about any of the babies I 'sat. Because I just wrote and then deleted the line: "I used to change his diapers!" Before I realized I've changed a lot of kids' diapers who years ago reached adulthood and I just never felt this way.

I fall back to the fact that my baby brother is the very physical marker of the passage of time.

I pretty much fell out of being a regular tenant at the homestead just months after he was born. I think he was crawling when my dad and brother drove me up to school.

He called me "ann ann" and looked for me...or so my mom said, after one of my short stints at home.

He almost broke my face that one summer I took care of him when my mom had her knee replaced (children's toys with handles and heft are a big no-no in my book).

I may have mentally scarred him with my "your hands ain't broken" way of correcting his actions. We have a wee bit of the same bad temper mentality...This is what happens when the two "babies" of the family argue. (I was the baby for 17.99999 years after all.)

And yet? Is that why we get along? (I think a big chunk of that is because I am only a visitor when I do go home...much easier to get along with everyone that way, really.)

Whatever the case, my baby brother is 18 today...and days away from 36 myself? I am feeling so aged and worn and has it been 18 years? Really? In a few months time I will have officially reached that point where I will have lived away from home as long as I lived at home...and then? From that point onward? The balance tips ever further away (unless, of course I go and "renest" as so many have lately begun doing...oh let's please not go there).

Oh I'm getting all wordy and weird...but that's the head-space I'm in right now.

Dude, 18. I promise to be better about this next year. But dude, 18!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANTHONY!