The other day I went through some of my pictures from last year and one stood out. Not that it was such an incredible perfect picture, no pretty much the exact opposite. In that picture I am standing with my mother and holding Nathan at my grandparents grave in Finland. This alone wouldn’t make it so special but I remembered a picture from one of my parents photo albums where my dad is holding me as a baby at the same grave.
These pictures just show too well how time is passing by. In one picture I am myself the baby being held by his father and in the other I am myself already a father holding his child. How easy it is to forget that time is a cruel thing pushing ever forward. When I was a teenager I couldn’t wait to turn 18 and finally drive a car (yes, in Europe it is normal that you get your licence with 18, sometimes with 17). This is now over ten years ago and I still remember those darn driving lessons, not to speak of all the school annoyance back then. I would have never imagined that I would be married few years later and have a child. The whole future I imagined for myself didn’t really turn out that way, but this is just life you never know what will happen next.
As a child I imagined all kinds of scenarios for my future, many involved being some Olympic Champion. Guess I didn’t foresee too well that the body can’t always keep up if not maintained well enough…anyways in none of my dreams I saw myself married with 25 and having a child short time later. I didn’t see myself ever moving to Finland or even moving then back to Germany right into the same building where I grew up. China? China was just a distant scary country with strange people. Things always tend to turn out rather different it seems. Most of all I never ever imagined having such a strange mother-in-law! Just kidding, she could be much worse.
Enough of my dreams as a child and back to those two pictures. This grave of my grandparents is somewhat special. I never met any of them. My grandmother passed away decades before I was even planned and my grandfather suddenly died just few months before my birth. He did not even know I was on the way as my mother wanted to surprise him. My mother still tells me that she saw him in her dreams the night before I was born and that I have similar behavioral traits as him. My grandparents never met me yet there are two pictures at their grave which are important to me; in one as a baby in my father arms and in the second as a father holding his son.
There are always unforseen events in life and you just got to hope for the best. Like my grandfather, out of nowhere he was suddenly one day dead without knowing anything about me. There is nothing like planning your life exactly ahead. My life also went differently than hoped or planned, very differently the past half year. My health hasn’t been exactly the best since this Spring. It hasn’t been good at all. The trip to China I had been looking forward to for so long did happen but in a very different way as planned as I only spent few days there to take care of important business and then fly back to Germany for health reasons. Over the past months I had heard many times from doctors that things are looking well just to drop into another hole few weeks later. I don’t know when things will turn out well for me, so I just go on and try to enjoy each day as much as possible. So I must also excuse myself a bit here as I try to keep up with this blog as much as possible but every now and then there might be again some longer “away” time for me.
What where your dreams as a child, how different are they to your life as an adult?
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Crazy Chinese Family 