The passage of time can be a sad, but beautiful thing. Sad in the aspect that the time itself is gone, never to return, but beautiful in what comes from it.

Kelly’s 21st birthday was Saturday, as what always happens on those important birthdays I got to thinking about times past. Kell and I have been friends since 7th grade. It doesn’t seem like that much time has gone by at all. Almost ten years. That’s a long time when you actually sit down and think about it.

In the past ten years so many things have happened. I went from one world I knew to a completely different one. Made lifetime friends, lost others. Relationships come and gone. I’ve watched everyone around me grow and become something.

Ten years ago my oldest sister, Angie, was my age now. Now she has two beautiful little boys, is building a house, and so on. My other sister, Leasa, has a little boy and is married. It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that we would all sit around and torture my brother, Terry, with lipstick kisses. But there is that passage of time again.

One of my oldest friends Amy has two beautiful children of her own now too. It’s a bittersweet feeling to look around and see how far everyone has come. Everything that’s happened.

It seems like only yesterday we were kids, now here most of us are, graduating (or already graduated) college soon. It makes me smile though, to look around at the people still in my life and know that I have all those memories with them.

Like the time that Kell and I dyed our hair. Mine came out a rather dark shade of blue, but hers… hers was turquoise. I’ll never forget her mother’s face. It was priceless. They had to bleach Kell’s hair three times to get all the green out. My mother on the other hand, didn’t notice the blue for two weeks. She blamed the lighting in the house. I just chalked it up to her having bad eyes in general.

Thousands of memories like that, are a beautiful thing.