I was looking on FaceBook this morning before leaving for work and say my daughter, Carrie, had posted some new photos of my grand daughter, Eliza from Christmas. I don't think I mentioned it but Eliza seems to have gotten every 'shortness' gene from both sides of her family.
I'm a little under 5' 10" tall. That is not too bad but my mother was 5' 2" and my father was 5' 4". My late sister was around my mother's height as best I can recall. Carrie has told me that most of Andrew's (her husband) family is also short. Comes as no surprise then Eliza is a short child.
One of the photos posted was of Eliza in a red outfit and the sleeves were so long you could, maybe, see the tip of one finger sticking past the cuff. That took me back to my childhood for some reason. My dad had retired from the Navy and really never worked after that so we grew up on a limited budget. So, there were two rules when it came to purchasing clothing for a growing boy. First and foremost it had to be cheap. Second it had to be way too big for me as we could not afford to buy new clothes when I grew out of them unless they started out a few sizes too large.
So, when one starts out with overly large clothing one spends a lot of one's time in clothing with rolled up pants and shirt sleeves. Seeing Eliza in that outfit with the sleeves a little too long reminded me of those days so very many years gone. Seems more like last month than around fifty years. Now I know why the old folks around me would tell me they could remember things from fifty years ago like it was yesterday but could not remember what happened "five minutes ago". Now that I'm getting within spitting distance of sixty myself I am understanding a lot more about a lot of things than I once did.
I just hope, one day, to get back to knowing as much about everything as I did when I was fifteen.
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