These are the good old days

Sometimes I see my present life in flashes of Super 8 film, etchy, jerking, filled with warm yellowy tones. There are two young brothers, neighbors of ours, that are always playing some kind of ball--basketball, football, weird hybrids of both--out on the street, and I think about how if I have children these boys will be grown men, or close, by the time my children are throwing a ball. I think about how the images of me from today will seem funny and old-fashioned to my children, viewing them in whatever medium we view photos and movies in when children of mine are old enough to view photos and movies. I wonder if I will look to them like my mother looks to me in our old home movies--glamorous in her beehive and go-go boots, radiating a vague discontent that makes her more beautiful, more distant and mysterious--or like someone happy and aware of her ridiculously good fortune. Or like something else entirely.

I hear in my head the whir and flap of old projectors and wish with all my heart that the woman I am now will be recognizable to my children within the mother I become. I wish that if our children see a photo of Jam Guy and I walking out of the house arm in arm the way we do, flirting and kissing, they roll their eyes and say "Mom and Dad haven't changed a bit," and pretend to act grossed-out but are secretly glad and reassured about their parents' love and about love in general. I wish that they respect the choices I made before they were conceived and that those choices somehow, in some way, someday have a positive effect on their own lives. I wish that the values I hold most precious today--be kind to all people and animals, respect your environment, be slow to judge and quick to succor--I am still holding then and able to convey to my children.

And I wish that they dress up in the clothes I wear today and laugh and laugh when they are five because the sleeves touch their toes, and then dress up in them for nerd day at school when they are twelve because they think my clothes are so dorky, and then when they are eighteen beg to borrow them because my retro threads are going to be so freaking cool.