When People Change

I promised someone the other day that I was writing this blog in my head, but the more I think about things the more I want to change what I was going to write into what I am going to write now.

So, as most of you don’t know, my sister Kanga…a childhood nickname, The Pine Nut Padawan, and Toots (a name she calls me…she’s 2 years old and “Scott” just doesn’t compute yet…it may never, who knows!) came to visit the other week. It was the same week that I was due to be on Jury Duty - so, while I was concerned about not having enough time to spend with them (a concern which was alleviated by being dismissed on Wednesday), I never stopped to think about who was coming to visit.

They arrived late on Wednesday and we made it back home early on Thursday. We didn’t have much time to talk the first night or anything as Toots was battling an ear infection and wasn’t feeling well. They went to DC the next morning, and I went to work.

When I got home, we all piled into the car and went to Chipotle and actually got to sit down and talk for a bit. It was then that I realized that, while I had talked with my other sister quite a bit since her visit some time during the summer, I hadn’t really had much time to talk with Kanga (the younger of the two)…and I really didn’t know who she had become. I guess that’s normal for kids that grow up into adults…I just hadn’t expected it.

Friday, they went to Hershey and to Gettysburg while groovy and I worked. I got off work at a good time and we got to hang out that evening and talk some more. Toots, the little person that she is, was the center of attention. We began to plan our trip for the next day to Harper’s Ferry and then toward Dulles and Ashburn, Virginia.

After a donut breakfast (at Dunkin Donuts, no less), we started our day and spent several hours at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia. It’s a great place to walk around a bit (especially if you have strong legs and lots of energy). We skipped rocks in the Shenandoah River and crossed a bridge over the Potomac. All in all, we had some fun. We then went to the Smithsonian museum at Dulles Airport (LOTS of planes in this HUGE hangar). The whole time we were doing these things, I kept wondering who it was that I am related to. I just really was floored by how little I knew about my sister and extended family.

The next morning, we all got up and went to Baltimore to hang out at the Inner Harbor. It’s pretty neat and has all things aquatic (boats, taxi boats, water, birds and especially that not-so-fresh sea smell). We walked probably near 200 miles around Baltimore and were all quite tired by the time we got home.

It was at this point that I began to realize that the old maxim about knowledge held true for people as well: The more time you spend with a person, the less you realize you know about them. I suppose this holds true for many things, but it was quite interesting to look at this whole visit as some sort of experiment. I began to take mental note of all the things I didn’t know and hadn’t noticed before. You want to know the end result? The end result was the stark realization that while I have 2 sisters, 2 parents, a brother-in-law and a niece (along with various animals and the “Kung Fu Masta”)…the only person that I really knew was myself. You can be happy or unhappy with just about anything that you want, but the only person that you can EVER truly know is the person that you are.

I ended the little visit just trying to talk with my family members and to not be confused with the disparity between who I thought these people were (or who they used to be) and who they have become. Quite honestly, this worked out well for me and I’m happy to say that not only did I meet my sister, brother-in-law and niece for the first time, but I also liked who they were.