Going To Church...And Feeling Old

We got new neighbors. They're not next-door neighbors--they're a few houses down, but they're neighbors and they're new. I met the papa at church. There's a lot of things one expect to feel at church, uplifted, encouraged, recharged, but today I felt old. 

Why?

It was the new neighbor.

He himself didn't do anything to make me feel old, but in our conversation, that's when it happened. We started talking and I told him we lived a few doors down. He told me he had grown up in the area and he told me his last name. He said he was married and had a daughter.

"Hey, I know that name," I said and I thought of someone I knew with that same last name.

"Yeah, my grandfather lives on the west side of town."

I knew who he was talking about. I went to high school with his grandfather's son.

That's when I felt old.

The children of kids with whom I went to high school have grown up and are buying houses in our neighborhood. Now, I know many of my friends younger than me are now grandparents. I'm sure some have even retired and have started new lives, but when you are talking to a kid in church whose dad graduated from high school a year before you did and that kid is married, has a child, and is buying real estate, it kind of brings it home.