Who Did You Use To Be?

In reviewing old pictures I'm finding that I can remember who I was in those pictures, but sometimes it's weird to consider that THAT person and this person are the SAME person.
I don't know, sometimes, how I went from someone who wanted to be a high school band director to someone who runs a call center. It's really not the same skill set, other than bossing people around.
Did the person inside my skin change, or just the outside? What was important then is so not important now. I think now, as a parent, I appreciate the person I was guided to be. I see my mother in myself, and my father, and sometimes it makes me shudder and sometimes it makes me smile. At the age of 18 I would have probably been completely mortified to think that I'd be like either of them - and now I'm so happy for all the things about me that ARE.
It speaks of immortality, this sameness. The good and the bad of it, carried forward. And there, in my own children - I see sparks of it in them as I'm sure my husband does.
In this picture I'm 18, and with my mom and my brother Matt who is 8. We're on our last "family" vacation late in the summer before I went to college. I am full of hope. I am full of promise.
And I love that the hopes and promises in this picture didn't come true. But were replaced with different dreams, that were better than any I ever conceived.