Being "Young" In Someone's Eyes

Greetings from Austria!

My partner Charles and I are vacationing in Europe to visit my family in Austria and then spend a few days exploring the mountains of Switzerland.

I've been looking forward to this trip for quite a while. It's only our second trip since the start of Covid, which is highly unusual for us because we like to travel.

It felt very surreal being at the airport and sitting on an airplane surrounded by hundreds of people, most of them not wearing masks.

Our airplane was filled mostly with families, many traveling with young children. We saw hardly any business people. In our row, a young couple was traveling with their 3-month-old newborn. The baby was adorable and, luckily, spent most of the flight sleeping in a bassinet.

Zurich airport, our connecting airport, was busier than ever before, even pre-Covid.

But it was all worth it to spend time with my parents, who are both in their 80s. I'm lucky to have them still around, and I try to visit them regularly.

When you visit your parents, do you feel like you were put in a time machine? I sure do.

Because I left home in Austria when I was 18 years old to move to the US for college (and have been living in the US ever since), I suspect my parents always think of me as their teenage daughter. No amount of crow's feet (I think of them as smile lines 😉) or strands of grey hair will change that.

On many of my visits, my dad eagerly awaits me at the airport. He will be standing there, at 83 years old and 6'3" tall, holding the string of a bright helium balloon in his hand. The balloon reads "Ich vermisse Dich," which is German for "I miss you." How cute is that??

When we are at a restaurant, he half-jokingly asks if I want to order a particular item from the kids' menu. He remembers that I liked that specific dish ... forgetting that maybe my taste in food has evolved over the past few decades.

And my mother often calls me Christinechen instead of my proper first name Christine. In German, by adding "chen" to the end of any word, a word becomes diminutive. It's a way of making people, animals, or things cute and little.

"You'll always be "young" in someone's eyes and "old" in someone else's eyes, "talented" to a friend and "terrible" to another. The world is never going to agree on a definition of who you are." -- unknown

May you be seen as an 18-year-old in other people's eyes too!

I'm curious: when you look at your partner, do you see your partner at the age you met or at the current age?

Best,
Christinechen

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