I didn’t want an iPad until I saw the commercial where it turns into a star finder! So totally awesome – just hold it up to the sky?! I’ve seen some amazing things in life, and I’m constantly humbled and awed by technology, but I was slack-jawed stunned when I saw that commercial. They just held the iPad up to the sky, and it showed them what constellation(s) and other heavenly bodies they were viewing. There’s one app called GoSkyWatch Planetarium and another one called Star Walk, and if I had five hundred bucks to blow, then an iPad would be a freakingly cool toy.

Alas, do you know what I wanted to do as soon as I picked my jaw up from the floor? Call my uber-geek brother. Then it hit me all over again: his memory will always be 30, and time will never go beyond 2009. I’m sure heaven has way cooler stuff than iPads (not that you’d need one, seeing as GOD is there to occupy your rapt attention), but still – it’s something he would be completely stoked about, no doubt.

I think about the woman I was at 30 and the changes that have molded my life since then. To some degree, my tastes have altered: music, food, fashion. My family looked a whole lot different: I had a son in kindergarten, one in Pre-K and an infant. We had recently relocated to Central Texas. I had a different job, different house, different car. I had not started graduate school and certainly hadn’t considered getting a doctorate!

In my mind, Nathan will always be a computer guru who loves hard rock, working out and making fun of politicians. I wonder, if at 35 … 40 … 55 … whether he would still have the same preferences. (I reckon 90s metal would be “oldies” by then!) Maybe he would; maybe he wouldn’t. It’s just something I ponder.

A clever and thought-provoking professor I know hosts a haiku theme on his blog every Friday. Last week, the topic was Dreams. I’ve only had one dream where I can remember talking with Nathan directly, but I wrote my haiku about him, because hearing his voice again would be a dream come true:

No, wait – please don’t go!
There’s so much I want to say;
I miss you, Brother.

The memories may not go beyond 30 years, but there are still 30 years’ worth of memories!