The idea was simple: twelve pictures to represent twelve months. It was something I used to do with the Girl, but with a full family — wife, two kids, two cats, and a dog — that quickly became unreasonable. I had twelve pictures and I wasn’t even through a quarter of the year.

Then I began noticing a theme in the pictures, both the ones I’d selected and the ones I was noticing: maturity and independence. The kids working more, helping more, taking more on for themselves. The kids showing interest in things they’d never shown interest in before. Sure, there were lots of pictures of the kids being kids, but there were lots of pictures of kids growing up. Mowing, baking, reading, helping.

L finished elementary school and dove into middle school with eagerness. The Boy went from barely reading to showing an interest in chapter books and excitement at the prospect of reading them on his own. The Girl committed herself to singing in the church choir, now led by an Italian who was the associate choir director at the Sistine Chapel and has the girls singing most of their stuff in Latin these days.

There were some downs as there always are. One of Papa’s sisters passed away unexpectedly, and our dear friend who was battling cancer and had been given four to eight weeks to live survived only a few more days. Bida is growing more and more pathetic (in the classical sense of the word), and with her slowly stopping eating and moving less and less, for the first time, K and I discussed the inevitable. Not for a while, that’s true, but it’s coming, I fear.

This year will bring even more changes. The Girl will officially be a teenager. I will begin the second half of my forties. The Boy will likely be eating more that K. The Girl will likely be taller than K. And no matter the other changes, family will still be family.