Eighteen years.

We’ve been wrangling this kid into Pete’s old leather jacket each autumn for the past eighteen years (and his sister into her great-grandma’s fringed jacket for fourteen). Oh, how slippery time is.

On Sage’s first birthday, we wrapped him up in an adult-sized jacket (a thrift store find that belonged to Pete) and snapped a picture for posterity.

A friend had suggested the tradition, to mark time by capturing your child growing into the garment as they approached adulthood. Hopelessly sentimental, I was all in the moment she shared it with me, and knew it would be the one consistent thing I did to mark time.

We repeated the shoot each year, and when Lupine was born, she got a jacket of her own (my grandma’s vintage buckskin fringe).

Year after year, all childhood long, this is what we‘ve done. I bribe them with ice cream each autumn, they don the jackets, and we head outside. In the absence of school pictures, we have these. How glad I am.

And this year… well, this year was big. Because Sage isn’t a child anymore. He’s old enough to vote (his first vote being this critical election, quite possibly our most important homeschooling lesson of all).

I expect this is the final jacket picture year featuring them both.

Oh, my heart. What a ride it has been.

How do you mark time and the growing of your kids?