It's official. I'm going to be an uncle. My sister and brother-in-law are expecting their first in about six months. And so continues the progression of generations. I've been ignoring it for the past year, even though part of the reason I went up to Portland last month was to visit friends and meet their kids. Both of my roommates from Salzburg, Ian and Clinton, had kids. Next door neighbour from Salzburg, Nate, had one. Erik, Nate's roommate, is expecting his first. It isn't like the signs haven't been there, I've just been ignoring them. Photos of me holding their sprogs aside, I can pretend that it isn't really happening, we're not really all growing up.

I have a very strange memory, and still have no idea how it works. I can forget someone's name the moment I'm introduced to them, or what I did last week. At the same time, and this is what makes it strange, I can remember things that happened to me when I was very young. And one of these memories is when my parents brought Lorna home for the first time.

It was in the first house we lived in in England. St. Paul's road. I remember being in my parents bedroom, on the bed, while mum held this tiny little person that they told me was my sister. I remember the sunlight in the room. Lorna had just come home, so she was days old, and I was three and a bit.

She'll be bringing her child home in six months. Not to any older siblings, but she'll have traded positions. She'll be holding a tiny little person, and one day that little person will be a bigger little person looking on at a new little person, and then replaying the whole thing out again. And again and again, like a line of Matryoshka dolls, leading off into the future and gods know what. Except we won't exactly be sitting inside each other.

Or maybe we are. My ancestry contributes to who I am, so it's always inside me. There's a little bit of all those relations, whether I'm conscious of it or not, sitting inside me. So each generation adds a new layer, and finally it's my turn to add something to the next Matryoshka doll layer, the outside layer. Maybe one day I'll have my own kid, but for now I'm just an uncle, and I'm almost ready for it.

Although it's probably better I stay an uncle. Gods forbid I have my own kids and subject them to mumbling rants like this one, full of mostly-remembered sentimentality and crappy metaphors. If I do, their layer of Matryoshkosity will probably end up like one of those really cheap, squashed face ones, that looks like the blind painter might have had a face explained to them once.