The elderly woman on the far left looks directly into the camera.  Her face is excited.  Eyebrows lifted as she broadly smiles. She is filled with a sense of glee that is usually reserved for children...on Christmas morning. A retired biology teacher, it is fitting that she is enthralled by that which stands behind her, what can only be described as a massive fossil.  A mastodon perhaps, though the species is really quite unimportant given that it ceased to exist approximately 10,500 years ago.  Aside from the immediate thrill of a dinosaur (or former dinosaur) in her presence, the building in which she stands holds endless opportunities to pursue her efforts of learning and sharing knowledge with the very young children she accompanies.  These are efforts that she will relentlessly continue until she, like the fossil, ceases to exist.

To her right stands a woman, approximately 20 years her junior, sharing similar stature and facial features among other traits unseen in this particular captured moment of time.  This younger woman, smiling genuinely like the elderly woman, does not look at the camera.  Instead, her gaze is focused off into the distance, her mouth forming silent words.  Perhaps words intended to assuage the frustration of the toddler in her arms.  A practiced behavior that will become an invaluable practiced behavior once the toddler becomes a young child, then a pre-teen, then an adolescent, then a young adult.  She never anticipated that more of the words she spoke would be "don't do thats" and "I'm proud of yous" and "I love yous" than "molar" and "pro fee" and "amalgam."

True to her nature, the toddler is arching her back, hips thrusting forward, angst on her face that only this toddler would know, wanting desperately for her feet to be independently on he ground.  Wanting desperately to roam the world like her younger siblings.  She will--roam the world.  A free spirit will develop in her.  One that her sister envies from a distance, that she learned from her brother who she will eventually out-spirit.  She will prove the naysayers wrong.  She will be a doctor, a philosopher, a socialite, a social activist, because she says she will.  Her feet will be planted firmly, and independently, on the ground.  The weed-covered ground that she will slowly, but surely, rid of dandelions.

Beside the angsting toddler and assuaging woman stands a short, but unmissable little girl.  She is unmissable because she is dressed in bright purples and pinks.  Her pants are three sizes too big.  She will grow into them, so she is told.  Her face may be the most distinct of the five, because anxiety and worry foreign to her age consumes her features.  She is terrified of the fossils that bring her grandmother so much happiness.  She fears they will attack her.  Take her from her family.  Maybe even eat her.  A reasonable fear, given that despite their current inanimate position in the world, they were not inanimate two weeks ago when she snuck a peak of the movie her parents were watching.  Sneaking peeks never worked out well for her.  She once ruined the surprise of a gifted polka-dotted pink purse when she snuck a peek before it was wrapped.  She will not sneak a peek again.  She will follow the rules and fear the larger things in the world, because, after all, that is what she knows.  This fear though, will bring her success.  Following rules can do that.

To the pink girl's right is a boy, about a foot taller.  He, like the elderly woman, is looking directly into the camera, thrilled to be standing in front of his idol.  A tight-lipped, but true, smile on his face.  A real life dinosaur--one of the many species whose name he had dutifully memorized in what he will later refer to as his "golden days" as an only child.  Perhaps this extinct creature was one of those on the colorfully printed sheets on his bed at home.  These dinosaur sheets, and their friend Winnie the Pooh, will be neglected in favor of solid colored green sheets. The boy's true smile will also be neglected, in favor of an ironic one,  to accompany his ironic t-shirt and ironic non-prescription glasses.  He will forget the name of the fossil behind him but will gain knowledge of Proust, and Vonnegut, and Wallace.

Oddly for these five individuals, no words are spoken.  This picture, however, is worth 729 words.  Words that were and words that will be.