It's a maudlin night, I guess. My little baby boy is going off to the big university in another state tomorrow, and that'll be two kids down, one to go. I think this means that we're not ever going to allow poor Skatje to leave home, because I don't think I'll take to empty-nesting very well.

Anyway, Connlann was cleaning out his room tonight, and he went through an old filing cabinet that had some of my antique papers tucked away in it. He found this old photograph in there:

It's got to be over 20 years old, from the far off days when zebrafish were immensely larger than they are now, and we grad students had to go snorkeling to scoop up embryos for our work, which were the size of softballs, of course…OK, I lie. It's a faked picture, but this was before the days of Photoshop, and Carol Cogswell had to do it all in a darkroom. With chemicals and scissors and artful dodging and burning, so you'd darn well better be impressed anyway.

That's a photo of the Kimmel lab at the Institute of Neuroscience, University of Oregon, circa the mid 1980s. I remember most of them well, but unfortunately when I list them left to right and back to front, I have to start off with the two I knew least. With the parasol is Jonathan something-or-other, a new grad student who did a rotation through the lab; then it's an undergrad whose name completely escapes me, but I do remember he was a quiet and pleasant fellow; next is me, behind a fishnet held by Bill Trevarrow (who is still at Oregon, managing their fish facility); Chuck Kimmel; Don Kane, fellow gadget freak and imaging person, who made the zebrafish flipbook; two people behind nets so I don't feel guilty at not recognizing them; Molly…about whom I'm kicking myself, because I should remember her last name. In front is Ruth BreMiller, our histology expert without whom I would have suffered even more in grad school; Rachel Warga, who was an undergraduate at that time, but would later get a Ph.D. in Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard's lab (and would marry Don); Charline Walker, who was the backbone of zebrafish research for a long time; my old pal and officemate Walt Metcalfe; and Adam Felsenfeld, who last I heard was herding genomes at the NIH.

It's strange to be reminded of these lives we've left behind. These were good people I loved working with, at a good (if very poor and intellectually stressful) time in my life, and within a few years we'd all be scattered about the country to different jobs, whole different lives, and we'd mostly lose contact, except for those intermittent professional things. That's another sad thing about academia—the positions in our early careers are so transient, that friendships get splintered and we all learn not to put down deep roots anywhere.

I don't think Connlann was even born when this picture was taken. Now he's about to do the same thing I did. He'll go off to college, he will have a wonderful time, make new friends, and have great experiences that he'll remember well for the rest of his life…and then he'll move on. As an old codger now, the one thing I'd tell him is that every grand beginning has an end, and you have to savor everything in between. There are always new beginnings to anticipate, but the now is also always flying by, ephemeral and far too quick to fade. This is true of those college years, and it's also true of our children.

All things must end, but consider what comes afterwards…it can be even more glorious.