growing old

Inherited Roads

~ Diary of a Kitten Addict ~ Leave a comment

This started as a Facebook tribute to my dad on his 79th birthday. It began to wander into a narrative as winding as the roads we’ve traveled and the lives we’ve lived, and I thought, well, some things are bigger than Facebook.
Because how do you fit a lifetime of stories, sarcasm, and shared miles into a single post? Maybe this one just needed a little more room to stretch its legs, unfold its map, and find its way home.

Happy 79th Birthday to my dad: proof that genetics are wild and wonderful things. Scientifically, I’m 50% Jack and 50% Sandy (I think that’s how it works, but I’m no scientist). If you know me well enough, or look closely, you can probably pick out which pieces belong to which half. Most people think I take after my mum, and in looks, humor, wit, and occupation, I do. I don’t look like my dad, and my personality, well, that’s all Sandy.

I was the firstborn, which means I came into the world with the full, undivided attention of two brand-new parents. That lasted about thirteen months, until the twins showed up and the spotlight had to stretch a little thinner, or, on most days, disappear entirely. To this day, the family joke is about who is Mom’s favorite (spoiler alert: it’s Ryan), but I’ve always known, and still know, that I am Dad’s. Not in the spoiled or sugary “Daddy’s girl” kind of way, but in the quiet, unspoken kind that lives in the spaces between shared jokes and long drives. Ryan and Jenny might disagree, but that’s okay, they’re just jealous.

My dad is quiet and grounded. He doesn’t command attention or draw a crowd, not because he can’t, but because he doesn’t need to. He’s steady, thoughtful, the kind of man who listens more than he talks. But when he does speak, you should listen; it’s usually something important or something crudely funny you won’t want to miss. (Or, if you ask my mum, sometimes a little bitchy, but you can’t be perfect all the time.)

I’ve always been able to draw the lines between my father and me; our shared love of stories, our passion for travel and getting lost, our comfort in quiet, wild places. But if I had to pinpoint the moment that line was firmly drawn, it would be my solo trip to Colorado.

When I got to Denver and Fox Rental Cars, I bought a road map off the counter on a whim. An honest-to-God, unfold-it-till-it-rips, paper map. I didn’t need it; my phone sat on the dashboard, smug and certain, whispering turn-by-turn directions. But I wanted it.

The guy at the counter looked at me quizzically. He had tried to sell me extra insurance and a hardier 4×4 vehicle when he heard where I was headed, but all I wanted was that dusty map. My dad always had maps tucked into the seat pocket of the car, their edges soft from use, highways traced in pen, towns circled for reasons long forgotten.

When we traveled, it was always an honor to be the kid who got to hold the map and look for exits on highways where we could stop to eat or pee, and find our next stop. Maybe that’s where it started: my need to see where the road goes, to trust my own sense of direction even when I’m not entirely sure of it.

When I got into the car, I pulled a highlighter and pen from my bag (#educatorlife) and traced my route from Denver to Grand Lake on the map. I placed stars next to possible lookouts and scenic stops along the way. Then I set Google Maps to my hotel in Grand Lake and was off.

Throughout the thousand-mile journey around Eastern Colorado (Grand Lake was just my first stop), my dad was with me every step of the way. He’d text me randomly about alternate routes I might take or places he’d been that I shouldn’t miss. He shared stories and directions like breadcrumbs, as if he were quietly riding shotgun.

No one in my immediate family has an iPhone, so it was up to my friend Scott to track my location and AirTag, just in case I was eaten by a bear or fell off a cliff. Something my dad has worried about since I was old enough to walk and, therefore, climb over guardrails for a better look. In that, maybe we differ, or maybe it’s just age. Jack hates when I don’t stick to the trail or get too close to the edge.

I suppose I didn’t inherit a highly developed sense of self-preservation from either of them, which both my parents continue to lament.

There was one day in particular. I was still in Grand Lake, fresh off a weak attempt at snowshoeing, my first time. I literally took decorative (but real – they said I could use them) snowshoes from the wall of the hotel and set off with no direction or education on how to use them. Self-preservation and common sense be damned. 

Solo in Rocky Mountain National Park, I ended up buried to my neck in a snowdrift, convinced I was living out some Stephen King–esque scene and wouldn’t be found until summer when the snow finally melted. My head, sticking out of the snowmelt and mud, half-eaten by wildlife, a sad note scrawled in blood on a tissue stuffed into my bra: maybe Get busy living, or get busy dying, or simply, We all float down here. That’s all it would say. My final tribute to the world, a borrowed line from Stephen King and proof of my lack of creativity, but deep love for great literature and one-liners. (I know my dad is smiling and shaking his head as he reads this… even if it is dark.)

After that, I decided exploring from the safety of my car was the smarter option. (Second spoiler alert: I got out. It wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t happy, and I had snow lodged in places I didn’t know existed, but here I am.) I pulled out my trusty map and highlighted a few places I wanted to see. I found myself on roads with no names, no lines, no paving, and definitely no signs. I just drove.

I chased an eagle into someone’s driveway trying to snap a photo. They chased me off with a shotgun in hand. I found a quiet reservoir where an osprey fished for nearly an hour, and I sat watching, camera in hand, capturing shot after shot. (Did I mention my dad gave me my first real camera?)

There were hours where I didn’t see another car, and I didn’t care. I was free. The world was mine. And in those moments, I would find myself whispering to Moosen, “Oh, Jack would have loved this.”

Out there in the Rockies, windows cracked to the cold, I realized I wasn’t driving alone. I was following inherited roads, his steady hands on the wheel in the way I trace a ridgeline, his patience in the way I wait for the osprey to dive, his caution tugging my sleeve when I lean a bit too far over the guardrail or cross it all together. Maybe I don’t have his face, but I have his miles. And they fit.

The truth is, my dad and I have always traveled in parallel lanes. He taught me that work is a kind of motion too, something steady and honest that keeps you grounded while you chase whatever horizon calls your name.

He was a teacher by degree, but true to Jack-fashion, he obeyed no man or master. He struck out to make his own way, his own fortune, his own company, and he succeeded. Proof that if you work hard enough, and long enough, you can build something lasting. He’s still working today at his company that’s as old as I am. I wish he wasn’t. I wish he would just retire (again). I’ve told him before, Go then, there are other worlds than these. But even the words and wisdom of Roland Deschain don’t convince him. And I get it, deep in my soul, even when I don’t want to admit it, I do get it.

The company is as much his baby as his three children are. It’s his name, his reputation, his life; countless, thankless hours poured into something tangible and valuable. It defines him the way my work defines me. It’s why he answers emails at all hours, finishes quotes on deadlines, and works on vacation. I understand it because I do that too.

But legacy and creation aren’t just in what we build or where we go; they’re in what we tell and imagine. And my dad could imagine. It’s the stories, he had one for everything, that showed off his particular brand of genius. When he told them, you could see him come alive, winding up and taking off into something bizarre and fantastic, and sometimes, well, a little scary.

This was the man who used to tell us that tunnels, of which there are plenty when you grow up in Pittsburgh or travel through West Virginia and Virginia, were filled with Noop-Nops.

If you’re wondering, no one actually knows what a Noop-Nop is. But what I can tell you, with absolute certainty, is that they live in tunnels and other dark places. They have wings like bats and furry bodies; the adults can get pretty big, two or three feet tall, with sharp fangs and razor-sharp claws. If you’ve read From a Buick 8, you can see them. For the record, that book came out long after Noop-Nops were invented, Stephen King just put a face to them…at least for me.

To avoid them, you have to follow the rules. When entering a tunnel, make sure your headlights are on, your doors are locked, and your windows are rolled up tight. Sure, you’ll hear them, the tapping and banging on the car as you pass through, but if you follow the proper safety procedures, you’ll make it out the other side unscathed.

Maybe that’s where my love of scary stories really started, not with The Boogeyman or Cujo, but with the Noop-Nops. My dad invented the monsters, but he also taught me not to flinch when the dark got loud.

He had me read The Boogeyman when I was about ten, and I’ve been a horror junkie ever since.

What people who don’t like horror don’t understand is that it isn’t about the gore or the fright; it’s about the possibility. The unknown. That’s what keeps you turning the page, coming back again and again. There’s something primal about being scared; it reminds you what it means to feel everything all at once. It wakes something ancient in you, something that refuses to sleep. It sharpens your senses, pulls you back into yourself, makes your palms sweat and your heart race. For those moments, you are completely present.

When you close your eyes, the nightmares that follow are worth the fear, because you wake up exhilarated, grateful, and so incredibly alive. Fear, after all, is just curiosity in disguise. The same instinct that makes you turn the page also hums beneath your skin, a magnetic pull toward whatever waits just out of sight.

I think that’s what I really got from him, not just the map habit or the camera or Stephen King, not even the wanderlust itself, but the compass. The quiet, internal one that says, go see for yourself, and the equally quiet one that says, get home safe, check under your bed, and close the closet door. He gave me the discipline to plan a route and the nerve to ignore it. He taught me that hard work is just another kind of journey: you show up, you keep moving, you learn the road as you walk it.

In those gifts was also wonder. The kind that makes you look twice at the sky, pull over for an osprey, or read just one more chapter even when you’re scared. He taught me that life isn’t meant to be tidy or predictable; it’s meant to be lived. To take the road with no lines, the tunnel filled with Noop-Nops, the story that keeps you up at night. To love fiercely, work hard, and laugh at the absurdity of it all.

And maybe that’s what it really means to live and love and inherit a story. It’s not the paths we’re handed, but the courage to travel them. The map might tear, the ink might fade, but the compass, his compass, still points true.

Always home.

This Is Forty-Eight… Forty-Nine?

~ Diary of a Kitten Addict ~ Leave a comment

Another trip around the sun, another year older, and somehow, it still catches me off guard. Birthdays don’t make me sentimental anymore; they make me aware, of time, of motion, of all the ways I’ve changed and stayed the same. Forty-eight feels too young to feel this wise, too old to feel this curious. But here I am, somewhere in between, still learning what it means to live wide open.

Thank you to everyone who took the time yesterday to wish me a happy birthday.
Hard to believe I’m forty-eight… wait, forty-nine? No, forty-eight. I think. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.

Sometimes I panic when I think about things like, “In 2030, we’ll install new social studies standards.” Not because of the standards, but because of the 2030. I can still remember partying like it was 1999 when it actually was 1999.

I remember being ten, with parents who were forty, and thinking they were ancient. Now, with parents who are seventy-eight and seventy-nine (I’m forty-eight, nailed it; my mum is thirty years older than me), I think about how young they still are and how much time we still have left to travel and explore.

I no longer measure time in minutes and seconds. In frat parties or nightclubs or boys. I think in weeks, months, and years. About retirement plans and portfolios. Menopause and hip replacements. I curse at my phone, send words instead of memes, and laugh because, well, here I am, the person my parents warned me about. The person they swore I’d become.

I went from wild and carefree to achy and crotchety seemingly overnight.
I turn down the music when it’s raining too hard because I can’t see well when it’s too loud. I brace for the “oof” every morning when I crawl out of bed, my knees, hips, and back punishing me for the years I punished them in sports, and in stupid (but also fun) things like Spartan races.
I track BOGO sales at grocery stores and make meal plans instead of eating leftover pizza I found on my dorm room floor or tacos I found under my pillow.
I still love unsensible shoes, but I only wear them when it’s sensible.
I haven’t yet started calling the front desk when the room next door is too loud, but I might have knocked… politely… on the wall once or twice.
And I definitely don’t have TikTok.

Sometimes I stumble across old photos from college, me in my purple plastic skirt, that shiny green jacket (also plastic) I thought made me invincible, and I wish I could tell that girl how beautiful she was before the world convinced her she wasn’t. How thin she was. How unbreakable she’d turn out to be.

I wish I could tell her that strength doesn’t come from holding everything together; it comes from falling apart and finding a way back. That every wound, even the ones that felt fatal, would scab over and diminish in time. That the broken hearts and tear-soaked pillows, the stupid boys and stupid girls and cruel words, would one day shrink down into stories she’d tell with a laugh.

I wish I could tell her the world wasn’t ending every time someone ghosted her, or when she cried herself sick over someone who probably sells insurance in Ohio now and hasn’t explored the Rocky Mountains alone. That those sleepless nights were wasted on people who didn’t deserve to know her favorite songs. That those long nights waiting for the phone to ring were keeping her from hearing herself instead.

And that those wounds, now faint scars, would become the very fabric that built her. How every break had taught her to bend. Sturdy, imperfect, a little frayed in spots, but hers and hers alone. The kind of fabric that softens with time yet still holds up after every wash. The jeans you still wear from high school. The T-shirt that almost smells like him. The thread that runs through every version of herself, binding the girl she was to the woman she became.

If I could, I would pull that thread tight, trace it back to where it started, and I’d find her again, the girl who didn’t yet know what she was made of. I wish I could tell her that one day she’d grow up, be respected, earn a doctorate, and realize the people she once tried so hard to impress no longer even exist in her memory.

I’ve said before that while I have regrets, I don’t live with them, and that still holds true. They’re memories, not weights. Reminders, not anchors.

At forty-eight, I feel lucky to be where I am.

I have a handful of really good friends, the kind who’ve seen me at my worst and still answer the phone at two in the morning if I call in a panic… or a rage… or just because I’m bored. They send me pictures of otters, leave voice memos of themselves singing on my birthday, drop off authentic All Dressed chips on my doorstep, send random memes about leaves and how much the bitches love them, show up at my dissertation defense at eleven o’clock Netherlands time, still cut and style my hair, or jet off for a weekend in Vegas that we still don’t talk about. They visit me in Charlotte when they’re passing through, or maybe just to curl for the weekend, and leave little gifts on my desk because they thought of me and my ridiculous obsession with all things cats.

I have a best friend. The kind who calls when I’m too sad to talk, sits in silence while I cry, and only hangs up once she knows I’m in bed. The kind of friend who travels with me, who knows my darkest secrets, my worst impulses, my deepest fears, and still always shows up. She calls me on my shit but never judges me… at least not too harshly… and she always calls me back.

And I have a partner who celebrates me, ignores my tantrums, and indulges my weird whims. Who takes trips with me on the off chance we might see moosen. Who sometimes makes a steak dinner better than anything Ruth’s Chris or Morton’s is serving up, and who always drives me to the airport when I’m off on another adventure, kisses me goodbye, and reminds me that he loves me.

I’d go to the mattresses for all of them without a second thought, because, frankly, several of them know where the bodies are buried and because without them, I’d be lost.

I have a family that is mostly intact. I’ve felt the loss of matriarchs and patriarchs, of beloved uncles and family friends I once thought of as surrogate parents. Each loss has become a reminder of family itself, of love, of togetherness, of how deeply we belong to one another even as the seats around the table begin to empty.

Despite my general optimism, I’ve started to live more in the now, because I’ve grown acutely aware of borrowed time and the absence of any guaranteed tomorrow. I sometimes wish I’d understood the meaning of family when I was younger, but I’ve come to learn it’s something that has to grow on you over time, like moss… or maybe fungus. You have to grow old to understand what old means. You have to experience loss to comprehend the hollowness it leaves behind. And you cannot fully understand love until you’ve stepped out of the light it once provided. But each loss, in its own way, brings you closer to those who remain in the void and learn to share that space with you.

But through it all, I know I have a place to call home, even if it isn’t brick and mortar or tied to a single point on a map. Sometimes family is forty-seven text notifications bitching about the Penguins’ power play.

Home, like family, isn’t always simple. Love and belonging come with their own messiness, their own friction. Because comfort doesn’t erase complexity. Family, like time, teaches in layers; some soft, some sharp.

I’ve also felt the strain that politics and pride can bring to a family, and I’ve lamented the silliness of those silences. The stubbornness that builds walls where laughter used to live. Yet even those moments have carried lessons. I no longer see myself as a child at the whim of adults trying to mold me, or as an adult bending to other adults who believe they still can. It’s a strange dance. The old and the young, elders and youngers, respect and mutual understanding. Learning to be cautious and kind, yet steadfast, confident, and self-advocating. It has taught me to love without question or condition, and to forgive, but never to cave.

The same lessons have found their way into every other corner of my life, especially my work.

I have a job I enjoy and take pride in, work that still challenges me, that still matters. The kind of work that sometimes keeps me up at night and wears me thin, yet always reminds me I’m part of something bigger than myself, that my days are spent doing something that outlives the hours it takes.

I’ve finished my education as far as degrees go, but the learning hasn’t stopped, it’s just changed shape.
Now it looks like airports and conversations and quiet mornings where the lesson is simply being present.

I travel. I wander. I wonder. I explore.

Not to escape, but to keep learning what it means to be alive in all the small, ordinary ways, because the world keeps getting bigger the older I get, and each place teaches me something new about who I was, who I am, and who I’m still becoming.

Because no matter how far I go, the journey always circles back to me. Every new horizon holding up a mirror, reminding me that growth isn’t just about the miles traveled, but the grace earned along the way.

I still sometimes cry into my pillow, and I know heartache doesn’t fade with age, but I also know it isn’t the end of the world. It just shifts the landscape. And it’s up to me to decide how I want to walk it.

To all the little girls and boys out there, the ones who think thirty or forty is old, just wait. It really does get better with age. You get better with age.

If you have a dream, chase it. If you want to go somewhere, buy the ticket. Money is something you can always make tomorrow, and things just gather dust. Real living happens at the intersection of let’s do it and holy shit, I’m terrified.

So do it scared. Live life on the precipice between caution and the wind. That’s where the good stories come from anyway.

Because that’s the secret no one tells you about getting older, it’s not about slowing down; it’s about finally knowing when to jump.

Mismanaged Mischief

~ Diary of a Kitten Addict ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story, or blog, or poem, I don’t know what is, started as a text a friend. But it had legs and substance and I kicked it around a bit until it become this idea…this…perhaps…so one night, when I had some time, and needed a distraction, I decided to write it down. But as I polished it, I realized that I needed a disclaimer, because, well because anything we put out there just does these days…

I know fireworks aren’t great. They’re bad for pets, bad for veterans, bad for the planet. They cause fires and injuries and air pollution. Trust me, I know. And it’s something I wrestle with every year. So if, after you read this, you still want to chastise me, go ahead. I get it. I won’t complain or stop you. I know the risks. In some ways, I’m a total hypocrite. I signed a petition to ban them in Big Bear Valley to protect Jackie, Shadow, Gizmo, and Sunny… so yeah, you get to do what you need to do.

But… this isn’t a love letter to fireworks.

It’s about something older. Deeper. More personal.
Louder, in a way.
Quieter, too, I suppose.

It’s about love and magic, being young, growing up, and all the feelings I have as a middle-aged woman in the thick of all the crises I’m supposed to be feeling and probably a few I’m not. About how sometimes I wish I could take it all back. A mulligan. A do-over. Another shot at 20… or 30. And how sometimes, I wonder if they feel the same. What if they got a do-over? A shot at redemption? What if they made a different decision?

I wouldn’t be mad.
Hell, I wouldn’t even know.

It’s about the stuff we don’t talk about at dinner.
And how, sometimes, in the right kind of darkness,
that ember beckons…

Mismanaged Mischief

Uncle Jack brings the big ones,
from some backroad stand in South Carolina
or maybe West Virginia,
the kind of place where warning labels fade in the sun,
and the whistle of a soft, sibilant s through missing incisors
makes she’s a beaut sound so much like Randy Quaid
you want to die from the perfection of it.

I don’t know.
I’m not there.

I’ve never been invited to witness the purchase.
But in my imagination, I’ve seen the displays,
boxes called Bamboozled, Honey Badger,
and Fresh Hot Bacon.
And I can picture,
in the most horrid, stereotypical fashion,
the man peddling large, incendiary devices
to my almost 80-year-old father.
And I always wonder:
is this the year someone loses a digit?

The real show will be just past dusk,
almost full dark,
when the sky softens into those pink and blue hues
the tourists take photos of.
You can set your watch by the retreat of the damp curtain
of coastal tides and winds
that lift just enough to let you breathe,
but still press against your skin
so you don’t forget:
Summer makes you earn the night.

His transformation though, that comes early.
Long before dusk or touristy Instagram memories.
I’ve never actually seen it,
but I know the signs.
Him shifting, edging backward through time
toward adolescence and carefree reverie.
It starts with a punk,
something I always call a pongee stick,
which makes him laugh every year.
I can see it burning against the dark grass,
a single ember in the shadows of almost-night.
That’s my cue to remind him
to be grown-up,
but it’s always too late.

Suddenly, he’s twelve again,
lobbing black cats at our feet,
cackling when we flinch,
tucking bottle rockets into our empty beer bottles,
tilting them skyward with the precision of chaos.
His eyes burn with youth,
mischief once gotten and long passed,
the echo of it,
a flare that won’t last.

They start moving toward the end of dock,
a wagon and small children in tow,
our only cue to get in or get out,
History has taught us to watch from the yard,
Because at least once,
he’s sent a mammoth screamer into the sound,
where some poor fish,
just swimming by and minding his own business,
met his fate,
bobbing like a question we couldn’t answer,
surfacing to threaten the fragile line between should we or
shouldn’t we.

I guess we’re all in,
we find our seats,
and suddenly the tell tale HISSSSSSS of the first wave
erupts into purple blooms and silver rain,
green comets that crackle and fly haphazardly,
red chrysanthemums that shatter into stars fall around us.

The crowd oohs.

The kids gasp.

The sparks fall in slow motion,
some of them too low
or too close,
I wonder, are the gasps awe or oh?
The displays from the island
and up and down the coast mirror ours,
and if you sit in just the right place,
it’s like watching fireworks in stereo.
And just like that,
We are all twelve again.

I no longer sit on the dock,
under the action.
In my old age, I’ve opted for a safer,
more respectable seat in the yard.

But I never stray far,
the vigilant eldest daughter,
Keeper of Mismanaged Mischief,
Queller of Fun.
I make sure,
I can still hear him.
I can still see him.

He laughs like someone
who’s forgotten to be tired.
And for a moment,
so do I.
And it’s so easy to get lost
in the pageantry of it all,
the opulence,
the awesomeness.

I look at my father.
See him.
Eyes lit with color,
mouth open in a boy’s laughter
I rarely hear anymore,
a laugh that time,
and age,
and responsibility
have folded into a box
labeled special occasions only.

I want to scream,
WAIT!
We aren’t ready yet.
It’s not time yet.

But in the dark,
the pongee stretches out,
licks the final fuse,
and the finale brings us to our feet,

I have nothing left to protest.

It’s over.

A lingering smoke cloud
and the faint smell of sulfur in the air,
the only trace
that the veil between is and was
had unraveled.
Just long enough to let him through.
But time erases,
and magic fades,
and just like that, he’s gone.

And the boy I never knew,
goes quiet again.

The squeaky wheel of the wagon returning
lets me know I’m right.

And it hits me,
maybe it isn’t fireworks we’re talking about at all.

On growing old.. and other stuff…

~ Diary of a Kitten Addict ~ 2 Comments

I think, as we grow older and then even older still… As we move through those stages of grief, “I’m almost 30”, “I’m almost 40”, “fuck, I’m almost dead”… I think we start to notice the passing of time as an actual marching. Time (or the lack thereof) becomes something you can feel. Time becomes something you can almost hear. It is that steady “boom, boom, boom” that hits you deep in the bones. You can feel the pulse in your arches and in your toes, it mutes your ears and makes you feel like you are listening to life underwater. It stops you in your tracks and you spend a dizzying few moments recalibrating and acclimatizing to the world around you.

I think, we start to realize how important it is to remember and connect with the people who knew you when you were young and when you were you. How else do we explain having 951 friends on Facebook? And I’m not talking about the you that grew and grew up. Not the you that learned, and fucked up and recovered. Not the you that has now settled into a groove that includes baby aspirin and fish oil. Not that you. Not the you that haunts your dreams and wakes you with “what if”. Not that you. Not the you, when there was a you, that had the world in front of them and choices to make… choices that now are life and the status quo… that now define YOU… And still, that you, the one that always persists and is always there, lurking, just beneath the surface, that comes at you with more choices: Is this the life you chose? Is this what you want? Is this all there is? Is this milk still good?”  

I think, we spin our wheels and fight the current, but just like salmon coming to spawn, we too come home. We become our parents and we grow old (the thing we fear most as children). But we also realize that our parents, they gave all to have us, they had dreams and lives and choices to make, and they chose us. And be it out of kindness or couth they never mention it. The other paths. The other possibilities. The other lives. And then you realize that every possible road was only possible because it was carefully and concertedly cultivated for you. Because someone else gave that to you. 

I think, you decide to choose the next road wisely and with intention and deliberation. You decide, this time will better, more brilliant, more WHATEVER… so you can honor that. So you can BE that. And then you realize that you don’t have to be more, not for them, you’re enough. You learn you can atone for the stupid shit you did, or you said when you were 14 and angry and thought you knew everything. When the worst thing in the world you could be was your parents. When you didn’t know or understand them. When you didn’t know what they are or who they are. When you were young, and dumb, and so woefully without worry or care. You will always carry that guilt, but you know, they’ve forgiven you.

I think, eventually, it all comes to pass. All of it. The triumphs, the falls, the absolute abysmal moments that make you ashamed to this day. You know the ones, that you don’t talk about at Christmas or when the family finds themselves all together because of death or birth or some other ritual we pay homage to. Those moments we talk around and laugh about carefully. Those moments that will always remind you of your past indiscretions and failures. But all of that…All of it… It. Comes. To. Pass. You find forgiveness and grace in acceptance. You find laughter in the impossible. You find stories and moments and memories in the midst of the most unlikely of places. You finally learn to understand, and then you finally understand. And if you are lucky, you learn to embrace what has been in front of you all these years. You learn that it’s all so much bigger than you. You learn that giants and fairytales have human and humble beginnings. You learn that life isn’t finite but it is final. And despite it all, you learn to smile.