Lately, sitting with parents feels like déjà vu 🙂
the same stories, told again, but never quite the same.

We have heard them before, about the time I fell sick before their big trip,
how they skipped an occasion, missed a meal, bent their world to fit ours.

They never had routines or big plans, just one: revolve life around Us.

Their identity was never their own name, but ours.
They introduced themselves as our mother, our father, proudly losing themselves to build our world.

Tales of one hand feeding many mouths.
Of earrings never bought so school fees could be paid.
Of dreams quietly shelved to let ours grow wild.

They saved by selling newspapers, walked back from the market just to buy us that ice cream.
Skipped meals on trips to buy that little dinky car, that I had once pointed at in a shop window.

They stood for values and lost comfort, relationships, opportunities, but never themselves.

Never once did they falter, nor take a pause,
A 24/7 journey without a sweat.
Their blood, sweat, tear -all tucked away, to watch us rise.
Through sleepless nights, beneath hopeful skies.

Stories during bedtime, revision cycles in the night.
Exam stress or the weight of the world,
Yet they stood by us, steadfast, unfurled.

I do not have memory of them being sick.
A nonstop running with us in mind.
Diluting their days and nights.

They rose from set-backs and many challenges, not for glory, but out of need.
And still found the grace to let us choose our own way. To be different. To question.

Yet now, I find those same values in my own voice, as I raise my kids.
The way to pause, the way to protect.

As they age, memories serve more than food.
Their childlike wishes are not for things, but for moments.
That alleyway from their youth.
A corner table at a forgotten restaurant.
The famous Dhaba and that old shop.
A long drive where silence held a kind of peace.

Parent, it is the best role they ever played.
No title after that has mattered much.
And it makes us wonder: why do we chase applause in far-off rooms
when the truest kind sat at the dining table each day?

You sit with them now, in this slower season of life.
The house, once loud, chaotic, full, now sits still.
Not bitter.
Just quieter.
A sense and calm of life well lived.

We thought we came to visit.
Instead, we have handed a window into their world.
Not just into our childhood, but into who they became while raising us.

I wish to have the magic to make old age easier.
But maybe, just maybe, old age itself is a kind of gold age.

And as fondness grows, I see it clearly – their world was always us.
Nothing more. Nothing less.

There is so much to unpack.
So much to hold close.
And somehow, just listening, really listening, becomes the least and most, we can do.