My Parents.

You’re always going to be a kid whenever you visit back home. Or at, least, that’s generally what I would have thought before the last five months.

This was the first time in my older years, as a college student, that I was reminded just how much my parents mean to me. Albeit for the wrong circumstances, seeing them now with much more life experience, having to deal with some of the most difficult experiences with each of them, just has been difficult to articulate. With the last quarter putting years on my life mentally, I was witnessing in a sort of snapshot how I saw the relationships I have with my parents are going to evolve in the years to come.

But as much as feel like reflecting on how I realized that shift has been cathartic for me, what has been infinitely more important to me in this part of my life has been how adamant they were about changing their lives to ensure I could be healthy again. It feels honestly quite dumb for me to be surprised about how much that meant day by day during my time pre-surgery in Chicago with my dad, through to recovery, and getting brought to everything with my mom. I recognize too how much more flexible they have it than almost any other parents could. Having health insurance, getting support and feedback from those we knew about surgery, and all the other gaps in trying to figure out how to be mobile again.