anniversaries

hello great big world and all sorts of people reading this. hello.
i am writing this today to let you know i have just figured something out: someday, one day, i will be my parents. yours too. i will be a parent whose child knows them as "mom", not "melissa", which will be very strange and wonderful and hard and fun and growing and demanding and new. mostly new. i wonder if you ever really get used to the reality of having people whose lives you have been entrusted with, whose well being and education are top priority, manners and knowledge of the world at large come from you? this responsibility is huge, the magnitude of which i cannot even grasp. to be given this gift, this job of raising a person to care about the state of their neighbors, the environment they live in, about the choices they make and how they affect everyone and everything around them. raising someone who grows and evolves and knows through and through that the person they are is just wonderful, that the gifts they have been given are like no one other person on this earth, that they can give of their talents and passions and change their areas of influence. that their voice will be heard if they want it to be, because they are yours. and you will do whatever it takes to see them succeed in life. whatever that means, whatever that looks like, but that they would embrace their soul. isn't that what it means to be a parent? to love? that i will be a parent and known as such will be very different. the role is unlike any other, and has unmatched challenges. you give and give and give for years and then maybe someday, when she is 22 she might think of me as "melissa" as well as "mom".

today is my parents, dave and brynda's, 36th wedding anniversary. it is an occasion marked with joy and peace and comfort and memories and thankfulness and hope. a day marked, that changes my mind just a little more about who they are every year. and i wonder, do my parents know how much i love them? how much i adore their selflessness? i mean i can tell them until i am blue in the face, but do they really know? the time that they gave me, the patience and love, an environment that wasn't protected from the harsh reality of life but was sheltered from the things they deemed unnecessary to our growth. they were right and wrong. they are people. just like me. enjoy your anniversary mom and dad, brynda and dave! i love you for being you, an older me.