I’m incredibly grateful for my parents.
A random yet fairly deep thought hit me suddenly yesterday, seemingly out of nowhere, as I was driving to the grocery store and my kids bickered in the backseat. The most random and deepest thoughts seem to hit like that when I’m locked into a mundane task.
I spent the most important years of my life (in terms of shaping my brain, shaping who I would be as a person) thoroughly steeped in love. Drenched in it. My parents were not perfect, but they loved me, and I always felt it, I always knew it, from the time I was very small, despite any (perfectly normal) mistakes they may have made, despite any outside forces that may have tried to sneak in, the home I grew up in was fiercely protected by their love and their desire to do what was best for their six kids with our varying needs, and I can’t imagine a more precious gift.
They showed me by example what to do for a child. Imagine a movie montage—no music though, that’s just cheesy ð
I can picture sitting in the living room as a preschooler, brushing my mother’s hair in the dim light while she sat on the floor and dozed.
I picture being in the Santa Anita Mall parking lot at 6 am on a Saturday with my dad, learning to drive his truck (years before I was legally old enough to drive, mind you).
I see my mom walking into my bedroom where my friends and I were hanging out, picking up an empty laundry basket, putting it upside down over her head with a big smile and prancing out triumphantly as we laughed.
I see my dad standing in front of us kids on a Monday night, with a white board behind him on an easel, reading a verse of scripture to us that had touched his heart.
I remember feeding ducks at the arboretum in the shade with my mother and assorted little friends. So many times. Preschool; Girl Scouts. All roads lead to the arboretum.
I remember sitting on the kitchen table around age 11, around 9 pm, Hannah and Noah in bed already, everyone else out for the night, picking up the receiver from the (corded) wall phone to call the pay phone number at the stake center where my dad was playing basketball, asking whomever picked up to find Harry T, so that he could assure me that I was safe and that he would be home soon.
I see my mom puttering around the house late at night in the summer, whole-house fan blaring, waiting for us to go to bed so that she could shut off the house fan and go to bed herself.
I see my dad wrapped in an afghan, dozing on the floor outside the bathroom as he waited for me to finish up (because why wouldn’t a preschooler wake up her father to accompany her to the bathroom in the middle of the night?)(he was also the go-to whenever the pukes hit me)
I feel my mom hugging me when I broke down crying after I got back from girls camp and realized she had removed everything from the bookshelf from my room and put the bookshelf in the kitchen to hold pots and pans. ð (I was leaving for college the next day; she was just being efficient. ð)
I feel my dad’s large hands on top of my head as he said blessings of healing over me dozens of times throughout my childhood, whenever I felt sick or afraid.
I can hear my mom’s voice cracking with emotion as she said a family prayer with us on the morning of my wedding.
I can hear my dad telling me the stories of his father that I hold close in my heart, stories of a man who changed so completely and left behind a life of anger to become a man of peace, then suffering however briefly from Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s before he died.
I can picture driving my mom (in her 15-passenger van) to her evening classes at a local university when she went back to school to get her teaching credential.
I can picture my dad popping up out of the ocean as a big wave came at sunset, pointing to the wave and yelling “This one’s mine! H.T.!” and then riding the wave in to the sand.
Maybe I’d better write these all down into a book, since it’s already too long for a blog post and that’s only the tip of the iceberg! I’m endlessly grateful for these two strong and brave and goofy and faithful and life-loving humans who raised me to become—I think, I hope—the same kind of human, offering the same gifts to my own children.
