"You should go from place to place recovering the poems that have been written for you to which you can affix your signature. Don't discuss these matters with anyone. Retrieve. Retrieve. When the basket is full Someone will appear to whom you can present it."

They stepped into parenthood with no manual, no certification, no guide. Only trembling hands, hopeful hearts, and a brand-new universe staring back at them — you.

They carried you, raised you, while quietly patching up the places where life had already cracked them open. They worked when their bodies ached. They smiled through weariness. They whispered love into your tiny world even when their own felt unbearably heavy. They showed up —through heartbreak, through uncertainty, through all the chaos of their unhealed parts. They gave what they could, sometimes too much, sometimes not enough.

Maybe they didn’t always say the right words. Maybe their love didn’t always sound like what your heart needed to hear. But still —look closer. The quiet phone call, just to check in. The sweater left folded on your bed. The warm meal waiting, the small note, the light left on, just in case you came home late. Those were their love letters —written not in perfect language, but in presence, in effort, in trying. Sometimes, they were too strict. Sometimes, too distant. But beneath the sharp edges was fear — fear of losing you, fear of failing you, fear of the same world that once hurt them.

Behind the silence was exhaustion. Behind the distraction was survival. Behind the mistakes was love, just shaped differently than you expected. They were never perfect. No human ever is. Some fell shorter than others. And yet —they gave what they had, and sometimes, even more than that.

And now, as we stumble into our own lives —as we become caretakers, lovers, dreamers, and parents ourselves —we begin to see the mirror. The same tired eyes. The same quiet hopes. The same impossible love. We start to understand that they weren’t superheroes — just people doing their best with what they knew, fighting battles they never spoke of. So maybe now, we can meet them again — not as children, but as equals in this vast, messy humanness.

To forgive, to understand, to grow — together. Not from perfection, but through grace. Not because we finally have it all figured out, but because we choose, again and again —in all our flaws and fumbling —to love anyway.

The sun drops low, bleeding gold and violet into the dusk, oblivious to whether we are watching. The day's heavy lifting is finished; the world needs nothing more from you.