Yesterday evening, my mom and dad brought me to Arkadelphia (I wrecked my car and had been borrowing mom’s for a while). Without missing a beat, my mom automatically went into the kitchen and started washing dishes while my father helped bring in some of my stuff from the van. A while later, we listened to a recording of a recent concert I gave in Benton in which I honored my mother and grandmother on the stage (it was Mother’s Day). I was arranging some of the things we brought in and turned around to notice that both my mother and father were crying. I was like, “What are y’all crying for?!” The best I could get was that parents just do that sometimes when their babies are growing up and they’re all proud.
It was one of those moments that maybe only comes every few years. And they are somehow so transcendent that they immediately show all life’s struggles and pain and frustration and tenacity of unforgiveness for what they really are…filler and finished, should you accept it. I loved that moment yesterday.
My parents left. And part of me left with them, though I stood still on the front porch.
SRay
