My Home Is Changing | I Write From the Middle

My daughter is almost out of the door. & I already miss her.

My son is still here. Young enough to cause a ruckus. Old enough, I can see the shape of who he is becoming. My in-laws are older now. We’re in the season where visits feel different. Where you notice things you didn't before. Where ordinary clicks on the clock start feeling like something worth paying closer attention to.

I watch from the middle.

I don’t write from a place having figured anything out. I’ve lost people before I was ready. I’ve missed conversations I can’t jump back to. I know what it feels like to sit across from someone and leave without asking anything that actually matters. & to carry that silence forever.

This is why the sweetness of c[&]y exists. Bitter turned sweet. Not as a product built to profit from your pain but one to redirect your fate.

What will winter look like?

There is a particular stretch of adult life that goes unspoken.

Your children are pulling away. Not unkindly, naturally. They are becoming their own people. They desire  and need you differently. Turn around. Your parents are settling into their oldness in a way that only they know how. They’re honest now. Very direct. No more pretending. They say it with their chest.

You stand in the middle.

And somewhere in between summer and winter, college applications, doctor's appointments and the dinners that feel shorter than they used to, there is opportunity most people miss entirely.

Your parents are alive. Their minds still work. They may speak long conversations that wander everywhere unexpected… finally, they are willing to talk.

What the kids are absorbing

They watch how we handle things that feel impossible to say. Whether we ask questions or sit quiet. Do we treat our elders with respect. Is the past worth knowing or just a background.

Talking to your kids about family history isn't school work. It’s proper posture. You lean in when your Uncle whispers low, I never told anyone about this but…. It’s why you sit around the table late night breaking bread when you should be asleep. It’s when you treat the past like it belongs to the present.

Because it does.

Your kids understand themselves more when they understand where they came from. Not from a textbook. From a familiar voice they were blessed to hear while they were still here to speak.

A child who recognizes her grandmother's laugh. Who lay in her lap and remembers her describe being young dumb and full of hope carries something no academic achievement can provide.

This is not sentiment. This is your identity. And identity is built in the kitchen. Not classroom.

Honest Oldness

Something about old folk that I find amazing.

They stop performing. If only we could be old forever. The cost of maintaining image is expensive. What’s left is something more honest and intriguing then the best version of our youngest self.

Your still breathing parent; the one’s whose blood still flows. The ones with opinions. & still very much capable of surprising you.  Conversations available to you today are richer and wiser then the ones you would have had with them ten years ago. Ten years from now, they may be much harder to have.

This is your window. Open. Most won’t bother to try looking out til it closes.

Procrastinators Suck!

We sometimes treat reflection in this society like it should only apply to grief. In death we tell the real story. The obituary is when we learn who someone was.

Reflection belongs to the living.

You don’t have to wait for something to be wrong before you fix it. You don’t have to wait for a crisis before you treat the people you love like the irreplaceable people they are.

My home is changing. My kids are growing. & your parents are aging into the most honest version of themselves.

Learn something new this week. Ask a question. Stay a little longer.  & let the conversation grow without shutting it down.

You won't regret it. I promise you.

c[&]y was built for this sweet moment…..

BUT QUESTIONS BELONG TO EVERYONE.

What is one thing your parents never told you that you wish they had?

What do you hope your children will one day say they learned from watching you?

If you could hear one story from someone you've lost — just one — what would you want it to be about?

_ Wesley Onesler