Many of us head off to school in August having shared some tearful goodbyes with our best friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, or hearing ‘you’re gonna miss those home cooked meals’ and ‘better learn how to do laundry,’ but what never seems to get mentioned are the people behind those home cooked meals and the laundry, mom and dad.
For 18 years of our lives they’ve been there to teach us how do things and fix our wrongs, yet when all of a sudden when they’re not just a room away nobody mentions how different our lives really will be. Those little things that caused us to roll our eyes or drive us crazy went seemingly unnoticed for so long and now that they’re not part of our everyday life it seems as if something is missing. We seem to fail to appreciate how much fun it is to see our dads’ scream at the TV screen on Sundays during football season, when you find yourself sitting in a room full of fans of the opposing team or girls just sitting on their phones.
Mom’s attempt at humor that would often go, unnoticed, or with an eye roll. The good laugh when you get her occasional jokes in one of her daily text messages. And days when you head out to grab some food, do your weekly Walmart shopping, or fill up your gas tank (really anytime you leave for that matter) you don’t hear the occasional offer of $20, that you would often grab without much more than a ‘thanks’, but instead you hear a whimper from your bank account as the balance drops down to $5.37. But don’t forget about those home cooked meals, you’re excitement for chicken parm night in the dining hall ends up being a huge let down when the chicken seems to be only slightly warm and mom’s homemade sauce doesn’t come close to stacking up against the jar stuff that you’re eating.
Or on Thursday night when your friends are begging you to go out with them, but all you really want to do is have a date with your bed and Netflix, the instantaneous text back of “My parents won’t let me go” doesn’t seem to cut it when they’re three plus hours away. Finally when you get a text or phone call that Uncle John and Aunt Sally are splitting up, or cousin Lisa got some bizarre tattoo or piercing, you’re roommate isn’t as appreciative of the juicy family drama that has just unfolded as your mom would be, and the gossip just isn’t the same.
All in all we have an awful lot of "thank yous" that have gone unsaid for 18 years, and maybe it did takemoving hours away for us to realize when and where they were due, however it’s better late than never. So thank you mom and dad for the many things that we never noticed we would miss, and for understanding that we do appreciate all of your quirks, even it took us this long to notice.