Young Was Not So Long Ago

Kids never seem to conceive, while they live under your roof, that you were once 15 as well. They don't know that it isn't so hard to remember the feelings, the yearnings, how the soul even ached with feelings you couldn't describe. Those feelings, they flitted and flashed, sometimes easy to capture, other times impossible. Kids don't believe that their parents were ever anything except the obstacles between them and what they really want. I'm only ever the maid and the busdriver and the cook, I suppose. Inconceivable that I was young and flirty and silly and fun; that I had dreams and ambitions and goals; that I had emotions that were bigger than I was; that I swam in flashfloods of desire. They look askance and roll their eyes at the idea that we, their parents, ever liked anything "cool". We're just these antiques who try to keep them from having fun, looking cool, being with their friends, listening to good music.....

Which makes me wonder.....have I ever said thank you to my parents? Thanks for sacrificing their time and their money and their energy....when there were things they would've rather done and they did for me instead. Have I ever said thanks and even sorry? Sorry that I was such a clueless git sometimes, selfish and self-centered and self-absorbed. Thanks for the times they rescued me; sorry for the times I didn't say thanks....Have I ever mentioned those things? Have I ever really sat down and thought about my parents as anything other than the handyman, the maid, the cook, the driver? To a degree I have, but maybe not enough. Maybe now's as good a time as any just to say thanks.