Appreciating your parents

As I get older, the more I that I’m realizing just how much of a sentimental person I really am.

And to acknowledge that I’m becoming even more of a sap is truly saying something—I regularly cry over innocuously trivial things like holiday commercials and videos of baby sloths—so aging into my mid-twenties has clearly started to take its emotional toll on me.

I have been incredibly lucky to have been blessed with two parents who have done nothing but support me, and I am fortunate to be able to honestly call my mom my best friend and my dad my biggest supporter.

I still live with them, and as I plan for a future that doesn’t involve living under the same roof together, I’ve started to get extremely attached to the time I get to spend with them.

I’m a person who doesn’t enjoy dealing with change, and altering a dynamic that’s remained relatively unshifted and constant for most of my life won’t be easy.

And while I’m excited to move forward and tackle new things, I know that I’m going to desperately miss coming home to both of them each day when I’m not there anymore.

They are twin pillars of strength and guidance for me, and they have shaped my life in the best way possible.

They welcomed my boyfriend into their home over four years ago, and since then, they have embraced him into our family with unending acceptance and support.

I’ve had the chance to do what many young adults my age don’t get to do—take the time to save money and focus on classes with the added comfort of living at home while I do it.

I look back at my—now going on five—years at Laurier with the belief that I’ve experienced university in a way that I’ve always wanted to and I’ve been very privileged to have had it work out the way that it did.

I go out, I have fun, I tackle the aspects of independence that school makes you confront regardless of your living situation, and I’ve been able to come back to the place I’ve called home for the past 15 years, to the same two people each time, and I wouldn’t change it for a second.

I’ve always been nostalgic about what were once arbitrary moments from the past, and I’m doing my best to appreciate the routine I’ve fallen into, the place that I’m familiar with, as mundane as they may seem in the moment, before things eventually begin to change after I graduate.

I know that no matter where I end up living, my mom will always be a phone call away to answer any of my endless day-to-questions or listen to me vent about a particular problem, and my dad will continue to be the person who makes me laugh more than anyone else and cooks my favourite meals without me asking him to—but it’s important for me to remember just how lucky I am to have enjoyed this level of comfort and encouragement for as long as I have.