When did you first realise that your parents are people?

Watching your parents physically change is unnerving. It happens slowly but then all at once. My mom has dyed her hair since I was little, finally embracing the full grey in her 70s. My dad, who has always been slim and fit, is now pretty thin. 

I examined them across the kitchen table where we have sat together for all of my 35 years. This table has come with us to every house we’ve ever lived in. Most mornings when I wake up at that house, my dad is usually sat there having just finished journalling or reading a book about philosophy.

The sliding door is open with a cool breeze coming through. He’s made himself some unholy concoction of apple cider vinegar and water or something else I find equally repulsive, and he’s set out the coffee mugs for my mom and I.

This particular morning we’d finished having a pretty mundane breakfast together. I’d marvelled at this new time we have now, just sitting and eating and talking. I looked up and them both and said, “I know you’re my parents, but I never thought I would watch you age.”

My dad, often exasperated by the shit that I come out with goes, “Eh, Nicole, but of course we were always going to age. We’re people.”

They’re people. 

My parents are hardworking, intelligent, capable, and strong-willed. They are beautiful, unwavering in their sense of self, and total opposites of one another. My mother is outgoing, chatty, deeply loving and hot-tempered (at least she was when I was little). You will know how she’s feeling at any given moment. A sincere caregiver. My dad is cerebral and introverted, never one to show much feeling, but an empathetic listener. A true Libra in my mind, always wanting to see both sides of the story.

They have regular human qualities and regular human personality traits, but I still look at them as the people who will be there for me to solve any problem I ever have.

Two years ago was the first time I’d ever seen my parents break down and sob. These are the people who have seen me cry countless times, rendered speechless at a commercial or a TikTok of a toddler who I don’t even know. 

The night my cousin died, I had slept over at her husband’s house so that he wouldn’t be alone. My younger cousin joined me there as well. The expectation being our parents would join us there the next day. 

My mother, having lost her sister and her niece in quick succession called me the next morning but couldn’t get her words out. All I could hear was wailing. Dad had to explain they couldn’t come because the shock had worn off, rendering my mom incapable of doing anything. The grief had overwhelmed her so severely, she couldn’t speak. I won’t ever forget that sound. 

I turn to my parents like God (if I believed in him, the way religious people do) when I have a problem that needs to be solved quickly, when I let things get so bad that all I have left to do now is pray and beg for their forgiveness.

Being an only child, I suppose I’m just used to that dynamic. They’re the parents, I’m the child. When I was younger, I was naturally heavily reliant on their support while simultaneously never wanting to listen to their advice. 

I never wanted to get into trouble, I never wanted them to be disappointed in me, I never wanted them to lecture me. Because I was on my own, I was ruled by the idea that I had to be the perfect only child. There’s no one else to shift blame on to, there’s no one else to point at - there’s only me. When you’re the only one who can carry the shame of their disappointment, you’re just ducking and diving your way through, trying to avoid the inevitable for as long as possible.

Little did I know I would continue to be fucking up well into my 30s. And apparently my whole life, or so they tell me. At 35 they’re trying to convince me that they themselves also didn’t have any of this “stuff” figured out. I can’t help but compare myself to them, but my logical brain tells me simply that it was a different time.

I now recognise that my parents never encouraged me to live my life for their approval. They never placed any of their expectations about how I should live my life onto me. They never tried to steer me in a direction that was for their own validation or gain. If anything, they made sure to always move me toward my dreams, my aspirations, my goals.

But I was (and still am, to an extent) duty-bound to an idea that as the daughter of two immigrant parents that I have to uphold a standard of excellence, outwardly. 

My dad always told me, “never do anything for me.” Or for anyone else. 

And yet, here I am, still toiling away, doing things for me in the hopes that I will never need to ask them for anything again. It’s hard not to boil down the mistakes I’ve made in the past to poor decision making on my part. As some fatal flaw that will always leave me falling short.

I want to be able to give them things the way that they always gave me everything. They don’t ask, they never do. They don’t expect anything. I still can’t help but look at them from across our kitchen table and wonder if they think of who I’ll be when they’re inevitably not around.

About me: I'm Nicole, the writer of The Noteworthy. I’m also a content creator and the co-host of the award-winning Mixed Up podcast. Having been chronically online since the age of 13, you can also find me on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Pinterest. I’m working on my first book, The Half Of It, which you can pre-order here.