The day I realized my parents were once young

I found an old photograph of my parents today it wasn't anything special. The picture was slightly faded, the edges had started turning yellow, and both of them were standing awkwardly in front of a wall, looking at the camera as though they weren't quite sure what to do with their hands.

But I couldn't stop looking at them. Not because they looked different. Because they looked young.

I have seen my parents thousands of times. I know their faces their voices, their habits, their arguments, the expressions they make when they're annoyed, and the things they complain about repeatedly.

But I had somehow forgotten that they existed before I did in that photograph, my mother wasn't my mother. My father wasn't my father. They were just two young people who had no idea what their lives would eventually become.

I started imagining them.

Maybe they had friends I have never heard of anymore. Maybe they had stupid inside jokes. Maybe they stayed out late, made terrible decisions, fell on love fought with people, laughed until their stomachs hurt and worried about completely different things. Maybe they had dreams that disappeared somewhere along the way.

I wonder what they thought adulthood would look like. Didy father imagine himself becoming the person he is now? Did my mother imagine having children? Did either of them understand how much responsibility was waiting for them?

Probably not Nobody eeally does. That is the strange thing about growing older. We see our parents as if they arrived in the would already knowing how to be parents. As children. We assume they have always been adults.

We don't imagine them being confused. We don't imagine them being afraid We don't imagine them having their own failures, disappolntments, friendships, ambitions, or versions of themselves that existed before the family.

And then one day you see an old photograph. Suddenly, the person you have known your entire life becomes a stranger for a moment

I looked at the photograph and wondered what happened to those two people . Where did their younger selves go?,

Did they disappear? Or are they still somewhere inside the people sitting in front of me now? Maybe growing older isn't just watching ourselves change. Maybe it is slowly discovering that everyone we love has been changing too

My parents are getting older. That thought feels uncomfortable in a way. I don't know how to explain. There are things I still assume I'll have time to ask them. Stories I haven't heard. Questions I never thought to ask.

And perhaps one day, I will wish I had looked beyond the word parent and tried to understand the people underneath it. I spent so much of my childhood thinking they were simply my parents. I forgot they had entire lives before I existed.