What is something you used to believe as a kid
that seems ridiculous now?
When I was a child, I believed that adults knew what they were doing.
Adults seemed to know how life worked. They knew how money worked, what to do when something broke, and how to respond when something went wrong. They seemed calm, capable, and certain.
My father was an engineer, so that belief came easily. We were one of the first families in our street to have a television, and he built it. I remember him inviting the neighbours in to listen to the stereo play, which he had also built. He put extensions on both of the houses we lived in as the family grew. A lot of the work was done by him, with the growing tribe of children helping where we could. As a child, I assumed he knew how to do everything.
My mother was a homemaker, and she seemed to know how to keep the family ticking along. Meals appeared. Clothes were washed. Children were organised. Life had rhythm and order. I did not understand then how much work, patience, and sacrifice sat behind that ordinary stability.
About ten years ago, my mother reflected on her life and wrote:
“As the years pass, you start to see the whole picture. You see how much it meant to have made that vow and stuck to it—not just in the good times, but in the ordinary ones. To have someone by your side, year after year. To look back and say, we did that – together.”
That last sentence stays with me: we did that – together.
As a child, I thought my parents’ life was built on certainty. Now I realise it was built on faithfulness. They were not people who knew everything. They were people who kept going. They were winging it, as most adults are, but they were winging it with grace, humility, and determination.
My mother turned ninety-two last week. In the same week, she went into palliative care. She is increasingly frail and fading fast.
She is also deeply loved. She is the most visited person in the nursing home. My father goes every day and sits with her. After all these years, he is still beside her. In some ways, this is the final expression of the vow she wrote about: not just in the good times, but in the ordinary ones, and now in the hardest ones.
I used to think adulthood meant knowing what to do. Now I think it means doing your best when you don’t know, and staying faithful long enough for love to become a legacy.
The Afterword 
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