Try to remember your parents,
when you were young and growing.
Remember how old they seemed to be?
Sometimes they seemed all knowing!
Of course when we were growing teens,
and thought we knew it all,
We didn’t know that yet to come,
we’d make mistakes and fall.
All through these years we felt so smart,
at least till we were forty.
Our parents were always the “older folks”
with graying hair and stomachs quite portly.
Look back when you’ve turned sixty,
look back at when you were ten,
Just do the math – and see how old they were.
Can you see how young they were then?
It came as quite a shock to me,
as I looked back through the past.
Just how young my parents were,
how they’d worked to make love last.
Not yet thirty when I was ten,
they seemed to be much o9lder.
When I was thirty I felt so young,
and I’d learned to be much bolder.
When I was forty, I owned the world;
I was in the prime of life!
But when my parents were that age,
they seemed old and still battling strife.
This year, in my late sixties, I see,
a child’s parent seems lost in the past.
But looking back from a different view,
we’re amazed how they’ve made things to last.
As I look back now at my parents lives,
I realize how much they’ve done.
I contemplate this view of them,
and the battles they have won.
I’m still not finding quite the words,
to say what’s entwined in my heart.
I’ll ponder on this intriguing “twist”
until understanding, the truth can impart.
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