{ A Month of Thanks } My parents

How can I really thank the people who's love embrace was so powerful and magical that it spilled over into new life, my life?

How can I even begin to match up my experience of being loved by them with a language that makes sense?

I have never not known love or acceptance or delight or wonder within the kingdom of their love.

Every time that I slap my knee when retelling a story or laugh at my own joke, they are with me.

Whenever the birds nibble on my backyard offerings or sing on the wind, he is there.

When the lyrics to a song fly off of my lips and twirl around my children, she is there.

When the sunrise breaks open the sky and the light shatters the pink veil, the tear in my eye and the catch in my throat, all of it, I realize, is a learned response, having watched his very heart do the same.

And when I sit at my kitchen table, with my head in my hands and the sobs rolling over in waves, she is there, listening and understanding and just being.

Because
for me to be
is for them to be.

And perhaps the greatest way to offer my thanksgiving for the gift of them is to fully live into the person they have helped create.  Live... fully accepting all that I am, embracing all of my triumphs and failings and attempting to flesh out what they began...

Their fingerprints are all over me, tell tale evidence of the generosity of their souls.  May I never wash clean of the proof of them.