This post isn’t new. I wrote it a few years ago, hoping it would be tucked into the still-open wall of my parents’ home—a time capsule for some future residents to discover. I came across it again just now, right before heading over to my parents’ for dinner. I’ve been dwelling in so much discomfort and agony, and I want to rest here, in this memory, for a moment.

As an adult, I often end up at my parents' dinner table alone— a level of personal attention and focus that feels like a revelation as a middle child. When my girls are with their dad, I am usually eating grilled tri tip or salmon at the same table that has graced our family dining room for a lifetime. On these nights, I sit between my parents and become the monkey-in-the-middle of their volley of stories of years past. Stories of family friends and high school classes, Christmas mornings and depression-era soups, first dates and childhood adventures.

Sometimes I barely hear the stories themselves. It's hard to keep track of so many people I never knew, so many storylines that wriggle and bounce— a staccato of half-finished thoughts and fragmented anecdotes. They fill in the gaps with an unspoken understanding, a shared history woven tightly through decades of parallel experience. What I hear, more than the details, is a mirror of love— a plait of two lives intertwined in ways both ordinary and profound.

I think about my future. The stories I'll tell. The history I'll weave. It will never be as intricate and intertwined as my parents' story that began braiding together as early as their teens. My own history is less clear, less linear— but like theirs, it will be full of love.

One of the love stories I'll tell one day will be about them. It will be this.

Late fall of one year, my siblings and I received a group text from my parents that a gas leak behind the fireplace had led to an explosion that blew out half of one of the living room walls. The walls of the 1939 home were made of heavy plaster-- layers upon layers of material that imploded out into the living room where my parents were enjoying an evening fire.

Miraculously, the large mirror from the mantel and the painting behind my dad's favorite chair had simply fallen to the floor without breaking. The chair itself—his beloved "Papa chair"—had been impaled by flying plaster, its brown leather scratched by exploding bits of wall. Even more miraculously, my dad was not sitting in that chair, despite it being his usual station.

Instead, he'd been on the couch with my mom, safe from harm— because just moments before, she'd asked him to cuddle on the couch with her.

My siblings and I joke that love saved his life. Then the reality of that statement settled in.

I went to see my parents that night, grateful to live nearby for so many reasons, but in these kinds of moments especially. The firemen and worried neighbors had long since gone, but by 10 pm, the man from the gas company was still in the rubble of the living room, writing up his report.

It was then I watched how my parents' braid of love extends beyond the dining room table— it stretches outward, encompassing everyone around them. As the gas company worker scribbled notes amid the rubble, my parents asked about his long night of work, his military service, his favorite books, his long commute, his family. He shared more than anyone might expect in such a moment, drawn in by their warmth and genuine curiosity.

They rejected any notion of filing a claim against the gas company, choosing instead to take responsibility for what happened in their own home— not out of pride, but out of a quiet sense of fairness and accountability.

I saw their dignity, their kindness, their pure love. I saw how it ripples and folds, surrounding everyone near them. I saw it again when some childhood friends came to visit and swarmed into their kitchen and yard, seeking the parental love they were so dearly missing. I saw it when my mom lost her wedding ring, possibly down the drain and the city crew showed up, willing to rake the sewer grates to help her find it; my mom chatting with and charming every person involved. I saw it when they cared for the neighbors' dog again and again, while the family was away, grieving and overwhelmed.

It's not about the events themselves, but the spirit they bring to each encounter: an open heart, an enfolding, a welcoming.

There is no doubt in me that this same love is what prompted that evening's move from the Papa chair to the couch that night. It was their own love reflected back to them, weaving tighter when it mattered most. It was that ricochet, that braid continuing, an instinctive act of grace— love, radiant and unyielding, encompassing them too.

If there's something I can offer to this wall, to history, to the sharing of memories, to life itself, let it be this:

Here lived two people who loved each other deeply, for a lifetime. Their love started when they were young, and it grew and it grew for decades. It grew into a large family, an extended community, and a hub of comfort, until it became overflowing. One day, a small gesture of that love protected my dad, just as it has protected us all for a lifetime.

Rather than a story, it has become a legacy of love. May we be grateful always. May it spread. May we carry it with us across dinner tables for years and lifetimes to come.