Sometimes -
we forget.
About the people whom we birthed from, about the stories that ran before ours. About the people who stroked our heads, and whispered words of love into our ears, about the people who wiped the ketchup from our mouths, the people who tucked us in at night.
What can I say about parents that hasn't been said before - they nag, they embarrass, they do lame things, they tell terribly corny jokes, they scold, they hit, they look after us.
Yet for all the love they show us, they receive hardly any in return, just some shy hugs, some reluctant pecks on the cheeks from daughters who flock off to their friends moments later, for a fancy shopping spree or to enjoy a chick flick onscreen.
Imagine - our fathers and our mothers, these people whose blood runs through our veins, men and women who dash their unworthy children with blessings of love, only to have their love turned away in cold rejection as they watch their offspring grow into adulthood, shedding the need for parents, starving for their own independence.
Parents, naggy and a tad too serious, who tells us the same old stories of their friends and families, who recycle the same bad jokes, who smile painfully as they watch their child turn their back on them and enter the world as an adult. Parents, who sacrificed everything for us ever since we were born, forgoing their dreams to look after us, forsaking some friendships and forgetting some birthdays, inadvertently losing friends along the way.
Yet they still bulldozed fearlessly on, protecting their children as best as they could, showering their children with as much love as they could muster, while they were still around.
What would life be like without them? Our humble angels in disguise, whom we take for granted and throw away like dirty rags once teenagehood claims our lives. The parents who cry behind closed doors for the children whom they love so much, the very people who rejected them - their children, who unconsciously hold their parents' hearts in their hands.
Do they really deserve it? Does anyone? A harsh word, a testy retort - in the end, it all boils down to nothing at all.
An empty world would ravage our lives, a cold darkness that would envelope our frail hearts, in the absence of the two greatest people on earth - our parents.
Our parents, who fret about us all day, with fingernails chewed down to the bone. It was our parents, who had taught us our first steps, our first alphabets, our first numbers. Our parents who scold and hit us, with a splintering heart behind a snarling, furious mask. Our parents, who cry with us, as they guide us through our growing pains, helping us through heartbreaks and miserable failures, while the rest of the world ignores you so blatantly.
Our parents, whose greatness will forever be unparalled, for the things they do for us, for the things they sacrifice for us, for the thoughts they have about us, for every minute of every day.
And for the amazing love they give us, as they lead us on through the potholed streets of life.