My parents met in May 1986; at that time, they were only 14 and 15 years old respectively. They started dating in September of the same year. Another month later, my mother turned 15.
She can no longer remember exactly what they did on their first date. She says it might have been watching a movie, or maybe just going out to have fun with some friends. But when she first saw my father—a quiet yet interesting boy—playing catch with his best friend across the street, while she was there helping to take care of the children, neither of them could have known the kind of journey they were about to embark on together.
This year, on the day before their official 30th anniversary, my twin brothers and I planned one of the best surprises of my adult life: a party attended by over 40 of their closest friends and family members.
They deserve to be celebrated.
My grandmother came all the way from Delaware to our hometown in Wychester County to help arrange this surprise. For months, she has been answering my anxious calls regarding table seating, table decorations, and cake flavors, while I’ve been trying to avoid my parents as much as possible at home. It’s no easy task to want to surprise someone who lives with you.
I quietly made invitations, created decorations, including cards with “Back in 1996” on each seat, and coordinated with suppliers and the restaurant to ensure that every detail was just right.
My heart was pounding with nervousness. I really hoped they would be completely stunned by it—they deserved it. Since I had sent over the decorations in advance, I left the final arrangements to my grandmother and my best friend since kindergarten; I entrusted her with the task of turning my vision into reality.
My brother and his girlfriend need a sufficiently credible reason to be able to come home from Austin over the weekend. He told their parents that they would be coming back to celebrate their pearl wedding anniversary, which sounds reasonable before an important business trip.
He told a little lie. There was no business trip at all.
We gave them a surprise.
A few weeks before they arrived, my brother “reserved” a table at our favorite restaurant – where he used to work in high school – for six people on June 7th. We were going to have a belated lunch with our partners to celebrate our parents’ anniversary. Since we would all be together, I also convinced them that we should take a family photo. My plan was very well thought out.
That afternoon, my boyfriend and I left home first, heading to a restaurant just a few minutes away, while leaving my brother to complete the most crucial task: to accompany my parents into the restaurant without letting them notice the familiar vehicles belonging to friends and family in the parking lot.
They turned the corner, expecting to sit at a six-person table, only to hear the people they loved the most in the room shouting in unison, "Surprise!"
They were stunned.
They shuttled back and forth between the tables, hugging, laughing, exchanging greetings, reminiscing about the past, and also admiring several photo display boards made by their grandmother, which recorded with static images the little moments of their love story spanning decades.
For me, this process, this surprise, and the aftertaste that follows—months later it is still a topic of conversation at the dinner table, and whenever they talk about that day, their faces are still filled with that joy and affection—is a kind of happiness in itself. This makes me incredibly happy.
This joy has continued throughout our conversations, in the way my mother places photo displays in every corner of our home, and also in the cake table decorations hanging above the piano. Those objects scattered throughout our home that day have become a reminder: our parents are not just the ones who raised us; they too have their own stories, memories, and milestones in life, and they deserve to be celebrated as well.
As we celebrate a milestone in their marriage—a marriage that has lasted longer than the 25 years I have been in this world—I can’t help but wonder what kind of lives they led before they became my parents.
Before my twin brothers and I were born in the year 2000, they had already lived together for many years. They were once teenagers, friends, lovers, and later became husband and wife. They have their own memories and private jokes, experiences of loss and milestones, dreams, and disappointments.
Their lives do not stop just because they become parents.
They are still living, experiencing, learning, and loving, just like my brother and I, experiencing loss for the first time in the early stages of adulthood.
Essay
Parenting
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