The long days are now

Before my parents arrived, I told my friends I was nervous. About the visit, about our dynamic – all the history that comes with being someone’s daughter. One friend said: “Maybe you can learn something from them.”

My first instinct was resistance. I’m tired of learning righ now. But that’s life, isn’t it? And the truth is – I’m not actually tired of it. I want to keep learning, reflecting, growing. So I decided to stay open.

What I didn’t know yet was what they were about to teach me.

My mother mentioned it almost in passing. She said my grandfather used to say it at every doctor’s appointment, after every diagnosis: “We’re too late again.” As if life were always one step ahead. As if he were always arriving just after it had moved on.

I kept thinking about that image. Running after life, reaching for it – and just as your fingers close around it, it dissolves. Slips away. Moves on.

Is it even possible to catch it? Or is the catching not the point at all?

We had four beautiful days together. It was good to have them here, in my city, in the life I’ve built. I’m grateful for the intensity of it – the long conversations, the friction, the quiet moments where I could see how much we’ve all grown. How that growth has changed something between us. For the better.

I’ll carry all of it with me. Every coffee. Swimming in the Atlantic together. Seeing the pride in their eyes – their ability to find so much joy in small things. They have always given me a home. They still do. Whether as a place or as a feeling. And somewhere along the way, without making a big thing of it, they taught me how to be a good home to myself.

The summer solstice fell right in the middle of those four days.

The longest light of the year. And something about that felt exactly right – because these days were long and full in every sense. No rushing. No arriving too late. Just the longest light, and us in it.

The long days are now. Life is now.

Not later. Not once things settle. Not when the timing is better or the fear is smaller.

Now.

I understand that feeling of missing out life – I’ve felt it too. But sitting here, in the middle of these four days, in the longest light of the year, I didn’t feel too late. I felt exactly on time. Exactly where I was supposed to be.

The grandfather’s phrase, the friend’s words, the visit – together they moved something in me. Made me think about love. About what it asks, and what it quietly gives back.

Maybe it’s about learning to see the bigger picture. About rising above certain moments when you know your deeper why?

Maybe it’s about the fact that you don’t always need to forgive to move forward – but you do need to find peace within yourself?

That connection is possible, even after pain? Even after hurting each other?

That respect is everything – in romantic love, in family, in any human relationship at all?

That genuine interest in yourself makes it easier to be genuinely interested in others?

That it takes two. Always.

That conflict and pain are part of it – but how we meet them is our choice.

And above all: that love is stronger than all of it. That it wins, in the end.

That gives me hope.