My parents celebrated an anniversary recently. Sixty-four years of marriage. A small Catholic ceremony in a small church—just a year after they met—on a small street where proximity sometimes rearranges the future.

Dad had been seeing another young woman and invited her for a big night out: the premiere of West Side Story at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. It’s enough to make a farm boy from North Dakota feel like he’s starring in his own musical. But she canceled. (If this were a movie, that’s the moment the soundtrack would go plink—fate clearing its throat.)

The owner of the boarding house where he lived suggested he ask the girl next door. Literally next door.

Mom had just moved in with her Aunt Crystal—not an actual aunt, but my grandmother’s best friend and the woman my mom was named after.

He asked. She said yes. And then there they were. My 18-year-old mom in a wedding dress that highlighted her 18-inch waist, and my dad in his pompadour leaning in for a kiss—seemingly unaware of his own casual handsomeness.

Once, on their anniversary, I found myself sharing a one-room cabin in Yellowstone with my parents. I was in high school but knew anniversaries were a couple thing, not a couple-and-their-kid thing. “I’ll disappear for a while,” I offered. “Go for a long hike. Hang out at the lodge.”

Mom laughed and gave Dad’s hand a squeeze. “Oh, Honey, we’ve been married a long time. You can just walk around the cabin.”

My parents have only ever shared one regret about our family: that they didn’t have more kids.

They were good at kids. Not just their own. I’ve stopped being surprised when someone I’m just meeting casually refers to my parents as Mom and Dad — only to learn that, in some gentle, unassuming way, my parents had parented them too.

They were also good at bickering, though they’ve largely lost their knack for it over the years. These days they’re more like an extension of each other – sometimes literally. When one is out of sight, the other scans the room for them.

Whether it’s Mom in my passenger seat or Dad, one of them inevitably reaches into the back seat, a silent check-in.

You still there?

If a memory disappears for one, the other colors in the blank spot. Together, they reconstruct a perfectly rational world.

We’ve started a little ritual. After Dad shaves, I ask Mom to inspect the work. Partly because it seems important that he remember why he shaves: Mom has never liked kissing facial hair. If it were up to him, he’d grow a beard.

But mostly because I enjoy the theater of it. Mom gamely stops whatever she’s doing and walks over to the freshly shaven Dad. She places both hands on his face and then neck, conducting a careful inspection.

And every single time, something shifts.

A soft smile appears. Her whole face seems to remember something.

Not a shave.

Something else.

Maybe every version of him she’s ever loved.

Cue music.

Eventually she remembers the assignment and delivers her verdict.

I never tire of it.

My dad had a minor stroke a little over a week ago.

Dad—who has never really had anything seriously wrong with his farm-bred body—is, for the first time, in a hospital bed.

Mom gently strokes his face with both hands and kisses him.

Shaved or not.

Later, without thinking, he reaches for her in the chair next to his bed.

Sixty-four years later, they’re still checking:

You still there?

There is no touch like my mom’s. You may think your mom’s touch is the best—I don’t mean to be unkind, but you’re wrong. If you have ever had the pleasure of holding my mom’s hand, or having her stroke your back, or your hair, or your face, you know.

Growing up, I’d whip off my socks and put my feet in my mom’s lap and, without a word, she’d begin lightly brushing her fingers from my toes to my heel, to my delight. “I have no idea how you tolerate this,” she’d say. “I hate having my feet touched.”

The other night, Mom was restless and exhausted at the same time. Finally, she sat down on the bed at my promise of a foot massage—which felt odd to even offer her. “Tom,” she said after a few minutes, “have you ever had your feet massaged? It’s amazing! Sweetpea, you’re so good at this. I may want this every day.”

2025 marked the 20-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. My brother Tom sent a small blurb from the Homer News looking back at the local coverage from that time—coverage that featured my dad. He was a chaplain who’d volunteered with the Red Cross and gone down after the storm to help.

Helping. That’s kind of his thing.

I remember talking to him when he came back from New Orleans. He hadn’t slept much. He’d been stationed in a massive sports arena turned shelter—hundreds of cots, hundreds of people, all of them carrying some version of loss: homes, belongings, livelihoods, pets. Some had lost so, so much more.

It was loud all night. Hot. Smelly. But that’s not why he couldn’t sleep. There was too much to do. So many people in need—victims, first responders, other volunteers running on fumes and determination.

If there’s work to do, my dad does it.

Once he built parallel bars for a friend of mine who needed them for at-home physical therapy after a neurological diagnosis—and couldn’t afford them. He measured, researched, designed, and custom-built them. Then he and my mom drove to Los Angeles to deliver them. He’d never met her, but she needed help. He could help. So. Done.

There were the hitchhikers he picked up over the years—occasionally bringing them home for a meal, sometimes for a night, once for six months so Stan could get back on his feet.

There was a WWII veteran—dying in the hospital where he chaplain’d—she wanted to ride on a motorcycle again. My dad found someone with a bike and a sidecar. Of course he did.

And then—when my brother lost his wife, with three boys still at home—he and Mom moved from California to Homer, Alaska. They bought a bed-and-breakfast a short walk, down a dirt path, from the boys’ school.

The kind of path you don’t think much about until it becomes the path to comfort and unconditional love. Devion, Camron, and Collin walked it almost every day toward grandparents who were now, very decisively, there.

For as long as I can remember and to this day, no matter what we’re talking about, Dad will say, “So what’s going on? Do you need prayer for anything?” Almost no matter what I say, he answers, “Well, let’s pray about it,” and reaches out his hands to take mine.

It helps.

My parents now live in a retirement community whose residents range from independent to memory care. There is no shortage of people who need helping. I walked in the other day and found Mom and Dad praying for another resident.

Still at it.

I’m thinking I may rent my mom out as one of those robo‑vacuums. Drop her off at a house, pick her up an hour or two later — along with a hefty fee, obviously. Floors gleaming. Counters shining. Maybe even a complimentary kitchen reorganization (which, let’s face it, is going to happen anyway). Though I’ll need to add a disclaimer: When in cleaning mode, do not attempt to interrupt. It will only make her stronger.

She’s always liked straightening up. The results anyway. Our house growing up was always neat — not fussy, not perfect — but the kind of house that, no matter when you stopped by, felt like a hug when you walked in. Lived‑in, but tidy. Lovely. Ready.

She always had enough on hand to offer a cool drink while you visited in the garden. A meal if you wanted to stay. A bed if you needed one.

But lately, her need to clean has increased. A drive (hyperdrive, some days) to bring order to things, in a world that increasingly needs it.

“I can’t help it,” she said to me not that long ago. “It’s a compulsion.” And we both burst out laughing.

Because it was funny. And also because it was true.

And then she reached over and flicked a crumb off the table between us. And then leaned over and picked it up off the floor.

Mom, Dad, I—along with anyone I can drag along—spend a great deal of time in the Grand Forest. Grand Forest West, to be specific. I have no idea what goes on over in Grand Forest East, but we’re having none of it.

Grand Forest West is our happy place. It’s close to where Mom and Dad live and is, as advertised, grand. Giant evergreens. Eye level Ferns. Wildflowers. The works.

We practice strength and balance as we navigate the well‑groomed trails—hills, rocks, tree roots, all part of the deal. It’s where Mom prunes the forest (lightly, unofficially) or gathers greenery for a makeshift bouquet. It’s where Dad stops to marvel—at the trees, their height, their almost up‑to‑the‑sky straightness—and where we make up stories about why some of them bend, choosing, for reasons of their own, to grow off in a different direction.

And lately, it’s where I’ve been trying to get Dad used to walking poles. I point out that his strapping grandson Collin swears by them. I casually remind him that the last time we talked to his cousin Sherman, Dad’s same age – 92- he said ‘I’m doing great. Except that when I stand in one place, I fall over, so I use a cane.’ I take a pole to model. Dad takes the other—for a while. Not before offering it to Mom, of course. Never missing an opportunity to share his bounty.

So I give mine to Mom instead (Dad is, after all, the intended target), and before long he’s twirling his pole like a baton or using it to inspect a mushroom on a tree trunk.

Meanwhile, Mom—decidedly not the intended target—is out ahead, calling back over her shoulder: she likes the walking pole. Matter of fact. It’s helpful. It makes her feel more stable.

…win?

The hospital in Big Bear felt closed. Like we’d snuck into a large department store after hours—lights dimmed, hallways mostly quiet. The hospital was on strike, but Camron was ready for life, and we were ready for Camron.

So there we were—me, Mom, Dad—holding Tom’s firstborn, the first one we met at the very beginning. Sherry came into our lives with four kids already mid-story, and I don’t think we understood yet that they were ours to love.

We must have looked trustworthy that night. Or at least well-intentioned. Because there we stood, within moments of his big entry, holding this shiny, brand-new human in a darkened corner of a hallway. Left to stare. And wonder.

Knowing him now, I think we could have dropped him on the linoleum floor, and he would have walked it off—but he had a whole larger-than-life, lionhearted, adrenaline-fueled adventure ahead of him, so it’s best we didn’t.

Camron wasn’t just a beautiful new baby. He was a prism—when the light hit him just right, all rainbowy, we saw what our family could be. What our family now was. We fell in love. The three of us. With all of them.

What is it about posing game elders in hip hop poses?
I don’t know.
It shouldn’t work. They shouldn’t be this good at it.
It definitely shouldn’t be their idea of fun.
And yet—

Mom has always—correction, almost always—loved Tom (Jr., that is)’s particular brand of irreverence. His humor. The way he seems to know, instinctively, exactly how far he can go and then… goes just a little bit farther. He holds the key to her heart and her laugh. He’s relentless, and she loves it.

When she’s had enough, she reaches out and takes a swipe at him—not connecting with anything, mostly because she’s already doubled over laughing. It’s part reflex, part performance, part pure delight. And he just keeps going.

When he’s here, everything feels a little more complete. Our little nuclear family is united. Lighter, too. We feel it—we all do—that sense of being full up on something good.

And then he goes back to Alaska. And things don’t exactly dim, but they quiet. Just a notch. Maybe two. So we watch. We watch the videos. We scroll through the pictures. Again and again. Reliving the moments as they unfold in small rectangles of light. And I watch them—my mom, my dad—as they watch. The way their eyes soften. The way a smile finds its way to their mouths, like it remembers the path. Even the memory brings the joy, one step removed.