Coming home after a year of studying abroad felt like returning to a place where nothing had changed, yet everything somehow had.
My parents were so happy to have me back that they made all my favourite dishes. My mother sat beside me and fed me with her hands, just as she had when I was little.
After lunch, we gathered around old photo albums.
Page after page, we laughed at forgotten moments while my mother told stories from my childhood. She kept pointing at my pictures, saying how beautiful I had been as a little girl, and how everyone wanted to carry me in their arms. She would laugh while telling me that my father never liked sharing me with anyone. If visitors tried to hold me for too long, he would quietly take me back inside.
She always says my smile lit up their whole world.
And she still says I was my father’s greatest love.
He always made sure I was, literally, the princess of that house.
I was always waiting for him to return from work. I would cry when he left and run to him the moment he came back. Until I was two or three years old, I slept on his chest almost every night.
Even today, if someone asks me who my first love was…
my answer is still the same.
My father.
No matter what I ask of him, his answer has almost always been “yes.” He never made me feel like I had to earn his love. He simply gave it, quietly and completely. My parents, along with my sister and brother, built a home where we grew up feeling safe, loved, and strong from within.
Every time I look through those old photographs, I don’t just remember my childhood.
I remember what it felt like to be loved before I even knew what love meant.
And that is one of the greatest gifts my parents have ever given me.
