Generations Poem by Starfish ZA

There was a time
when growing old did not mean growing distant.

When the road back home was travelled without much thought,
when Sunday had a familiar table,
and family simply seemed to find its way
back to one another.

We watched our parents grow older in small ways-
a slower step, a familiar story told once more,
a little more time taken over ordinary things.
And still, they were simply Mum and Dad.

They remained woven into our lives,
not through grand gestures or special days,
but through the quiet comfort of being there,
in a hundred small and ordinary ways.

Perhaps that is what I remember most:
how little thought we gave to being near,
how naturally one life touched another,
and how certain it felt, year after year.

And then, almost without noticing,
the generations quietly changed their place.
The children grew into lives of their own,
and time began to quicken its pace.

Homes grew further, days grew fuller,
and weeks somehow slipped into years;
not through forgetting, not through less loving,
only life carrying us quietly on.

We understand more than they may ever know,
for once we too had places to be;
yet somehow our parents remained close beside us,
still part of the life we were learning to be.

And now there are quieter moments
when someone comes gently to mind-
a story you know would make them laugh,
a memory the years left behind.

You think how lovely it would be to hear them,
to share something foolish or small;
and more often than not it is still the parent
who sends the message, who makes the call.

Not to measure affection in minutes,
nor count who remembered or when,
but simply because love keeps reaching
for those it has loved through the years in between.

Perhaps that is the melancholy of generations:
the love remains, though the days move apart;
the voices are heard a little less often,
but never grow quiet within the heart.

For parents remember the everyday closeness,
the laughter, the noise, the coming and going;
and somewhere beneath all the years that have passed,
that old sense of family remains, softly knowing.

We do not ask for yesterday back,
nor for lives to be other than they are today.
We only sometimes miss the easy closeness
that time, without meaning to, carried away.

A voice on the phone can bring it back briefly,
a visit can soften the spaces between;
and suddenly years seem to fold into nothing,
and home, for a moment, is somewhere we've been.

Perhaps this is simply the way of generations:
we hold, we let go, yet the love carries on.
The children move forward, as children will do,
while parents hold gently the years that have gone.

And still there is comfort in knowing
that no matter how far our lives roam,
somewhere beneath all the distance and growing,
a part of us always remembers home.
So, when a familiar voice comes unexpectedly
and finds us across all the distance between,
perhaps that is all we were hoping to feel

not a return to the past,
only the gentle reminder
that we still have a place
in each other's heart.