“The trouble with having a family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of parenthood.”
Robert Breault
Our house has a door that sticks.
Not always, but that’s part of the charm-slash-chaos.
Some months, it closes with a satisfying click, like a well-behaved door in a well-adjusted home. Other months, it behaves more like performance art. You tug it closed and it stops an inch short of the frame, sulking. You pull again, and it just…stands there. A door with doubts.
When that happens, there’s a move we all know—part muscle memory, part magic spell. You lean your hip into the frame just so, angle the knob, and give it a firm-but-loving shove. It’s not violent. It’s more like coaxing. And eventually, the door gives in with a soft, splintery groan, the sound of wood remembering how it fits.
We were going to fix it. Of course we were. I even Googled a few things, which in our household is the emotional equivalent of calling a contractor. But we never did. The seasons changed, the wood shifted back, and the urgency faded. Now it only acts up sometimes—just enough to remind us we’ve been here a while. Long enough to know how the house moves.
There are things in life you live with not because you’ve given up, but because you’ve adapted. Things that don’t always work the way they should, but still work. Things you learn, over time, how to move through.
Like a door.
Like a house.
Like each other.
Every summer, we take a trip to a resort down in the Texas Hill Country. It’s part spa, part state fair—but it checks all the boxes: lazy river, waterslides, suspiciously damp hallways, and the subtle smell of chlorine baked into every surface.
When the kids were little, it was an all-hands-on-deck kind of vacation.
They couldn’t swim. They wore life vests shaped like sea creatures and clung to us like barnacles. Their favorite thing was asking to go down slides they were absolutely too small for and then immediately regretting it halfway down.
We were lifeguards. Snack distributors. Human sunscreen stations. The kinds of parents who walked around carrying goggles, towels, and half-eaten chicken tenders with no memory of how any of them got into our hands.
But now we’re traveling with teenagers.
Teenagers are funny. You pack for them, pay for them, and then barely see them.
This year, we brought one of their friends along. Which meant, of course, that we saw them even less. They’d surface for dinner, maybe. A brief appearance at breakfast. Then they’d vanish back into the swirling, semi-supervised freedom of adolescence and a resort wristband.
At first, Shelley was the one who felt it. The stillness. The quiet. The strange, sudden absence of small hands grabbing at ours. I, of course, suggested that this could be a wonderful opportunity to nap and eat things while they were still hot. Shelley gave me a look that said: I miss them. And if you say anything stupid right now, I will also miss you.
We had a wonderful time. We lounged. We floated. We went to dinner like people who had made reservations instead of promises to clean up spills. But every so often, I’d catch myself scanning the crowd, expecting to see two little heads bobbing above the water, calling for me. Needing me.
Instead, they were off somewhere else. Confident. Independent. Towel-less, probably.
I used to think things like that needed to be fixed. That growing up meant staying close. That if they pulled away, I should pull harder.
But the truth is, we all shift. With time. With growth. With sunscreen that no one wants to reapply.
Some days I move through the world smoothly—locking into place, saying the right things, remembering to defrost the chicken.
Other days, I’m that door.
Resistant. A little swollen from something I can’t name. Requiring patience, maybe a hip-check, maybe a snack.
And maybe the point was never to stay perfectly aligned—but to keep showing up when things don’t quite fit.
There are some half-primed spots on our walls that have been waiting for paint since last fall. A drawer in the kitchen that only closes if you whisper something encouraging. A floor lamp that flickers like a disco ball for no reason other than its own personal drama.
We used to think we’d fix all of it. Now I’m not so sure.
Because here’s what I’ve learned: some things don’t need to be fixed. They just need to be known.
That’s how you learn a house. And maybe, over time, it’s how you learn yourself. Your partner. Your kids. Not by perfecting them. But by staying long enough to memorize the quirks.
To know where things stick.
To know how to open them, anyway.
The boys will come back, eventually. Not all the way—just enough. Enough to sit at the kitchen counter again. Enough to ask what we’re doing this weekend. Enough to open the door with the exact rhythm we’ve all learned, and walk back in like it’s nothing.
And I’ll be here.
A little older. A little uneven.
Still shifting with the seasons.
Still standing.
