You did good, guys.

It is 2am in the morning, and I am getting emotional while writing about my parents.

No worries, they are both here. I can call them tomorrow, hear their voices, catch up on their news, and then carry on talking even when there is nothing particularly important left to say. That alone, feels like a very good reason to write this tonight.

01 / YOUR FIRST LITTLE TROUBLEMAKER

There are things I have wanted to tell them for a while. I do tell them I love them. I’d like to think that I show it too. Perhaps not as often as I would like. Perhaps I leave some things unspoken because we have known each other for an entire lifetime, and it is easy to assume that they already know. But tonight, I want to say them a little more clearly.

Mum, Dad… you did good.

You did pretty well with your first little troublemaker.

And I know I did not always make it easy for you. I was a bit of a little shit. Stubborn, contrary, a proper handful, (τζαναμπέτης) as we would say back in the village. I had opinions. I had determination. And, naturally, I knew considerably more than I actually knew. You had 3 children, and you were trying to figure out each one of us as you went along.

There was a lot of talking in my childhood. Guidance, lectures, arguments, disagreements. I did get scolded and slapped around too, quite a few times (most of them very well deserved), and that is part of our history as well. I do not want to turn my childhood into some sanitized version of itself, or write about you as though you were two people who never made a mistake. I love you as the people you are. And today, I can look back, understand more than I understood then, and recognize how much (love) you gave me.

You supported me where it mattered. You nudged me towards things I might never have had the courage to try on my own. You helped me believe in myself. Believe that I could stand on my own two feet and make something out of this fucking life.

I hope I have surprised you a few times along the way. Mostly in a good way.

Looking through these photographs, I see myself as a little boy, and the two of you so much younger. Then I see myself a little older, and older again. So many years gathered together in a handful of pictures. Your child, growing up, leaving home, building a life, and eventually becoming a father himself.

02 / THOSE TWO NUMBERS ON MY PHONE

I do not remember ever taking your love or your support for granted. I became independent relatively early, and when I moved abroad, I understood even more clearly how much our conversations meant to me.

We talked a lot. About serious things, and about the most ordinary, everyday stuff.

I did not call because I was far away, or because I needed someone to talk to. I am quite comfortable on my own, you know that. I am fairly introverted, fairly self-sufficient. But I wanted to know how you were. I wanted to hear you. To tell you what had happened in my day, and listen to what had happened in yours.

I had begun to understand that our time together had limits. At some point, it occurred to me that those two numbers on my phone would not always have someone answering at the other end. And that thought made me want to call. To listen to the story that might not have been especially interesting. To make the time anyway.

I do not know whether there is ever such a thing as enough time with the people you love. God knows I’ve learned that the hard way. But I am grateful for all the time we spend and have spent together, whether in the same room, with a phone pressed to my ear or on a Skype call.

These days, I do not always manage it as often as I would like. Since Verena passed away, our communication has not always been what it used to be. Being a single dad is not the easiest thing in the world. Everyday life with Melina has a way of filling every available space. Now, I need to be there for her, as you once were for me. Some days are over before I have properly realized they have begun.

I think you understand that. You raised 3 children, after all. I have only one, although the circumstances are different.

But I do think of you. And just thinking about you makes me smile.

03 / DAD, I WAS LISTENING

Dad, from you I inherited the need to understand.

The rational thinking. The inclination towards numbers, mathematics, the natural sciences. The curiosity about how something works, and why. All that encyclopedic knowledge that could begin with an ordinary conversation and take us absolutely anywhere.

The man is a fucking scientist. What else can I say?

I often catch myself explaining something to Melina, and I remember you. We begin with a question, and suddenly I am analyzing, making connections, trying to give her an explanation that makes sense. Sometimes with the scientific terminology thrown in for good measure. And somewhere in the middle of it, I recognize your voice in my own.

I admire your intelligence. Your integrity as a person. Your persistence, your determination to succeed, and your ability to find solutions. We now live in a world that asks AI about absolutely everything, and there you are, sitting down and working it out for yourself.

You also taught me what professional integrity means. How to conduct myself properly at work. To take responsibility, make an effort, and respect the work I do.

I remember our conversations about the bank, about money, about all the financial things you would sit down and explain to me over the years. I soaked them up like a sponge. Admittedly, being a sponge, I also let a few things leak out here and there. But most of it stayed.

I do not remember (ever) sitting there thinking, “Will he finish already, so I can leave?” I was always curious to see where you were going with it. What I would learn this time. Which of our ancient Greek ancestors would suddenly make an appearance, and what he had apparently said about the matter under discussion.

Although, honestly, some of those sayings would have sounded better in Pontic Greek. “Ason temeteron” after all, right?

I do have one complaint.

I wish, back then ~ you know when ~ you had gone and gotten that guitar back. The one you lent someone, and they never returned.

You could have taught me to play the guitar too, Dad. I made my music after all though…

04 / MUM, YOUR LOVE MADE IT THIS FAR

Mum, from you I received so much love that I am still learning just how much there was.

You taught me to love myself. To love other people. To talk about what I feel, to explore it, to express it, to write it down. To be tender, and to let it show. You taught me how to treat girls, and how much the way you treat another person matters.

So much of my emotional world (if not all of it) comes from you.

Sometimes I think that, without knowing it, you were preparing me for parenthood long before I became a father. In the way you loved me, you were giving me something I would one day be able to give to someone else. My very own little human.

Because with Melina, love fills glasses, jugs, bottles. Entire swimming pools. And that’s because of you Mum.

I tell her all the time. And she tells me too. “I love you.” “You are the best dad in the whole wide world.” “I am going to miss you.” I have no idea how many times a day those words pass between us. I guess they must come from somewhere.

And then, there are our little kisses. We can be in different rooms, in completely different parts of the house, and suddenly you hear a “mwah, mwah” (flying kiss sound). Then the answer comes back from the other end.

Mwah, mwah. (flying kiss sound)

Our secret language. Along with German.

Your love is there in those little moments too, Mum. It made it all the way here. Into another home, another everyday life, into my child sending me kisses from the next room.

I do not know whether I would have had the same capacity to give so much if I had not first received it from you. All that love you gave me as your firstborn. Something I could take, make my own, and multiply so there would always be more to give.

It feels as though all those years were also preparing me for the life I have been living these past few years. All that practice for the effort of raising my little girl. And I hope I get to keep doing it for another 54 years.

I love you so much for that. And for so many other things I am struggling to fit into these words.

05 / LOVING HER AS TWO PEOPLE

Raising Melina helps me understand you guys better.

I see how much space one little person can take up inside you. How much you think, how hard you try, how often you question yourself. Whether you said the right thing. Whether you listened enough. Whether you gave her what she needed in that particular moment.

And the two of you did this with 3 children.

I have one, and some days she feels like an entire world. She is a force of nature…

With her, there is a little more love still. Because I love her as two people. I cannot replace her mum. But I do everything within my power to help her feel loved and held, to make sure she has as much love around her as I can possibly give.

And the lovely thing is that now she gives it back. Freely, constantly, in her own little ways. In words, in kisses, in those sounds traveling from room to room. There is so much love moving around this house.

Perhaps you recognize more of yourselves in her than I can see. Or something of yourselves in the way I speak to her. I am so deep inside our everyday life that I cannot always step far enough back to see it all clearly.

But I can see enough to tell you that what you gave me, stayed.

In the way I think. In the way I work. In the way I love my child. In the belief that even when life becomes difficult, I will find a way through. You showed me how to get up, after I fall. And to get up faster, every single time.

I know I might not say it very often. Sometimes it might not even show. But I am proud to be your son.

I hope you are proud of me too.

06 / YOU DID GOOD, GUYS

In fact, I have a feeling you stopped worrying (about me) quite so much or whether I would manage, a while ago. I mean that in the best possible way. As though you know by now that, somehow, I will land on my feet. I will work it all out.

Well, I had good teachers.

It is almost 4:00am now. I am looking at our photographs and smiling through the tears. I have grown up, become a father, lived through so many things, and I am still your little boy.