“I remember he couldn’t run. But I didn’t think any dads could...

“I remember he couldn’t run. But I didn’t think any dads could run, so that didn’t seem abnormal to me. Then one morning we were at a school breakfast, and he fell over. And the next day we were shopping for canes. But even when he got the wheelchair, his MS never felt like a big part of our childhood. Our parents made sure of that. We still went to baseball games. And took a lot of vacations. And Dad did everything he could to be a normal dad. He set up a stand in the backyard so that he could throw baseballs to us. And when we went to the beach, he asked the lifeguards to drive him down to the ocean, just so he could get in the water. In our living room there was a framed picture of Mom and Dad at the beach. It was taken before the disease. They were so young. Dad was hugging Mom from behind, and they looked so relaxed. Like they were taking a breath together. I looked at that picture so much, because it’s a side of them I never really saw. All of their time was spent managing things: Dad managing his disease, Mom managing everything else. So much of the parenting and caretaking fell on her shoulders. I don’t remember them having many date nights. Or lighthearted moments together. They were always so tired from doing the things they had to do. Several years ago my dad retired to focus full time on his health. And recently he was able to build a completely wheelchair-accessible house. He’s managed to get back a lot of independence, which has taken pressure off Mom. And now they have a lot more time together. They’re working on their relationship. They’re going to therapy. They laugh a lot more. They’re even cuddling up on the couch to watch movies, which I had never seen before. This has been my favorite chapter of their lives. For their anniversary I made one of those cheesy music videos, with a montage of photos. I searched through all our old albums. And I discovered the old photo from the living room that I loved. But that isn’t how I chose to end the video. Because I also found one more picture from that same day, that I’d never seen before. It was the two of them, hand-in-hand, running on the beach.”