The Time We Never Gave Them

When parents stop listening, children find their answers elsewhere, and not always in the right places.

- Ikkz Ikbal

In the old houses of Kashmir, the ones with carved windows and wooden eaves sagging under the weight of snow, time used to move slowly.

Grandparents would sit on creaking verandas, telling stories that stretched across decades. Mothers would fold the day into soft bundles: quilts, bread, hand-stitched sweaters. Fathers would return from the fields with mud on their boots and a pocketful of advice.

A child, in such a house, did not need to search for company. Love was close. It lived in glances and in the slow rituals of daily life.

Now the houses are busier. There are phones ringing in every room. There are screens flickering late into the night. The stories are shorter, if told at all.

And the children are growing up learning how to wait.

It isn’t that parents have stopped loving their children. The love is there, tucked behind tired eyes and unfinished work. But a love that does not arrive on time can begin to feel far away.

There are gifts on birthdays, chocolates after long absences, and promises that pile up like unopened letters. But none of them sit in the empty chair where a parent was supposed to be.