All parents are heroes, and these are mine

Meet my parents, Gjin and Angjelina.

Let me tell you a story of these two lovely humans.

They married in 1983, four years after my dad saw my mom in a family event and straight-up knew she was the one.

Throughout the 80s, they had three children — my sister and my two brothers. Six years after my second brother, they had me — kind of a nice surprise, one would say…

My dad worked in a gun factory while my mom took care of the house and the children — an ordinary young couple navigating a new life.

At the end of the 90s, the war started in Kosovo, and my dad lost his job. Although they had the option to leave, they decided to stay in Kosovo. They couldn’t leave my grandparents behind, hoping and praying for survival.

Can you imagine the fear of a young couple with four children living through that?

Luckily we survived, though we were left with a destroyed country, with no jobs or prosperity. After 17 years of marriage and four children, they had to start their life from zero again.

Literally from zero!

My parents started a small farm back home, so we could have some income. I remember them saying: we have nothing and nowhere to start, but we need to do something.

We started producing our own food and sold what we didn’t need. Cheese, milk, yogurt, potatoes, meat, you name it — almost every kind of homemade food.

It was a family effort, and all of us put in the work and had a role. That’s how both my brother and I paid for our university.

You went to university only if you studied hard in my house. My parents could not support us to go and try whether we like a degree.

Fast-forward to today; I am happy to see how in peace they are with four children and seven grandchildren living in four different countries.

These two turned a hard life into a hope for my siblings and me.

They turned a mess into order.

All parents are heroes, and these are mine.