The adults who drove you everywhere were giving you hours of their lives. That’s what love costs.

A lot of care arrives as logistics. Driving, waiting in a parking lot, rearranging a shift, sitting through something boring because you were in it: none of it announces itself as affection, so it goes unregistered for years. The currency is time, and nobody gets more of it. That is the actual price, paid quietly and usually without thanks.

Say thank you for a specific trip this week, not in general. Particulars land differently than a blanket word. And when you can, start paying some of it back: a ride for a sibling, an errand nobody asked you to run.