For years, I thought I’d made peace with the past. But the look on my parents’ faces when they showed up at my front door—a door they never expected I’d own—showed me that old wounds don’t close so easily. Especially when you’re the son who didn’t follow their plan. I never thought I’d see them again. After seventeen years, I’d accepted that I was nothing more than a disappointment they left behind.

But when my parents stood on the front step of my house last Friday, their eyes scanning the place like they’d walked up to the wrong door, I realized things were about to get interesting. Let’s rewind to when I was seventeen, back when I told my parents that I wouldn’t be going to med school. “You’re what?” my mother whispered, as if I’d just confessed a crime. “I’m not going to be a doctor,” I said again, my voice firmer this time, though I could feel my heart pounding. “I want to pursue acting…and maybe start a business.” I’d spent months working up the courage to say it out loud. My father scoffed, throwing up his hands. “Acting? Business? You think this is some kind of joke? We’re doctors, son. It’s in our blood. It’s who we are.”