My parents are getting older, and I don’t have kids. It’s hard seeing them age without knowing what my future holds, but I’m learning to stay present.

• At 38, my career took me far away from my family, but Northern California has truly become home.
• At my father’s 80th birthday celebration, seeing how much my parents had aged was tough for me.

I grew up in The Hague, in the Netherlands, with dual citizenship in the United States. In the Netherlands, people are known for being direct. Often, when they caught on to the age difference between my siblings and I, they’d ask, “Were you an accident?” I was not.

After several losses in our extended family in rapid succession, my parents felt the urge to create more life amid their grief. So, I came along; but this also made me what the Dutch would call a late arrival, or a “nakomertje,” and meant my parents were a bit older than those of my friends. On a recent family trip, I started ruminating on what it meant to have older parents — especially when I don’t have kids of my own.

My career took me far from home — and far from my family

After I graduated, I took a journalism job in the Bay Area. I didn’t intend to move far away from home for the long haul — but 12 years in, Northern California has become home. I’m privileged to have lived two lives on two different continents and still be able to travel between both when I can. This past summer, my family and I gathered to celebrate my dad’s upcoming 80th birthday. My parents rented an Airbnb in a quaint Dutch village where we rode bikes through the woods.

The house we stayed in used to belong to the town’s pastor and it’s next door to his old church, where today, the bells still ring. Every half hour, the clock chimes with its reminders of the passage of minutes turned to hours turned to days. After the first couple of nights, I found myself wondering, “Are we running out of time?”

I know I’m not the only one who struggles to watch their parents age, yet the change is more obvious when in-person visits are less common. When seeing heads full of silver hair or observing their gait and noticing how they look less stable on their feet, it’s easy to dwell on how much is already behind us.

But one night before dinner, I suddenly remembered these lyrics from Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem:” “Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” His advice made the regular church bells sound a little sweeter. No, I can’t go back to pick alternative routes that will magically provide the perfect number of hours with my mom and my dad, but I can appreciate the time I do have left with them.

Having my own children has never been a priority, but soon, the decision might be made for me

Back at my parents’ place before my flight home, I noticed them reading stories to their grandchildren. My siblings and I watched as the kids received our parents’ love and attention. Between this birthday trip for my father and with my own birthday approaching next month — I’ll be 38 — I’ve been thinking about family even more than usual. My parents were 40 and 42 when I was born, and my siblings are seven and nine years older than me, respectively. At 38, I’ve never been married, but my siblings have taken more traditional routes; they both have the house, the marriage, and the baby carriage.

Even though I love being a daughter and an aunt, children haven’t been top of mind or top of heart for me. However, with my fertility window closing, I’m aware the timeline for deciding — at least about giving birth — is closing in on me.

I’ve started picturing myself meeting someone with children so I could still create a space for family and nurturance. At the same time, it’s not that I’m expecting that to happen; I don’t expect any phase of my life to look a specific way. Every stage of my life has shown me that I’m often out of sync with the cultural “norm” — and that’s OK.

Without small children of my own and without following the typical milestones that often mark time for others, I’m learning that I’ll need to make my own milestones. But this is a good thing; it means that I get to decide what moments are vital to be present for. And I’ve also realized that with them in their late 70s and me in my late 30s, my parents and I aren’t out of time yet.