What We Get From Our Parents

[macele]

i once thought that i was exactly like my daddy. at times, now, i'm not so sure. he is no longer on the planet earth in a walking-around human form. i miss him. i hope somehow he knows that. i'm not one to believe that folks in heaven know what is happening on earth.

he couldn't say i love you with ease, and because of that, i can. as a kid, i wore his boots. i wore his cowboy hats. i liked the sweat in his hats. anything of his that was cool, i wore. old spice cologne. he was a mechanic. i love to smell grease. i like to think that i can fix things because of him. i would sit in his work truck with my hand on the steering wheel just like he did. i love tools because of him. i would eat breakfast with him and watch his every move. i still eat grits like he did (daddy broke his biscuit into pieces and put in the grits. he ate all together. lots of butter too). i would look at his hands and arms to see if mine were just like his. i wanted to be just like him.

his blue eyes and his heart. both a giving heart and heart disease. i look a lot like him.

i had put so much pressure on myself to be perfect. to be a hard worker like him. to just do everything "right". after he died, i broke down. 22 years old, and the panic attacks started. so was it good that i wanted to be so much like him? hmmmm.

now momma is a total opposite from daddy. my hands are like hers. i have her titties LOL. her athletic ability. her green thumb. i can grow all things pretty. love it! i wish that i had her talent for music. she can play any string instrument, the harmonica, and the piano. plays by ear. so surely my creativity is from her. surely.

i love them both. daddy loved me. he just couldn't express himself. momma is affectionate. now, as i've gotten older. i think i'm more like her than i've ever realized. but too, i've changed.

[pajama]

Gemme, what a lovely thread. Thank you.

I think I am a lovely amalgam of both my parents. And now that they are both gone I love seeing them in me, more and more every year. (This was not so much the case in my twenties, LOL.)

Those that have met me in person know that I work a room, I am a flirt, I love to compliment, and can be a bit mischievous. This is ALLLLLL my father. The letch, and I say that with love.

Then there's the side of me that likes to be alone and in my head. That doesn't have many very close friends. That doesn't really know/bond with my neighbors. Kinda the recluse. This is completely my mother.

Even my spirituality is picking-and-choosing of my father's agnostic/druid/AA to my mother's devote Roman Catholicism.

My son looks like me, I look like my mother, and she looks like her mother. We could never deny one another. And I know exactly how I will look as I age, and I am good with that. But I have my father's hazel eyes and the ability to *twinkle*. My poor son inherited my Dad's ears. It's why you'll probably never see The Boy with short hair.

I have~~~
My mother's hands.
My father's wanderlust.
My father's voracious sexual appetite.
My mother's love of shopping.
My mother's quiet confidence in herself and her self worth. (My mother roared when women had NO voice.)
My father's addiction prone personality.
Both parent's temper/anger/rage.
My mother's Spanish and her voice so I've been told.

[Bard]

I look walk and act like my Dad I have his blue eyes and like him took quite a while to find the right one. we are serial monogamists, he has been married 5 times and to the last his true love for 30 years. oh yeah he is also a retired police officer he is kind and true honest and generous I hope I have those quality's to .. from my mother I get my coloring the Scandinavian blood I guess and the thick German thighs not much else I never knew her well and really can not even picture her now. when I smile folks always say i am a image of my dad only smaller. they both of my parents are/were over 6ft all of my brothers are over 6 ft as well
I am kind of a study of nature vs nurture as many of the personality traits come from my nanny who took care of me from a month old and they taught me love and caring that I was not disposable and their son Jack taught me how to treat a lady my Daddy Jack taught me my love for football and my Dad when he came back into my life after my my mom died strengthened that
my daughter has very Germanic features an so she resembles my family it make the ex nutz lol but for Goose she loves that she looks like me and like Grandpa. Goose is also sweet kind and a good citizen and now as I watch her grow I see part me part her other mother and now part desd I love watching her grow

[Gráinne]

This is a great thread!

My mother was a short, plumpish, reddish brown-haired woman built in the bust like the stereotypical German beer hall girl. I got everything but the bust. I think I wrote here once that I got my hair colored a little redder, and was shocked at how much I resembled my mother. Unfortunately, I also inherited the tendency towards heart trouble in later years from her.

If my outsides were all my mother, my insides are all my father! This caused no end of confusion between me and Mom, and it wasn't until later in our lives that we accepted one another.

My dad was very introverted, and a real nerd (said with great affection). There was not one subject he didn't want to learn more about, even shrunken heads of the Amazon . Through him, came my love for art, music and theatre, not to mention science. I often thought he would have been a tremendous teacher, better than my brothers and I (and we all are or were teachers), but he never did that.

What's most interesting to me is how traits in my family "skipped" a generation. My daughter is Miss Outgoing,like my mother, always wanting to be on the move and with people surrounding her. My mom loved to shop, but my daughter, given free reign, would win the Shopping Olympics. She has the same dry sense of humor and ability to out-talk anyone. How my mother would have loved this granddaughter!

I don't know where she got her looks, though. Neither I nor my parents, nor anyone on her dad's side is a tall, blue-eyed blonde. Maybe some generation even farther back. That can happen sometimes; my own brother is a tall redhead, but my dad's family had some very red Scots in it .

My son looks like my father, and is more like me, inside. He loves music and books and while he has friends, prefers to stay by himself a great deal. He has the same love of science and the same curiosity as my father and me. Those two would have gotten on like a house on fire. I could see them reading together or visiting a museum, like I did with my dad.

The challenge of course is to love and appreciate my daughter for who she is, no matter how different from me she might be. I don't want the same pattern to repeat itself.