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I know so many people who come from broken homes or from parents who just didn't deserve their fantastic kids. There's so many on Hatrack here with similar stories too, and I just don't understand how a parent can treat their child so horribly.
So I thought I'd start a parent appreciation thread.
My parents are great, at 30 years of age, we're more like friends. My Dad married my Mum knowing she couldn't have kids due to a cysts which had caused some of her womb and one of her fallopian tubes to be removed. So it was quite the surprise when after several years of marriage Mum fell pregnant. Everything they planned for their life went out the window from that moment forth. Mum's teaching career was tossed and their plans to travel extensively through South America never happened. Everything they did, they did to give my sister (adopted five years after my birth) and I the best possible chance at life. We weren't well-off, but they saw to it that I had piano lessons, singing lessons, went to Tae Kwon Do and swimming training. They helped me with school and life and have always been there for me without fail. I moved out at 17 thinking that I couldn't stand being home any longer (as teenagers are wont to do) and now, almost half my life later, live over 2000 kilometres away, seeing them only twice a year. We talk every few days and they still give me everything I need... though I try to make sure that those needs are just for their company and care. And that all of what they've given me is as reciprocated as possible.
Posts: 2245 | Registered: Nov 1998
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I have to admit I've had great parents, even if my father has some issues. My Mother has supported me through all my endevours and though I was far from the perfect son while I was a teenager I try to make it all up to her now.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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quidscribis, no, I'm 30, I left home at 17 which is nearly half my life, considering I'm about to turn 31. I wondered if that wasn't an odd way to put it. But my parents were about the age I am now when they had me.
Posts: 2245 | Registered: Nov 1998
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quote:Originally posted by Troubadour: My Dad married my Mum knowing she couldn't have kids due to a cysts which had caused some of her womb and one of her fallopian tubes to be removed. So it was quite the surprise when after several years of marriage Mum fell pregnant.
I have one less fallopian tube and I've gotten pregnant twice since it's been removed.
I'd like to say my parents are great too! They raised us with kindness and humor. They always made sure we had a vacation or two every summer. :)No matter how short they were. They also let us have pets in the house. When we were little if we had a bad day my mom would wrap us up in a blanket and hug us until we felt better. I love my parents!
Posts: 1417 | Registered: Aug 1999
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My parents are here for the weekend. Dad is ripping out the rotted floor in the upstairs bathroom and replacing it, Mom is scraping and painting the china hutch. Bob and I are unpaking boxes.
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I spent the week with my dear old Dad, who just retired after forty-five years of teaching middle school.
The school put out a call to alumni and students to write stories or thoughts for a scrapbook. I read it, and it is one of the most incredible things I have ever read.
I am so incredibly proud to have the dad I have, and I am happy to have shared him with hundreds and hundreds of others, whose lives he touched so deeply.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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My dad was one of the funniest people I've ever known. He was always deadpan, so you could only tell he was joking sometimes by a little sparkle that would come into his eye.
He was quite often really forgetful, so he played up that absent minded professor routine until you could never quite tell if he was serious or putting you on. Like if he accidentally called me by one of my sibling's names, he would keep going down the list, "Charlie, I mean Laurie, I mean ... what's your name again?"
One time he was playing trombone with the symphony and had to wear a tuxedo, so dressed in his tails, cummerbund, white tie, and boxer shorts, he picked up his trombone case, pretending that he'd forgotten to put on his pants, and said perfectly naturally, "I'm going now, see you later tonight" as he walked out the door. Like I said, you were never quite positive if he was kidding or not. He was a big fan of Marx Brothers style silly humor although he could be really subtle at times, too.
He had that P.D.Q.Bach style of musical pathology, as well. Once he and Edson played two different Glenn Miller songs in 2 different times, starting offset, so that they formed a sort of avant garde jazz piece (making fun, of course, of Glenn Miller whom he thought of as rather hokey and overplayed) which they recorded for Edson's answering machine. Edson was his trombonist friend with a similarly whacked out sense of humor.
Another time, my niece Sarah as a toddler was banging away on the piano keys, and my father sat down beside her and added an accompaniment, made a duet out of it, as he echoed some of her dissonant phrasing and built a tasteful and coherent whole out of it, again making the whole thing sound like some very avant garde jazz improvisation. He would do things like that for no audience but himself. It added to the charm that we'd just happen to overhear these weird and wonderful things he did.
Once I caught him listening fascinated for an hour by a mockingbird, trying to understand all the rhythms and phrasings the bird was using. "Listen to this, listen to this!" he told me, and began beating out with his finger the rhythms as the bird sang.
Once at Christmastime he was playing Stravinsky's Petroushka on the piano, as he often did, but when he got to one part that has a melody reminscent of the start of Jingle Bells, he modified the piece, keeping the chord structure and harmonies as Stravinsky did, but substituting the melody of Jingle Bells where it fit. <laughs> It's hard to describe stuff like that in words, but the effect when you hear it played unexpectedly is hysterically funny.
So many times, things he said or did would have us literally rolling with laughter, clutching our sides, gasping for breath with tears running down our faces. We had our problems, too. My family was pretty dysfunctional in lots of ways. But when I think back on my dad, what I remember most was his music, his playfulness, and how much he made us laugh. Whatever else might have been wrong about our home, we certainly had an awful lot of fun there.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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My parents are pretty great. I did not always realize this. Their was a while when, as a teenager, I went through the typically "grrr. parents suck. making all these dumb rules. blah. blah. and also blah." Then I met some of my friends' parents, and realized how good I had it.
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No great story but I'd like to praise my parents, and their parents too. Entire generations of a stable family, awesome.
Nothing tremendous, just always there, rock solid. Normal. Freakishly normal. Cleaver-like in fact. A family going sane in an insane world.
Posts: 349 | Registered: Feb 2004
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My Dad ... Oh man. Miss him. Pretty sure he was the best human being I've ever known. Most kids, when they're little they think their Dad is superman, and part of growing up is realizing that he's fallible, just a guy doing the best he can.
For me it was the opposite. I never thought of him as being super human. When I grew up and began to understand the way he lived his life, the things he sacrificed for his family, how much love he gave us, how much time and energy he spent in his life simply trying to *help* people. Wow. He was incredibly special. And I realized that, in fact, he was a shining example of someone who wasmuch, much more than just a regular guy. No details necessary.
I got a few of his qualities but not the most important ones, I think. Too bad. If I want one thing, on this Earth, it is to be like him. Unfortunately most of the time I fall woefully short.
Posts: 2267 | Registered: May 2005
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I just had a dream in which my Dad was hanging out at home here on Sunday afternoon, as he was wont to do. He was doing some paperwork, or music arrangement or transcription or something on the folding card table with two legs folded up and pulled onto the arms of the armchair like he often used to do.
Here's the weird part. I remembered in my dream that he was actually already dead, so to tease him I asked him if he had a gig this afternoon. He looked at the clock and at his watch, and thought about it and said no he didn't. Then, because I was being silly, I asked him well when was his next gig anyway. He thought harder, and then HE remembered he was already dead too, and he smiled at me in a "ha ha very funny" way for teasing him.
Sorry, dad, if that wasn't a very nice way to tease you. I'm sorry you miss being alive and find heaven boring. I'd swap with you if it's any consolation. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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My parents rock. We've almost always gotten along, and they've been through a whoooooole lot of problems with my older sisters (and I), and we've all come out better and closer in the end. My mother is the nicest, most easy-going, most honest person on earth I'm pretty sure, and while my dad knows just how to make me angry if he wants to, he's a great caring person underneath too, with a wicked sense of humour and interested in everything, which is probably responsible for getting me into a lot of the things I love doing in life too. Added to this, they have never in my life had a real disagreement longer than about 30 seconds between the two of them, and have certainly never actually fought. I didn't realize how rare this was in married couples until I was about 15. Then I started feeling lucky. Still do. Posts: 624 | Registered: Mar 2005
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