My mother and late father were as different as night and day. My dad loved to be the center of a party; my mother would rather be found at the center of church. My father liked to use his hands to restore old cars; my mom liked to keep her hands busy by flipping through pages of books until she would need a new prescription for her glasses. I never really thought of my parents as being such an odd couple - but I guess now that I look back, I guess that they really were.
I was four years old when I saw the big difference "parenting difference" between my parents. It was time for me to go to 1st grade (the story in my family goes that I conveniently "skipped" kindergarten...) in September. One major event that needed to occur before I could enter the classroom was the infamous "shoe tying class" with my mom and dad. For some strange reason, they did not communicate to each other on who would actually teach me how to tie my shoes. So for several days (or maybe even weeks, I can't remember) I would oscillate between my father and mother trying to figure out how to tie my shoes.
What I learned from those two stuck with me for the rest of my life. My dad never gave me clear "instructions" on how to tie my shoes. My gigantic father (everybody is a giant when you are five years old) sat in front of me and showed me how to make both shoe laces turn into bunny ears and then voila - a tied shoe. I practiced and practiced and to no avail, I never got it. My mother on the other hand, gave me the step by step tutorial on how to tie the shoe. She gave explicit instructions on what to do to make sure that it was on correctly, and then did it again until I finally showed her how I could do it. After that event, my perception of mom and dad was quite simple, "mommy tells, daddy shows"; no matter what situation came about it always boiled down to that simple truth.
Because my parents had two fundamentally different ways of communication, I have learned to really adapt to situations that may at times, seem very challenging. From my father I have learned that sometimes it is in what you do not say that you communicate the most. He never had a conversation with me about how my day was at school or what I would be struggling with in my life. The simple fact that he was a great provider for the family and that he would wake up at odd hours to take me to school showed me more than him saying a few words. He emphasized that it was always in the actions of people that I learned more about them than what they would try to tell me. The same story goes for my mother - the matriarch of our "Party of Seven". She never really had the time to be around me as much as my father had when I was growing up, but when she was there, an important "lesson" was always imparted on me. Sometimes it would be a story about finding hope in the most desolate of times, other times it would be a story on how patience is the one virtue that you could just not have too much of. Those conversations that I have with my mom are truly precious, and I cherish them - much like the times that I cherished my father's times with the "man of much action, but very few words."
I was four years old when I saw the big difference "parenting difference" between my parents. It was time for me to go to 1st grade (the story in my family goes that I conveniently "skipped" kindergarten...) in September. One major event that needed to occur before I could enter the classroom was the infamous "shoe tying class" with my mom and dad. For some strange reason, they did not communicate to each other on who would actually teach me how to tie my shoes. So for several days (or maybe even weeks, I can't remember) I would oscillate between my father and mother trying to figure out how to tie my shoes.
What I learned from those two stuck with me for the rest of my life. My dad never gave me clear "instructions" on how to tie my shoes. My gigantic father (everybody is a giant when you are five years old) sat in front of me and showed me how to make both shoe laces turn into bunny ears and then voila - a tied shoe. I practiced and practiced and to no avail, I never got it. My mother on the other hand, gave me the step by step tutorial on how to tie the shoe. She gave explicit instructions on what to do to make sure that it was on correctly, and then did it again until I finally showed her how I could do it. After that event, my perception of mom and dad was quite simple, "mommy tells, daddy shows"; no matter what situation came about it always boiled down to that simple truth.
Because my parents had two fundamentally different ways of communication, I have learned to really adapt to situations that may at times, seem very challenging. From my father I have learned that sometimes it is in what you do not say that you communicate the most. He never had a conversation with me about how my day was at school or what I would be struggling with in my life. The simple fact that he was a great provider for the family and that he would wake up at odd hours to take me to school showed me more than him saying a few words. He emphasized that it was always in the actions of people that I learned more about them than what they would try to tell me. The same story goes for my mother - the matriarch of our "Party of Seven". She never really had the time to be around me as much as my father had when I was growing up, but when she was there, an important "lesson" was always imparted on me. Sometimes it would be a story about finding hope in the most desolate of times, other times it would be a story on how patience is the one virtue that you could just not have too much of. Those conversations that I have with my mom are truly precious, and I cherish them - much like the times that I cherished my father's times with the "man of much action, but very few words."
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