More Thoughts on Families

As I was walking this morning, I was thinking again about my mom and dad and the influence they had on me. Thinking about the positive things they gave me and the negative ones I seemed to pick up as well. I realized every single one of us have picked some good and bad from our parents. Those coupled with our bad habits we create all on our own...well we're kind of a mess most days.

I was telling some friends yesterday about me writing about my parents, when one said, "I wonder what my kids are going to write about me."

Wow...it hit me like a piano falling from the sky...I have probably screwed up my kids too. I have always thought everything good they learned from me and everything bad...well...uhhh....I guess from Tr...no from the Devil. But to be honest as I see my kids now, I see their faults (which for their sake I will not point out in this forum) and I can see my own set of faults ingrained in them. I see their strengths and I see mine as well. And yet they too have developed their own unique set of problematic traits that they will more than likely pass on to their kids.

Its kind of a crazy scenario. If you are honest your kids see the ugly part of you and actually replicate those bad things. If you try to cover up the ugly in you they still seem to find it...and then call you a hypocrite to boot. I guess the same is true about our strengths as well...but it takes way longer to see.


Here's a song that Marc Cohn wrote that describes this whole process. It's called "The Things We've Handed Down."

Don't know much about you
Don't know who you are
We've been doing fine without you
But, we could only go so far
Don't know why you chose us
Were you watching from above
Is there someone there that knows us
Said we'd give you all our love


Will you laugh just like your mother
Will you sigh like your old man
Will some things skip a generation
Like I've heard they often can
Are you a poet or a dancer
A devil or a clown
Or a strange new combination of
The things we've handed down


I wonder who you'll look like
Will your hair fall down and curl
Will you be a mama's boy
Or daddy's little girl
Will you be a sad reminder
Of what's been lost along the way
Maybe you can help me find her
In the things you do and say

And these things that we have given you
They are not so easily found
But you can thank us later
For the things we've handed down


You may not always be so grateful
For the way that you were made
Some feature of your father's
That you'd gladly sell or trade
And one day you may look at us
And say that you were cursed
But over time that line has been
Extremely well rehearsed
By our fathers, and their fathers
In some old and distant town
From places no one here remembers
Come the things we've handed down