Recognition

I have noticed lately that I'm becoming more and more like my parents. There was a time that this would have petrified me into agoraphobic tendencies. As it is, I'm adult enough to recognize not only that I could have done a lot worse with parents but that in most ways, I was actually very lucky. With that as a frame of reference, noticing their proclivities as being my own isn't so bad.

I think I can trace my wanting to grow food and the like to my Dad. My Mom taught me my way around the kitchen. They taught me to look at kids who are playing with something and say, "Don't break that," as if the kids' are plotting the destruction of that which they control. They probably aren't.

When I was a kid, my Mom seemed to me to be waiting on my father hand and foot and I promised myself that I would never make anyone do that for me. It was early enough in my life that I didn't have a model for what my own family would look like and I thought this was just some husband and wife pattern that I wouldn't repeat.

While Frank is more than willing to cook, I happen to like my cooking better than his and he seems pretty fond of my wicked-mad-dinner-cooking skills. One of the things my Mom always did that made me bugnutzcrazy was give my Dad the best piece of meat, the biggest serving of vegetables... he got the top picks even over what she served herself. It made me crazy and, I think, put a brick or two in the wall that stood between my Dad and I that we've only recently begun dismantling.

Lately I've realized while making dinner that I give Frank the bigger cut of meat and a larger portion of side dishes and if something's over-cooked or just not quite right, that's mine. It struck me all of a sudden that the reason my Mom always did these things was because she loved my Dad that much. I thought it was something he made her do somehow or that she felt she had to do for some reason other than that she just wanted to. Suddenly I realize that it's really the thing she wanted to do more than anything else just like it's what I want to do for Frank.

What I know is that putting all of this together has opened the door to my recognition of the kind of love I'm in. It is a love like my parents in the best ways that they have loved each other. It is a good thing and I'm very thankful to have experienced it. I am even more excited to see how it continues to unfold.