Who Are We?

I'm sitting in my living room listening to the roaring fire in the fireplace, the spinning cycle of the washing machine and the tick-tock of our wind-up clock on he wall. It's been a pretty good day with 8 inches of new snow shoveled, a 3 mile walk, 30 minutes in the hot tub, and now a fire in the fireplace and a glass of red wine at my fingertips. A startlingly red cardinal just flew down to the bird feeder outside the window and all seems right in my world. 

The kicker for all of this was that Matthew was up and stayed the night. We all ate out at a Mexican restaurant last night and played a few rounds of MarioKart. Today, we cleared the snow from the driveway and went in the hot tub again. 

We loaded up his car with gear for his new apartment and I stood at the door as he left our house. It is always tough to see your children leave. I threw a few snowballs at his car; watched him laugh (I missed) ... but I stood there ... waiting ... and then stood there watching him leave. I stood there until his blue Subaru was gone and I stood there a few moments longer. 

When I was a kid, a bit more than a few years ago, we would visit Nanny and Banky at 16 Gerry Street for a holiday or just for a Sunday afternoon. Jeanne, Kenny and I would play around in the old house for hours running up and down the stairs and in and out of the many little rooms that made up the magical old house. For all the times we visited, when we left, Nanny would stand at the curb and wave to us as we drove away. We'd be all the way up to the end of the street and she would still stand there watching us go. I know because I would watch her out the back window as we drove away (before seat belts, of course).

And now I do this. I don't do this consciously, I just do it. It seems that I "inherited" something from Nanny.

As I entered grade school, the neighborhood kids taught me the things you can say and the things you can't. I already knew about "damn" and "hell" but they taught me other words. I still remember thinking about it. They were words I didn't know so would I have ever said them anyway? So, a couple of neighborhood kids taught me nasty words and then they showed me their middle finger. "Definitely DON'T use your middle finger! That's a swear, too!"

At the age of 6, this left me totally confused. My dad seemed to always point with his middle finger and I'd never heard him use any of those bad words! The years wore on and I didn't use the swear-words. I was always careful with my fingers but my dad kept pointing with his middle finger! I was 13 and we were going to go canoeing. We're looking at a map and he said, "We'll put in here, and portage there, and take out there." ... pointing with his middle finger at each spot. He was always swearing with his middle finger. Didn't he know that it was a swear??

Many more years have gone by and I've obviously learned more about the way my dad uses his middle finger ... it's not up ... and that has taught me a lot about intent. The above photo shows a woman pointing with her middle finger. The woman in the picture is a great Aunt of some sort ... of my father. Did he "inherit" something, directly or indirectly from her?

We all inherit characteristics and traits from our parents. The obvious ones are those that are on the human genome but we also inherit characteristics and traits from our family, friends, and acquaintances. 

These things we've learned and adopted become part of who we are and we use many of them daily. We don't always know where they came from and sometimes we do. Today, I remembered my grandmother, Elinor May Cleary aka Nanny, for the briefest of moments as Matthew backed down our driveway and I wondered what she was thinking when she stood there waving to us as we drove away.