Parents Not Perfect? Neither Were Mine

So Your Parents Aren't Perfect,
Neither Were Mine
Shirley Moyer

Some people remember faces. Others remember names. I remember numbers.

It comes from an aging mother. She’s two oars short of a breast-stroke, but can tell the birth date of every grandchild. She knows when Roosevelt was reelected,the exact time her father passed away at 92, and when the first film of the Johnstown flood appeared at the Roxie, and all the inaccuracies therein. She knows slugger statistics, whose team is number one, and why baseball will never lose its audience regardless of how much cream they rub on the hard spots. But, strange as it seems, she can’t recall the time she gave birth to her first child. Perhaps I wasn’t her first child.

This is not a pity party; it’s an acceptance speech. It’s been a long time coming; fifty years. Some things in life we learn to conquer; I’ve overcome very little, but one thing I’ve come to accept — that which I can never change, the shortcomings of a parent.

I wanted to believe I was one of the Partridge Family only to discover I may be related to the Cosby Family. I was an only child for most of my life. Then I uncovered a brother and sister, likely with no knowledge of my existence. It’s life. It’s family.

Some live life like the recipe on a can of Campbell's tomato soup; nothing changes. Others cling to a willow twig, barely able to keep their noses dry. Mine juggled the soup while she was treading water and he was jumping from stone to stepstone singing, "God Bless America."

The purpose of this analogy is that I hope it will give a perspective on how we view our parents. Whether or not we wish to lay accolades upon them, or chop off their heads for perceived injustices, we are in control of the calculator, the bottom line. We've had it all along.

I believe we, the human race, are given the uncanny ability to know when checks and balances are out of sync. It may take a while, but eventually we know when things don't add up. We don't have to be accountants to be accountable. We are in charge of the numbers and it's our choice if we want to bank them or spend them, or ignore them.

No one can promise parents who fit nicely into the Partridge Family birdhouse, not even themselves. At last, I'm giving up. I forgive them, even though, for some strange reason, I admire them. They could have so easily just wandered off into oblivion. But no, they chose a facade, thinking they could fool me.

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Read more about the facade that changed my life and my amaziing father,
"Ginkgoes of BenVenue" ISBN 1-4033-7361-2
Available now from www.authorhouse.com
click here:

http://www.authorhouse.com/bookstore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=13205


Writing is the way I keep him alive.

OnWords & UpWords
Shirl, ReJoyce! whatever...