Parenting Without a Manual
with Talyaa Liera
I'm Talyaa, the poster child for the concept that there's no one right way to be a parent. I went from stay-at-home attachment-parenting mom of four to being the non-custodial parent, working as a professional writer and channel-psychic. Let's talk about throwing away the parenting manual and exploding the myths and mystique of motherhood!
Check out my personal blog at Juxtapositioning.
|
When I was little there were a couple of dozen stories that got trotted out at different times through the year. When my mother made chocolate chip cookies my father would ask what she was procrastinating about. When she washed windows we all learned to ask who was coming over to the house. When we had beans she’d tell the story of how she got into trouble singing a bawdy song about beans one night as she hauled the garbage down the alley, thinking no one would hear. Whenever we had grapes I’d be reminded of the snapshot taken of me at age three, holding up a bunch of grapes and repeating “Gapes, gapes.” We all knew that my brother once called the hardware that holds doors onto the door jamb “Hing geese.” The stories were comfortable, familiar. They were our way of remembering our connection to one another since we lacked the courage or tools to talk about our connection and our love directly. Our family stories became our love language.
My son Nathaniel, now in high school in France, calls me and we talk about our own stories. The time I heard some child shouting in French from my Paris hotel room and realized it was my own son, leaning out the window in the adjoining room, calling out to street passersby. The way at Thanksgiving that Grandpa never failed to tell me how he and Grandma made the turkey dressing. The day Nathaniel ran down the stairs because I wouldn’t let him have more potato chips and broke his arm. The time it snowed so much we made an igloo, or tried to. The stories help us remember how our hearts connect even though there are so many miles between us.
I wonder about families and stories. I wonder which stories the parents remember, and which are handed down with the children. I tried to tell many of my parent’s stories to my own children, but I am not sure if they stuck. Different frame of reference? Too many other stories to remember?
Do your children know your childhood stories? Are there stories handed down in your family? Which ones make the cut?
photo: milan6, SXC
Subscribe to blog via RSS
