Things my parents did right.

So, I've spent a lot of entries here working through a lot of stuff from my upbringing that I felt was hanging around, keeping me from being the best I can be as a person. It may not be this way for other people, but I feel like if I can dissect something, pick it apart and look at it in its most unromantic, autopsied form, it becomes less threatening and easier to define as something not to do.

My parents were, like all of us, flawed people, often deeply flawed. What makes this situation even more frustrating is that they have neither taken steps to grow out of their issues nor have even admitted that any ever existed in the first place. That has led to me setting healthy boundaries, as we all must do, because we can never completely isolated from intrusively unhealthy people.

On the other hand, for me to say that they were 100% abusive, negative and a a poor influence would be completely disingenuous and inaccurate. There are many good things I take away from them as well, and I feel it is just as important to acknowledge those.

For starters both of my parents worked like dogs their entire lives. They still work (because of my mom's gambling problem, granted), and whenever they've worked, they have never slacked off or tried to find a way to "take the boss". My mother started working at 16 as a waitress in a 50s diner after school. My dad joined the Navy then, seeing that he didn't want to spend his entire life in steel mills, left for California in the middle of a snowstorm, where he worked in the computer industry for over 30 years. I am also a very hard worker, and I get a great deal of pride in the work I complete. I think laziness is healthy once your work is done, but as a practice I don't admire it at all. I don't expect people to have my personality or to value what I value, but I'd be lying if I said I just don't squirm with anxiety whenever I'm in a home where the owners (as is their right) think keeping up on Dawson's Creek is more important than getting that six-month-old carton of sour cream out of the sink.

My parents also kept their homes in top running order, and their landscaping perfect, by themselves, hiring only for large jobs. We were always up on our shots and clean when we were smaller. We always had heat, power and water (which is more than my own kids can already say). They weren't addicted to drugs and we never lived in the kinds of conditions I see many kids living in these days.

My mother's cooking still beats anyone's and we were rarely fed junk. Every Friday was their payday and we would get to go to McDonalds where I would get a Double Cheeseburger, shake and fries. but otherwise? We only got soup out of a can, and mac and cheese out of a box, everything else, including desserts was made from scratch. Admittedly, we hated it at the time because all of our friends had all the "fun" food. These were also the pudgy friends, now that I look at it. They had candy drawers and cookies in the pantry and got to eat at Del Taco all the time. Now that I look back, they had more cavities as well. We had cake on birthdays and some of our candy on Halloween and the wonderful Italian cookies on Christmas. This is a lesson I take very seriously, because we eat at home, and though I am nowhere close to making as much from scratch as my mother, we still have more fresh food and raw food in our cabinets than not. Even "nice" restaurants, their portions are too big and you can get into so much trouble.

We were always huge walkers. And back in those days it was easier. When I was six and my sister three, we could walk to the supermarket just to look around or the park to play, but even so, we liked to walk. When we'd go to the beach or to my grandparent's in Paradise, we walked and walked. To this day, I walk on a regular basis.

When my dad hit his mid-life crisis, he couldn't afford a sportscar, so he started running. And running. And running. Eventually, he ran three marathons and took numerous trophies in 5 and 10ks. Nobody could catch him, even though he was 5' 10" at his tallest. From this, I learned not only the value of just moving around, but of actually training even when you have to sacrifice other fun activities or our time or even when your body said to quit. It was about how your mind could overpower your body. This helps me stick with my workouts even today.

My mom also taught me a love of animals. This isn't because we had many, we just had one dog and he died when I was 10. And though I begged for more animals, we never got any more. Still, while he was alive, he way Louie was treated and the responsibility of his vet care and health was not lost on me. There was also never this haughtiness that just because we were born human, that we were better. There was an appreciation for the talents of all species.

My mom was, and remains, the Last Homemaker. She could sew her own curtains while waxing the floor and scheduling our vaccinations. She was a whiz, along with my dad, at growing things and knows more about gardening than I'll ever learn. Tomatoes as huge as your head and grape vines nearly heavy enough to bring down the fence. She was the one who started cross stitching first and, although I don't do it nearly as much now, I completed scores of projects to keep or as gifts since I was 20 and she taught me how. We also learned to make those padded photo albums together, I remember.

As far back as I can remember, my dad had his nose stuck in a book far more often than he watched TV. I was as much of or at least as much of a voracious reader as he was. We would go to the library every Tuesday night, and he rarely put controls on what I read. He bought me a copy of Black Beauty at the Roscoe's in Paradise the year we went up alone. They might have said no to more toys, but never to more books. I had one of the more impressive Scholastic orders every month. This is something I can't afford to do for my kids, but I do take them to the library every week.

One of the best sounds I remember from my childhood is hearing my parents nearly dying of laughter at one thing or another. It could be a show, it could even be recalling a story from years ago, but they could both get laughing so hard they could barely breathe. My dad's eyes would begin to tear up and he would laugh "oh shit!" in between gasps for oxygen and my mom would laugh so loud, I'm sure people down the block could hear her. This was no polite chortle, these laughs were all or nothing, unrestrained belly laughs, and nobody around them could help but get pulled in, often getting the whole room rolling.

They taught us proper table manners so we didn't look feral, and taught us to say please and thank you. They also enabled me to have a compassion and understanding of people who were down on their luck. I learned to tell the difference between who was causing their own bad luck (i.e. lack of temper control, alcoholism, etc.) and those whose lives were turned upside down by economic misfortune or factors out of their control, so I learned not to lump everyone in a certain part of town, profession or lack of in the same group. From their humble and labor union origins, I learned as well that the heads of the coporations rarely have your best interests at heart, so don't get complacent and think you're irreplaceble, because you're not.

Take good care of your stuff, schedule your maintenance on time, save money, love music and turn it up, learn how to jitterbug, grow things and it's okay to kiss your dog.

These were the things I learned because they were in practice, and for as much time as I had to spend undoing the bad lessons, I'm grateful that I had the lessons above to at least stand on as I destroyed the lessons that didn't work and built them anew.