Thoughtful Thursday: What They Might Say

We’ve just discussed how we’d summarize our mothers and fathers. During Lori’s Listen to Your Mother show, I thought about not only how I would describe my mother, but how my children might someday describe me.

Right now their descriptions are limited to features like, “Mommy has brown hair like me,” or “Mommy wears sunscreen,” or “Mommy never wears flip-flops.” Someday, though, they’ll presumably have more to say. The version of me that they see at age 3 will not be the same version they see at 13 or 23; I can’t even imagine that far into the future, so all I can speak to is the present. Though they may not be able to recall enough to articulate it later, I’d like to imagine that Burrito and Tamale would describe the 2013 version of me as something like:

Our mommy puts a lot of thought into her parenting. She works really hard at giving us special presents and experiences. She is very patient, most of the time, except when she was on Prednisone. She sings to us every day. She makes the cakes we eat and the dishes we eat them on. We’re not allowed to do a lot of things that most kids do, like watch TV or eat candy, but she always gives us reasons why. She doesn’t approve of toys that make noise or light up, so we don’t have any. She always tells us the truth, even when it conflicts with what most people tell kids. She takes a lot of pictures of us on her phone with the cracked screen that’s held together by electrical tape; we like it because the tape is bright red.

How do you imagine your children might describe the 2013 version of you?

Thoughtful Thursday: Father

Welcome to the May/June Intelligentsia.

#43: Elana from Elana’s Musings
#37: A from Are You Kidding Me?
#35: Strongblonde from Strong Blonde
#25: St. Elsewhere
#23: Lori from Write Mind Open Heart
#18: Sara from Aryanhwy

In light of Father’s Day this weekend (at least in the U.S., I know that Father’s Day falls on a different part of the calendar for a few of you) and our efforts last time to describe our mothers in a couple of sentences…

My father is a thinker, a creator, a talker, a peacemaker, a charmer. He has big, wonderful ideas but his greatest fault is inconsistent follow-through. When I was a kid, instead of meeting me on my level, he always expected me to come up to his… which meant that I was the only 3 year old in town playing backgammon, but also the only 3 year old in the theatre watching Apocalypse Now. He is incapable of being ordinary.

How would you sum up your father?