Sometimes when I laugh softly, I hear my daughter’s voice. It’s not in the knee-slapping-tear-producing-stop-it-you’re embarrassing-yourself” loud guffaw that cannot be held in check. Nope, that laugh is all my own.
No, it’s only in the small soft laugh that happens when something cute unfolds in front of me. And yes, I’m aware that my daughter laughs like I do, not the other way around, but I admire her so much that I enjoy believing I inherited something from her.
The boys in the top photo are my brothers Blair and Gene. Aren’t they just the most handsome boys? Handsome in spite of inheriting the protruding ears of our Shingler family, right?
I believe it’s a male-only trait; while my daughter has petite ears, her brother Tim caught the protruding ear gene when he was born. To me, they just made him cuter. But he fussed over them in his teen years.
circa 1996
As Tim grew into early manhood, he fixated less on his ears, but I still mentioned them in his eulogy…that Tim felt his ears were just too darn big. That phrase brought a laugh of understanding from those who knew and loved him.
Consider your own family line and my guess is that you can quickly develop your own list of who inherited what look or trait or sound or behavior from those who came before us.
We do need to be careful, though, to not let negative “hand-me-downs” affect who we are or who we can be.
I remember when my grandsons (around 13 and 16 at the time) told me they tended to be lazy because their dad’s side of the family was lazy. They said it as if making a prophetic pronouncement: “We are X-NAMEs and X-NAME men are lazy, so we are bound to be lazy.”
You can imagine how well that went over with me. My first reaction was jumping up and down shouting NO NO NO!
While it is absolutely splendid to carry on aspects of our family, we’re selling ourselves tremendously short if we recognize limiting behavior and shrug it off with a, “Well, I guess I’m just a bad mood person like Grandpa.” Or “Hey, if living in a junky house was good enough for Aunt Bonnie, it’s good enough for me.”
To paraphrase a line of poetry by Merritt Malloy, you display wisdom when you know an inherited quality is worth holding onto and that you have to let it go when it isn’t.
The big ears you may just be stuck with.
You just leave Tim alone!!! He had Granddaddy Thatcher’s ears as does Brad Statnick. An apple falleth not far from the tree, eh?!?! We do reproduce our own kind!!! And Tim got his good looks from Uncle Bill??? Tee hee. I’m so humble, I’m proud of it?!?!?
Aw shucks, Unk Bill.
These are my “big” brothers who taught me how to ride a bike, throw a baseball, took me for sled rides, and protected me from all the bullies in our small town. Funny, I never thought they had big ears – Tim either.
I missed out on all that big brother sweetness since they were no longer little boys up by the time I have any memory of them.
Interesting what people notice about other people. You do have handsome men in your family as well as good looking and kind, sweet women. Good family traits. Glad to back on the blog list! Happy New Year!
Hi Nancy – I find Comcast quite frustrating. It’s not anything I do or don’t do; for whatever reason, every now and then Comcast decides to block the emails from Lifted Up, so that you don’t get the notice of a new post. I write EVERY Tuesday and Saturday without fail. I suggest you take it up with the Comcast customer service; since I’m not a Comcast customer, they won’t listen to me. If you fail to get an email on any Tuesday or Saturday, you can go to my site at http://www.LiftedUp.us, and on the menu select Lifted Up Blog, and read them there. As you can tell, this Comcast issue is quite annoying to me!
Thanks as always for reading and commenting.