LIKE MOTHER, LIKE DAUGHTER?

As I watched my kids grow up I had some idea of what to expect. First of all, since the nut doesn’t usually fall far from the tree I doubted that my kids would be sports fans. Their dad and I did not follow baseball, basketball, football, wrestling, tennis etc. on TV nor were we active in sports. Our four kids had forays into some extracurricular sporting type activities but that was mostly gone by the time they were grown up. One of the four was a reader from an early age and I figured he’d be a reader like me. He is. Our family was not into any kind of camping; we’d rather have the comforts of an exceptionally cheap motel than the discomfort of sleeping on the ground in a tent. Only of my four kids camps. And except for the usual games of “Fish” and “War” that every parent plays with their kids, we also were not a card-playing family, and I think overall the kids have grown up doing the same thing with their own kids but not turning into those people who can’t wait for the next poker party.

So if any of my kids moved to Hawaii, I would not particularly expect them to take up hula dancing with a passion. Similarly if one moved to Texas, I would really expect (and hope) that he or she would not turn into a gun-slinging cowboy. I thought I knew my children pretty well, and for better or worse they have turned into chips off the old block.

Except for Bryn.

She was born dainty, a cute little wisp of a thing with curly blond hair. She grew up with her beloved Marcy doll, “Peli”- the pelican pajama bag, a collection of glass mice, always singing in girls glee clubs; her room was lavender with wallpaper covered with old-fashioned dolls. This was a most feminine child, with sparkling eyes and a friend of everyone. And in her teens she had a terrific crush on Chris Knight.

So how could I have been prepared for what happened when she married and moved to Alaska? She came down for my birthday party yesterday and brought a bunch of photos to share. She works full time, but apparently has plenty of time left over for play. And it is her playing that has me simply shaking my head. Never would I have thought….



She is happy as a clam, and for that I am grateful. But it still has me wondering, how did this happen?