Genetic Material!

As a mom, I feel proud passing a lot of my traits onto the kids, My nose, or my eyes, my hair, my flare for music, even at art, and much more. But, there is one aspect, that I would rather my kids not be like me. The part where I can brood, for hours and days and weeks and months and years!.( Well! this is stretching it too much.)  The part where I don’t forgive and forget. The part where I would see myself as a victim in a situation that turned sour.  Now that I am grown up and aware of myself, it’s a constant work for me to get past it everyday. But, this is what grown ups do, right?

On the contrast, Pavan who sure is annoying at times, actually very annoying (I’m as annoying to him as he to me, I’m sure!), is the other way around. He cannot brood on things, almost to the point of being insensitive. He loves to forgive and forget. He loves to move on. He would want a closure to the argument with a hug to seal the topic. But, I would be like...”How ridiculous, You hurt my feelings  (not sure what that means after all these years of arguing with each other on the silliest of topics) how can you even expect me to hug you” , “You haven’t even apologized”  or “You haven’t even acknowledged your mistake..” or it could be like “ you made me look like a jerk in front of the kids” or it could be “you didn’t let me have the last word”.  Yes! very childish but, that’s what you earn for doing all the cleaning and washing and caring etc that is life.

Luckily for us, we complement each other in many other ways than any mentioned above. I’m a stickler for details , tiny details.  “Why did this move here?”, “Why did you mix the dark shirts with the light?”, “You can’t dump all the dishes like this into the dishwasher, you have to face them down, the spoons have to face inwards”. He is more of a big picture kind of guy. He is the kind of guy who prefers to get 90% of the work done with just 10% effort. and I’m the type who would put in 100% of effort to finish 40% and on rare occasions 60% of the work.

He’s an extrovert while I’m a perfect introvert. He’s the type who could crack a joke with a person he just met. I would need to know the person well enough to be that pally.  He so easily lets my mom know that, something irks him while I’m still figuring out after all these years, how to convey it to my mom so, I don’t offend her. He is very a optimistic person who would see the glass half full while I would worry about who drank that half glass of water since the glass wasn’t washed well.. These are all some qualities that I would rather my kids take after Pavan.

Now look at my kids. Of the four of my kids, one of them missed to take these positives' from her dad..or shall I say..I managed to pass my traits on to her.  And shouldn’t she be the easiest for me to handle, that, she is just like me! That, I understand why she is being so difficult in a situation. On the contrary…I would need to go back to college to learn parenting kids who are like myself. Since that's’ not an option..I’m taking each day at a time trying to get better at it. In the school counselor’s words “she sure is going to be your difficult kid”, seems such an un-caffeinated or mild way of putting what I’m going through. Pavan’s take: “Look at the positive..of the four kids who could have taken after you in that respect,…We have just one which is a pretty good ratio”.

Maybe someday, when we’ll be successful enough in rubbing of her dad’s anti brooding attitude onto her, I’ll be able to write a book on the topic..”Learned behavior can easily override genetic material” or how about this “How we did it?” Like the cake we ordered for the kids first birthday. It wasn’t marked for the kids..but, for the fact that we got through the first year of parenting…Looking forward to that day.

 

P.S. The blue cake was the triplets first birthday cake, while we got another cake (the yellow one) for Pavan and me..which said “We Did It”…This is my MiL and FiL holding the kids on their first birthday.