Parrots
On a recent flight, I was seated across from a forty-something-ish man and what appeared to be his pre-teen son. Both were dressed in khaki shorts cinched by blue stretchy belts stitched with repeating red designs. Both were sporting collared short-sleeved shirts of different colors but each with penguin logos on the left chest. While their faces weren’t a mold match, everything else about them shouted, “We share DNA!”
Both the elder and his mini-he had trouble getting fixed. While passengers were huffily attempting to squeeze by, dad stood in the aisle rummaging through his carry-on already crammed in the overhead bin. His likeness in the row below him, with similar laser-like intention, rifled through a backpack stretched to its seams with stuff. Once seated, each fastened their safety belt with synchronized intensity, pulling the straps violently across their laps. The reflective tendencies of the pair were uncanny. Somewhere up 30,000 feet in the clouds, I glanced across and noticed Mutt and Jeff both leaning back in tandem, their respective earphone cords pulled taut like a dog on a stretched-out leash. I couldn’t help but giggle. They were a chromosome cut smooth in half.
We pass some things down on purpose. Our grandpa’s watch. Our granny’s chocolate chip cookie recipe. Our father’s passion for the Green Bay Packers. Others travel without our permission, pulsing through the blood we share.
And then there’s all the stuff in the middle.
Those pesky behaviors, traits and habits that rarely cross our mind but jump like fleas from us to the coats of our offspring while we’re just doing what we do. Sheer proximity and exposure can replicate the best and worst of us.
My granddaughter, Austyn, says “be-C--A--U--S--E” all stretched out and with a second- syllable emphasis. Her younger sister, Scottie, at 2.3 now does it, too. Her mom and dad say that’s “be-C--A--U--S--E” that’s how her GG says it, and she says it all the time. My son answers phone calls when he’s busy then acts annoyed that someone called him while he was busy, exactly like his dad, whose father answered calls when he was busy the same way. My daughter has the gift of snark, (sorry, not sorry?) just like her mom. Before we know it-- often while we are looking the other way-- our kids begin to copy what we do.
Like Polly Parrots who bob and weave and chirp and sing, they mimic without understanding that somewhere along the way they’ll get to choose, though habits can be hard to break.
Our kids are watching. The way we bend the bill of our baseball cap, the way we make a sandwich. The way we do or don’t clean out the back seat of our car. They see how we react when we make a mistake, the way we act when we win. The way we greet and treat a stranger who will likely never cross our way again. From the inconsequential to the life-defining, our children do what they’ve seen done. They carry birthmarks that exist in how and what they do instead of on their skin.
When the aircraft landed and the freedom-bell dinged, the father-son duo (already, of course, unbuckled and perched like early birds in search of a worm) shot up and in a seismic flurry, grabbed their bulging bags, and pushed their way toward the not-yet-open door. As I trailed behind them down the jet bridge I noticed, they even race-walked in asymmetric sync.
The apple, as my mom and I like to say, falls very near the tender root of the tree.
P.S. Cat’s in the Cradle