Little Voices in My Head

This past weekend, I had a very interesting conversation with some friends of mine. The gist of the convo was that I have awesome parents. The rest of my family can’t be discounted, but honestly, if I had to pick a set of ‘rents, I’d pick mine.

Thankfully, my parents don’t know the details of most of the things I got away with as a kid. For this I am beyond grateful, but not because they would be upset. I’m grateful because I know that even now, they would still love me.  They would be disappointed, but they would still love me. I always knew, even as a kid, or a teen, that no matter WHAT I did, they would love me. Here’s why:

My mom is a feeder. It’s what she does. She takes in strays, animal and human, and feeds them. I don’t know what drives her to do so, but she does. Anytime my friends or my sister’s friends needed a place to crash, or just BE for awhile, my house was it. They and I knew, even then, that Mom love can be expressed through a meal, a hug, and a bit of handholding.

My dad is a silent strength kind of guy. He never had a problem sharing a story, or an example, to help a friend out. If there was any need for some stern love, my Dad was, and is, your guy. Generally, he tells some of the SAME stories often, but he gets his point across. I love you can be very easy to say in story form.

My parents as a unit, are scary-good at that tag team thing. Sometimes, they would LITERALLY tag each other ‘in’ during an argument between them and us kids. I’m telling you, there are some instances in which I am NOT grateful there were two of them! But on the whole, they were a team dedicated to raising us, and our friends, as wonderfully as they knew. My dad broke a cycle of abuse that often stays strong from parent to child, then child as parent, to child again. My mother, knowing she was adopted and chosen to be loved then chose to shower all of us kids with all the love she learned. I wish everyone I knew had that kind of love.

I was talking to my friends about how awesome my parents are, and it hit me. I really DO wish everyone knew that kind of love. The kind that even though they don’t agree with a homosexual lifestyle, they don’t agree with abortion, or with (how to put this) ‘other’ religions; that love still offered shelter to a lesbian friend, a hug to one who went through the worst night of her life, and an ear for those who needed counsel. Sometimes, I wish I could loan my folks out to my friends who don’t know that. I wish I could tell them that THEIR parents may be fucked the fuck up, but that they don’t have to be. I wish that a lot of the time. So if you’re one of those who has never, or rarely, known that kind of love, that kind of parenting—feel free to talk to me, or my parents, who have plenty of that to share.