Growing up, I was the child that seemed to most make my mother crazy. Once in a while, she would roll her eyes at me and say "God is going to get you. He's going to give you a child just like you."
After I became a parent, she once said something like "It's not hard to predict that. That's how genes work."
My oldest son got affectionately called Grandma's Curse when he was little. He was like me cubed and vastly more crazy-making than I had ever been but I adored him.
When the future ex and I were eighteen, we would go swimming together sometimes. There was a pool in his backyard and his mom would tell his sisters to leave us be and we had the pool to ourselves.
His hair was longer than mine, about shoulder length. After swimming, he would towel dry his hair and for a few brief moments he had a blond afro before going in to the house to shower, comb it down and try to control it like he normally did.
Other than me and maybe his immediate family, I'm not sure anyone ever got to see his blond afro, so most people had no idea how kinky curly his hair really was. It was much curlier than mine.
Except for a smidgen of wave at the nape of his neck, our firstborn child's hair is stick straight. When he was an infant, my mother used to run her hands through his hair, shake her head and chuckle that two curly-haired people had a baby with such straight hair.
During my divorce, I moved home with my two sons and lived with my parents for nearly a year. My mother found my oldest son so crazymaking she soon stopped speaking to him and would just tell me to tell my son x, y or z.
Before that happened, one day trying to smooth things over with my mother I said "Oh, yeah, he's just like his father and, hey, I never could make it work with him. It's why we are getting divorced." This was followed by her telling him in exasperation at some point "You are just like your father!"
I think she thought it would shame him into "behaving" or something. Instead, he said "Well, yeah, I got half my genes from him."
A moment later he turned around wanting to quip "And a quarter from you!" but she was already gone. It's perhaps just as well he wasn't quicker on his feet with the humorous remark he never got to make or we might have gotten thrown out into the street that day.
After I became a parent, she once said something like "It's not hard to predict that. That's how genes work."
My oldest son got affectionately called Grandma's Curse when he was little. He was like me cubed and vastly more crazy-making than I had ever been but I adored him.
When the future ex and I were eighteen, we would go swimming together sometimes. There was a pool in his backyard and his mom would tell his sisters to leave us be and we had the pool to ourselves.
His hair was longer than mine, about shoulder length. After swimming, he would towel dry his hair and for a few brief moments he had a blond afro before going in to the house to shower, comb it down and try to control it like he normally did.
Other than me and maybe his immediate family, I'm not sure anyone ever got to see his blond afro, so most people had no idea how kinky curly his hair really was. It was much curlier than mine.
Except for a smidgen of wave at the nape of his neck, our firstborn child's hair is stick straight. When he was an infant, my mother used to run her hands through his hair, shake her head and chuckle that two curly-haired people had a baby with such straight hair.
During my divorce, I moved home with my two sons and lived with my parents for nearly a year. My mother found my oldest son so crazymaking she soon stopped speaking to him and would just tell me to tell my son x, y or z.
Before that happened, one day trying to smooth things over with my mother I said "Oh, yeah, he's just like his father and, hey, I never could make it work with him. It's why we are getting divorced." This was followed by her telling him in exasperation at some point "You are just like your father!"
I think she thought it would shame him into "behaving" or something. Instead, he said "Well, yeah, I got half my genes from him."
A moment later he turned around wanting to quip "And a quarter from you!" but she was already gone. It's perhaps just as well he wasn't quicker on his feet with the humorous remark he never got to make or we might have gotten thrown out into the street that day.