Late this afternoon when we were done staining and painting for the day, I spent some time diligently cleaning paint brushes. Not the most exciting thing to start a thread about, mind you. But as I was cleaning them, I realized that is was my Father who taught me the importance of taking care of brushes and tools.

When I was a kid, my Father and I were at loggerheads most of the time. I didn't turn out at all like he wanted me to, and we seemed to disagree on everything. I seemed to spend most of my days trying to be the exact opposite of my Father. For a long time, I couldn't see that he had taught me anything. (And puhleeeesssss, can we not have anymore stupid books titled "Everything I Needed To Know I Learned from Our Garbage Disposal.") It's only been in recent years that I've come to realize how much my Father taught me, despite my deepest conviction that he didn't know anything worth learning. Kinda like the old saying, "The older I get, the smarter my parents are." It makes me wonder what my sons have learned from me. Maybe not all of the stuff that I harped on all the time. One thing that makes me laugh is that my oldest son Gideon learned the value of the phrase "We'll see." When his kids ask him if they can do something, he answers, "We'll see." They hate it as much as he did when I'd say it to him when he was a kid. Kids hold you to promises, not matter how impossible they turn out to be. Promise that you're going to take them to a movie and if you're in a car accident and have both arms and legs broken and don't take them, they'll cry, "But Dad, you PROMISED!" The trick is to say "well see." Now that my Grandkids know that their Father learned that from me, I've been diminished somewhat in their eyes... :-)

You never know what your kids are going to learn from you. Sometimes it's hard to realize how much you absorbed from your parents. Even if you tried your hardest not to listen to them.

Jerry