Family Traits

There are some family traits that are easy to see.  Take my parents and my siblings:

We all have dark hair.
We each have one of two noses.  I have the "witch" nose, although some would say it was "Roman"  insert "yeah...rome'n all over your face" some of us have the "other" nose.  Both are pretty unmistakable.

Then there are family traits that you can't see:

Sarcasm.  One of my nieces likens it to a language that her dad and aunts and uncles speak fluently. Guilty. I've also heard it described as the lowest form of humor.  I don't know about that (of course I would say that), I think we primarily use it to tease each other.  Teasing, whether you like it or not, is a part of life and sometimes hits rather close to the truth.  Fortunately because we are often the butt of our siblings' sarcasm comes the ability to "take" the teasing (some of us better than others....you know who you are!)  I tease people I care about.  That may sound backwards, but I assure you it is the truth.   I've learned, however, that sarcasm is not for the general public.  Something that I probably should have learned sooner than I did.

Competitiveness. My brother-in-law, we'll call him Crazy-T, once suggested that we are a competitive family.  But not in the traditional way, we don't compete over money or houses, jobs or even our parents attention.  He said we compete to be the funniest.  Since Crazy-T said that, I've observed at family get-togethers that he is absolutely right.  Most of my memorable family moments have more than one of us doubled over in laughter or gasping for breath, begging that they "stop the story...I have...to...breath"  Personally I can't think of a downside to this trait......

Another trait that my siblings and I share is respect for our parents, for the life they gave us on that small Indiana farm.  I am thankful now for the pre-dawn goat milking, and the heat-of-the-sun rock picking.  You would be hard-pressed to find  better work-ethics than those of my 5 siblings.  Were my parents perfect?  No, of course not.  Do we each have some hang-ups from our youth....naturally, everyone does.

You see, it's not just biology that makes a family.  It's love, and all the unseen family traits that we pass down to our children...the good and the not-so-good.