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Every now and then, my brain goes traveling down Memory Lane for no specific reason. And it comes back with a totally random very specific piece of my past.

Usually something that has to do with my childhood.

Chéri is very familiar with these Family Flashes, because I always feel the need to share them with him, when they happen.

I thought I’d start a little series, like a scrapbook of these tiny bits of my life.

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As toddlers, we learn directly from our parents. And four and a half decades ago, Mom and Dad probably didn’t realize they were being awarded the title of on call, 24/7 and unpaid teachers, for the rest of their lives. Without training in any way or form.

Just as your parents, and just as anyone else’s parents.

And that’s quite amazing to me. Because people in our society, need to study for years to get the permission to teach children things like maths, or geography.

Yet new parents get sent home one day with a precious blank little human, with the task of teaching it how to be a good person. No manual provided. Even if little humans have been coming to life for thousands of years.

(Let’s take a moment to give all parents a warm round of applause, I think they (you, maybe) well deserve it!)

I read somewhere that a lot of the most common fears that children develop, when growing up, are ”induced” or passed on by their parents. I am no psychologist, but it makes a lot of sense to me.

During our first years, we are real sponges taking in any information we get fed. And as much as we’ll mimic speaking, or walking, I think that we process things that our parents are afraid of as a threats. And after a while, these thoughts probably sink in very deeply.

Which brings me to what I really wanted to say in this post (sorry for the long introduction).

One thing I am really grateful to Mom and Dad, looking back on how they brought me and Little Bro up, is how they somehow succeeded in not making us scared of what they feared, themselves. They were very skilled at teaching us what to be cautious about, without dramatizing over it.

We were taught not to follow strangers, without being scared of them. That water could be dangerous, while being sent to swimming lessons at a young age, so we could enjoy pools and the ocean safely. They warned us of this world’s dangers without enveloping us in bubble wrap.

I thought about all of this tonight, because we had a big thunder storm over Montréal. And my first throught after one or two major lightnings, was that a couple of my close friends were probably very nervous, while I was wishing for the next one.

And I had a flashback of our family, when I was about ten years old.

Thunder storms usually happened in the early evening, a little after dinner. Our house had a covered front porch, and as soon as the first lightning struck, Mom would get her rocking chair outside, and Little Bro and I would tag along.

We knew that we weren’t to go run in the rain, when lightnings happened. But the porch was safe, and we counted seconds with Mom, to estimate how far away the storm was (if you don’t know the trick, you count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder, and divide by 3. And it gives you – roughly – the distance of the heart of the storm).

She used to tell us that Nature offered the best shows, and that they were free! And was she right about that.

And all of that without a single manual. Well done Mom and Dad 😉