Parent Stories

As women sometimes will, we were combining work and play, the three of us sitting at an unused dinner table, talking about which wines and cheeses to order for the coming week and telling parent stories.

Lindsey and I have, though there are just over thirty years between us, a great many common memories of tv shows, music, past events, and parental themes - Clean your plate, there are children starving in Europe, for example or Little pitchers have big ears. We both know the story of "The Black Dahlia", both have seen "The Wizard of Oz" more times than we can remember, both know who Billie Holiday, Clarence Darrow, and Audie Murphy were. We both know the story of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and who starred in the movie, all the theories of the JFK assassination, remember "Bandstand" with Dick Clark, have a working knowledge of the Civil War and past presidents. I have the Weeper Whineys who lived under the shoe shelf in my closet and she has monsters who came out of the dark and devoured children who didn't mind their parents.

Liv, being considerably younger and having been born and raised in a tiny, South Louisiana town built on grit, poverty, broken families and tamales, has ghosts and dire warnings. She remembers tales of "The Crying Woman", a lost and condemned spirit who killed her child and spent eternity stalking and kidnapping children who misbehaved. Parents who sold their children to creatures who wore rags, lived under bridges and were always hungry - hellfire was the reward for sassing grandma. Children who defied their parents could be snatched by ghosts and never returned, the penalty for a stolen piece of candy was being locked in a dark, airless closet with only your imagination and the monsters it could produce for company. Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about was everyday language.

Be it cruel threats or a beating in the woodshed, emotional deprivation or ghost stories, we all survive our childhoods and carry scars. We overcome or give in, get past it or stay stuck to the memories. Either way, the parent tales we remember, whether good or bad, remain - to be shared and laughed over, wondered at or hurt by, but never to be completely dismissed.