family rules

growing up there were things we called john-isms, they were little pearls of witty repartee which my father would throw out at just the right moment for a laugh. i have tried to go back and reconstruct them, but its never going to happen, i think the context has been lost. i have thought of asking my sister to help, but more likely than not we would need to be together sitting with a bottle between us drunk and laughing to remember most of them. i mean “you lie like a rug” and “that’s a useless as a tit on a bull” are gems, but the rest may be lost to time.

as the kids were growing up i tried to keep a running list of family rules, the little sayings that i hoped they would carry into their adult lives. i tried to give them numbers, to show that they were real, kind of like the ten commandments. imagine the commandments if they were not numbered. they just wouldn't have the same feeling of gravitas as the "small number of commandments".

last week i was talking to a vegetarian who is going to the US soon. while discussing food i used the first family rule we had, “there is no guilt at the top of the food chain”. this was something a friend had said in an indian restaurant one night that worked years later when the kids didn’t want to eat bambi, sebastian or some other animal that disney has removed from the family table by humanizing them.

the questions that came were “how many rules are there?” and “what does the order mean?”. i started making a list, i had the first five locked down but the rest were more mixed into memories of parenting. by the time i was done listing them, i realized the list was longer than i expected, i also had to reorder the list, because guilt in the food chain was not as important as the two that now go before it in the list. the following are the rules that our family has been built to live by:

1. we love you, no matter what
2. do what you love, the rest will come
3. there is no guilt at the top of the food chain
4. they always find out
5. when in doubt, don’t
6. safety first, fun when safe (no glove, no love)
7. team, corp, god, country (family, friends, god, everyone else)
8. listen, think, act, then talk
9. if you need an answer now… no
10. love is trust
11. family means no one is left behind
12. if you can’t win, change the rules
13. trying hard and failing is success (failure is never trying)
14. patience is a long awaited virtue
15. god judges, friends help
16. life is short, enjoy it

okay, so these do not have the color of my father’s sayings. they are more targeted at giving the kids something of substance to remember when they hear my voice coming out of their mouths someday. or was it to give them a voice to their conscience, solid words which they would remember from years before, maybe along with a lesson in life. number four for example went along with our oldest son running an illicit po-ke-man black-market, and using the proceeds to fund the winning of a charity fundraiser. it’s always easier to not lie when you know that “they always find out”.

the amazing thing is how often these little sayings can be used. better, i have heard the older kids use them over the past few years. knowing these sayings got through to them, and that the little man will grow up hearing them even though i am not there to say it helps.

having this list does not mean that my fathers saying were useless as teaching models. he also used to tell us “we don’t care if you’re a garbage man, as long as you are the best garbage man you can be”. that was something i carry with me everyday.

it also does not mean that we don’t have a few modernized -isms, these are little saying that the kids and i trade around a table while we are laughing. usually, someone just says it and everyone laughs, no explanation is needed, we all know the context.

• if someone asks you if you’re a god, you say YES.
• i love this plan, i’m excited to be a part of it.
• i think we've established that "ka ka" and "tukki tukki" don't work.
• ohhhhh, i hate mummies.
• no, i didn't bring it. you know why? because you said, "you won't need that man, we'll be back in a half-hour.

and finally one rule that didn’t make the list, one i was surprised to hear our daughter say on vacation last year when the little man had fallen, “unless there is a compound fracture or arterial bleeding, you’re fine”. it may sound insensitive, but when someone little has skinned a knee, sometimes it’s better to just help them get up and get moving again.

running the family with rules helps. it gives us a chance to always remember what we agree is important.