No Drama in My Life

A wise daughter appreciates the happiness of her parents.

Great memoirs are often the result of tumultuous, even tragic childhoods. The ones where money is scarce, abuse is commonplace, and full-blown psychosis is just a drink away. The single mother or perma-dysfunctional parents drag their brood from place to squalid place, sometimes abandoning them to a wretched relative while they pursue a drug-fueled artistic journey in a desert commune.

I can see why these childhoods lead to intensely readable literature (Angela's Ashes, The Glass Castle). The child at the center manages to rise above their broken family universe and turn their lives into something laudable when the most anyone could expect is welfare living at best and violent crime at worst. Who doesn't love a story of rags to riches, destitution to destiny, chaos to creative genius?

I guess this is the long way of saying that I'll never write a great memoir. My childhood was as idyllic as Monet's Giverny. When I think back on the years I spent in my parents' home, I can't say I have any memories of nastiness or meanness. I know there must have been the occasional bad mood or minor disagreement, but overall we were at peace. We were happy. My parents loved each other and they loved their children. My dad provided during the day and played with us at night. My mom dedicated her life to being an extraordinary nurturer, without any of the bitterness over lost dreams and self-sacrifice that writers love to dredge up when describing mothers who stay at home. We really were a family that was as happy as it looked.

My parents did not tolerate any meanness between the children. I'm still not sure how they communicated this message so clearly; I don't remember any conversations about household rules.Somehow my brother, sister, and I just knew that bullying, teasing, and fighting had no place in our home. My parents rarely had to discipline us because we rarely had any reason to want to disobey them. I think the reason we didn't talk back or yell at our parents was that our parents spoke to us with patience and respect from our earliest days.

I spend a lot of time pondering parenting and its associated challenges, from the daily (a diet consisting soley of graham crackers) to the big picture (raising a moral, well-adjusted child) to the just plain scary (drugs, child traffickers, trashy girlfriends). I don't have enough mommy time under my belt to claim to have all, or even any, answers. But when I look to parents and how they did it, it seems like the answers are the simple, time-tested principles that we too often turn away from because they aren't interesting, new, or exciting. We've heard them so many times that they almost lose their power unless we really think about what they mean. Love. Respect. Kindness. Obedience. Faith. These are the things that I was raised on and no matter what anyone says about these old school ideals, no one can argue that I did not have a pretty fantastic childhood.

While loving parents aren't nearly as conducive to nonfiction pageturners as delusional self-aggrandizing parents, I'll trade happy memories for a best-selling memoir any day.