Zachary's lacrosse coach is the son of my long time friends. The other day I was watching a game and the coach greeted another spectator with an enthusiastic hand shake and a smile. The small gesture made me inhale sharply. In that split second he looked exactly like his father, a man of integrity. In fact he reminded me of his grandfather as well. I felt a surge of fondness for all three men and the not so invisible threads between them. 

 

It is not news that children look and behave like their parents. Cleft chins, wide noses and distinctive gaits show up years later in the faces and legs of people who are oblivious to the obvious. Sometimes I look at my own sons and marvel at the resemblance to the man I chose to love. Is it genetic? Is it contagion? 

 

Of course it is not only the sterling attributes that are carried on. My girls are laissez-faire about picking up their paraphernalia and I do not need to wonder where that comes from. Although I never made any pronoucements about the right way to toss off shoes when you come in the door, my kids have eyes. They followed suit. 

 

Children learn the ways of relationships from their parents too. John and I cringe to remember the lessons we passed on to our older kids about yelling. We may never have declared it as an effective tool for communication but we certainly demonstrated it as the method of choice. Two decades later we have changed. Yelling is an anomaly in our home now. It happens but certainly not every day and sometimes not even every week. I believe that this impacts the last of our kids in ways that will bear fruit for them and even for their children. 

 

I suppose if I had realized in those early years that the echo of my screeching would reverberate for half a century I might have clenched my teeth a little harder.