What were your parents good at? (grandparent, inherit, SAHM, friends)

[Larry Siegel]

Originally Posted by jtur88

What kinds of special skills or talents did your parents have, aside from ordinary household chores and what they did for a living?

My dad was a semi-pro boxer, fighting preliminary bouts in the lightweight class, and was also a very good singer, singing lead in the local barbershop quarter.

Unusual for women in her time, my mom learned to drive a car in 1923, and lied about her age to get a license. Mom also rode in her brother's airplane in the 1930s.

These are things from a century ago, a time that younger generations refuse to believe even existed.

My father was a semi-professional pianist.

What makes you think that younger generations don't think that the early part of the last century existed? My kids knew my grandfather well, and he was born in 1887, so he had plenty to say about the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. My son plays some music from that period (early blues, although he is primarily a rocker); my daughter sings jazz from that period.

[hunterseat]

My mom was an executive secretary, a superior typist and knew shorthand, which must be a lost art now. She had great organizational skills. She contributed to the NASA Viking mission in the '70s.

My dad died when I was almost 3, but I knew he was a carpenter and a sign painter. He also loved horses and had them when possible. He once had a favorite barn pigeon that was mangled by the dog. He fashioned a little wooden pegleg which the bird hobbled around on. I'm a lot like him.

[Nightengale212]

What a nice thread and thank you OP for starting it. My mother had a natural talent for playing the piano. She never took a music lesion and by just listening to a song on the radio could play it perfectly on the piano with both hands.

My father had a great talent for gardening, kept the most beautiful yard, and grew the most delicious tomatoes which I have yet to taste another as good as Dad's.

All in all, my parent's greatest talents were their ability to express love and extend never ending support to their children since neither received this from their own parents.

[Utopian Slums]

My dad was good at rolling joints, walking for miles at a time in a trance like state, drawing and paining, making houses out of decks of cards, scaring little children with bizzare behaviors, and being kind and loving to all people.

My mom was good at making people feel subservient to her, being unstable emotionally, playing the guilt card, enabling her drug addict brother, getting info and free stuff from people, cake decorating and sewing.

[ReachTheBeach]

Both were scientists. Dad a pathologist who helped create a couple of vaccines for avian diseases and mom a PhD clinical chemistry training specialist flying around the world helping others improve their diagnostic labs. Interesting dinner discussions; I still have to remind myself most people don't like to hear about medical maladies around the dinner table...
Oh, and the old station wagon with all the park stickers on the back window pulling a pop up trailer you saw out on the road? That was us - 46 states plus Canada and Mexico before I set foot on an airplane.

[kevxu]

My parents knew each other six weeks and ran away and got married. My mother was a lifetime spoiled, twelve-year-old and my father hunkered down as a lifetime eighteen-year-old locker room bully: A wretched married life, wretched as parents. However, outside of their personal hell they each had certain talents or unexpected sides.

My father was a workaholic at hard labour who over a period of more than 25 years turned two shabby old trucks into the leading (though relatively small) milk hauling business in our part of the state. He helped found a cooperative of dairy farmers and allied occupations. He almost never mention it, but he was capable of great compassion for all sorts of people in distress, though he was emotionally frozen in all close family relationships: he paid for the coal supply to heat a small rural church and every winter day on his way to work he stopped in an stoked up the furnace so the church would be warm for the morning service, he bought a generous amount of food and toys for a black family burned out of their home before Christmas, he bought out the business, land and home of a competitor when the man was crippled in an accident and let the family remain in their home for a few dollars token rent as long as he lived, several times he stopped his truck when he saw a youngster being bullied by a gang and waded in, scared the crap out of the bullies and detoured to drive the victim kid to his home. We usually learned of these things from other people, and they often annoyed my mother who was virtually a dry well when it came to compassion.

My mother had absolutely unlimited talent to learn and do any handicraft. She made superb, flawless clothes. She knitted, embroidered and crocheted. She could lay wall to wall carpet. She could build new furniture from old discarded pieces, and then sand, stain and finish the new piece so that it appeared store bought. She could do decorative metal etching. Her talent was endless in these types of activities. Given a different husband she most certainly could have opened up and run a successful store of her own.

[old_cold]

They each had their own talents and accomplishments but from my point of view what they were very good at was being parents.

[Bette]

I loved my children dearly. However, during their childhood until my daughter was 15, I owned a company and at one time had 34 employees. Lots of work.

I did have an older woman who was like a grandma for hire with us (not live in) for 20 years. She was like family. She needed us; we needed her.

I sometimes feel they thought work was more important than they were but since I was the one basically paying the bills (husband was starting his own business), I may have made some wrong decisions.

Both are strong, independent adults today but times goes so fast and there would some things definitely I would have done differently. Some things I did right but there were a few I would like a do-over.

Example: When my daughter was in 7th grade and she was extremely athletic, I had a chance to send her to a school where a lot of the athletes send their kids (if they are so inclined). Because the school was far and we'd have to drive her there, we declined. She would have been mentored by the best and possibly would have gotten the sponsorships she needed to move ahead. Just didn't know that part of it; should have done more research; been more socially out there; too caught up with work and just keeping everything going.

[BabyBoomers2]

Only knew my parents up to age 6. They got divorced and I lived with step-parents who were distance cousins. All I know about my real dad is that he worked at a bakery, was a heavy drinker and smoked cigs. My mom was a regular housewife.
Now, my step-dad loved physical labor. When he wasn't working at local lumber yard, he was doing something in his small workshop at home, cutting down trees/splitting wood in our small woods (to use for furnace wood) and just doing "labor" type things all over the small hog farm he had. My step-mom had eye problems and was a housewife. She taught me how to iron my clothes and do dishes by hand. I've never much into outside "labor" type work, but sure can do household chores.

[imagardener]

My mother was good at keeping her 3 children in good schools after marrying the wrong person, our father.
My father was good at not keeping a job and marrying several times.

Now you'd think we would like our mother more as children but no. She was often ill-tempered and never listened to us, as in gave me piano lessons when I hated piano. My father was more "fun" because he never grew up. As an adult I realized that and changed my opinion of him.

Why do people marry the exact opposite of the person they should marry? Must be some genetic reason but it makes for a stressful childhood. I have no children which explains everything and married to the almost perfect spouse (perfect would be intolerable ha).