Becoming your parents

I remember when I was a pre-teen/teenager, friends of my parents and other family members would always tell me, "you look just like your mom!" In typical asshole adolescent fashion, I usually turned up my nose or made a face. The thought of being anything like my parents was just so horrific. Like most people, though, I gradually got over that immature attitude. Granted, it took quite a while and I had some particularly rough years of disagreement with my parents in my later teens. But by my 20s, I just stopped giving a fuck about being embarrassed to be seen with my mom or tooling around town in my dad's old truck. Now, I really like my parents. They drive me crazy, but I love them and I love spending time with them (in limited quantities). I think the combination of age and distance has helped this aspect of our relationship.

But as I unpack my apartment this weekend, I am struck by another phenomenon that my mom and dad and aunts and uncles and other adults have often referred to...

I am becoming my parents.

This is scary to me because it makes me feel old and cliche. How can I be becoming my parents: they're so old! How can I be old enough to be like them? *Shudder.* But at the same time, I'm old enough to reflect on this now, and actually, it makes me happy and it makes me love my parents more. I am seeing good tendencies and eccentricities of my mom and dad come out in me. I am seeing bad ones too, but I'm finding a positive spin on them.

For example, my parents are both pack rats, but in very different ways. The things that they value and accumulate are completely different. My mom saves sentimental things like photos, letters, drawings, cards, and postcards, magazines and clippings, gift bags, unnecessary receipts, outdated bills and financial records, and clothes. My dad saves screws, nails, bolts, and all similar hardware and tools, wood and metal, wires and cords, plastic and aluminum containers, Ziploc bags, and food scraps to make soups and broths later. Some of these practices infuriate me. Every time I help my mom clean her room, I find a pile of magazine articles that have been randomly ripped out of magazines at doctor's offices or other waiting rooms or people's homes. Often she was halfway through the article and she wanted to finish it later or the article had a good recipe, tip, idea, or cool fact that she wanted to try or share later. Whenever I find this pile of random clippings, I will immediately try to throw out the entire pile without her notice because if she sees it, she will literally sort through and read every single article and insist on continuing to save the pile for later. In addition, her room is full of boxes of old cards and family pictures. She has my report cards and art projects from years ago. Her closet is overflowing with clothes, many of which were given to her by nice old ladies in her congregation or who she cleans for at her work. The majority of these clothes are hideous. They are out of style, over-sized, over-worn, and so unflattering. But she wears them and won't get rid of them. Her reasons are like "but so-and-so gave that to me" or "but that was a present from so-and-so."

Welp, turns out I'm exactly like her. As I have been unpacking my apartment, I have found so many little boxes and containers full of sentimental items, including a stack of letters from my middle school pen pals. The real clincher, though, was when I found of small stack of recipes that I had torn out of Real Simple and Cooking Light and BHG and other magazines over the past few years. They were all great recipes and things I totally want to cook. So what did I do? You guessed it, I resaved them for later use.

We are also the same in terms of saving things that our loved ones have given us. Every day I do my make-up using a little pedestal mirror that was given to me in high school by my Aunt Cecile. She used to work for Sterling Optical in the Aviation Mall and this was one of the free-standing mirrors that customers used to see how they looked when they tried on new glasses frames. When Sterling Optical went out of business, the store furnishings were free for employees to take home and Aunt Cecile gave me the mirror. I'm not even sure if she gave it to me directly, or gave it to my dad or gramma and they offered it to me. Regardless, it is a perfect example of a classic Morin behavior: something that you don't necessarily have a use for but it is free and in good condition and you will take it because you or someone you know might want it later. (I will come back to that in a minute.) Almost 20 years later, the mirror surface is a little cloudy now, the back is all tarnished, it squeaks when you move it, and I think the screw that connects the mirror to the pedestal is getting stripped because it won't stay in certain positions anymore. But I love it so much. I love using it every day and it makes me think of my aunt every time I use it. Especially since Aunt Cecile passed away of brain cancer, many years before her time, it has taken on extra importance for me.


Similarly, around 2006 I visited my Great Aunt Irene, aka Inci-Nani (a Hungarian term of endearment meaning my dearest Aunt Irene), in Illinois for a weekend. She was pretty close to me at Purdue and I tried to go up and visit her as often as possible. Inci-Nani was my absolute favorite. She used to called me Angel Face and she had the best evil eye facial expressions, especially when my Uncle Byron or dad said something dumb. She always made me feel beautiful and smart and funny and I just loved being around her. For me Inci-Nani was the type of person that you didn't have to try at all around her, she just loved you and you could relax with her. Anyway, on this particular visit I was helping her cook and I was using her standing box grater to shred carrots or potatoes or something. I commented that I really needed to get one of them because it worked so well. Immediately she said I should have that one. I said no, she insisted, I agreed, you know how it goes. I still have that box grater and it is one of my most treasured and nonsensical kitchen tools. The top of it cracked at some point so the handle doesn't really stay on top when you're using it. Also, I must have dropped it and dented the side because it stands a little askew on flat surfaces. Whatever, I don't care. It is the best grater in the history of the world because my Inci-Nani gave it to me. Inci died of lung cancer, just like my Grandma Roza, and I miss her so badly. And when my mom was unpacking with me last weekend, she unwrapped the grater and said, "Awwww Inci-Nani" before putting it in the cabinet.

And that's why I love my mom. She might not remember how to get to Middlebury, VT but she remembers every gift and token and special item in our lives. I love that she would have saved that grater for as long as I have and made my dad fix it multiple times in order to preserve its lifespan. And in terms of all my mom's clippings and articles and magazines, they are symbols of her ideas and goals and creativity. She saves articles about exercise and meditation and communication and tons of other positive endeavors. She is always working to be happy and healthy and productive, and to share those things with the ones she loves. She is always being thoughtful and thinking of little things that me or my dad or her friends would like to read or make or eat and she saves them. I love my mom's goals and dreamy nature, and I love her thoughtfulness. Unintentionally, I have come to share the positive aspects of these behaviors and I'm okay with that.

Make no mistake, though, I have found tons of ridiculous, non-sentimental things that I have saved, just like my mom. I just found three boxes of check duplicates from my very first bank account (Charter One) from like circa 2000-2005. Correspondingly, I have literally found checks, receipts, bills, and taxes from the mid-90s in my mom's records. I shredded boxes of this stuff at our house. But first, I had to prove to her that she would not need it and she would not be audited for a Windex receipt from 2007. I don't know why I saved those checks or old bills and receipts. I guess I was just worried that someone might need them at some point. Just like my mom.

My dad has his own quirks and it is equally difficult for me to accept many of them. He is generally not sentimental, but he is hella thrifty and resourceful. My dad is totally the person that you go to when you need a tool or when you need something fixed but you have no manual or parts or any idea how it works. This is because he saves everything and he is very good at taking things apart and putting them pack together (albeit with a few extra pieces left over). This is an awesome skill, but mainly my dad does it because he doesn't want to buy a new one. For example, my mom has several high quality vacuums for her cleaning jobs. They are pretty expensive purchases and they work great, however, they are not commercial vacuums, so they cannot handle the amount of work she requires of them. She always gets the warranties, but after those run out, they may break down. My dad saves all my mom's old vacuums so when there are issues with newer ones, he will take them apart and swap out pieces. He has kept several running well past the manufacturer's expectations. This is such an old school behavior. Like remember when there were tons of repair men for TVs and vacuums and stoves and washing machines. Now if your vacuum dies, most people would just buy a new one. We live in a throwaway culture of waste and obsolescence but my dad is of an older mindset that things should be repaired, not replaced. Granted, sometimes he takes it too far and refuses to get rid of clearly broken things. Exhibit A: The PT Crapper. But for the most part, my dad just doesn't want to get rid of anything that might be useful later. As I mentioned earlier, why throw out a perfectly good fill-in-the-blank.

I hated my dad's cheapness growing up. Our family has always been working class or lower-middle class and although I think we have had a great life, money has never really been in abundance. But of course, when I was young, I dreaded the thought of being called poor. Kids are so cruel and insults about your family's finances cut very deep. My dad's thriftiness made me feel like we didn't have enough money and I didn't want anyone to know that. In retrospect, my dad's thriftiness is totally a product of his upbringing. He grew up as one of 14 children and I know my grandparents were wonderful providers and they "never wanted for anything," but of course, they didn't waste anything or make a lot of frivolous purchases. Growing up, though, I often felt like I was being raised as one of fourteen by my dad, even though I am an only child, because he could be so stingy at times. Of course, that was partially me being a spoiled brat, but also he did make us feel guilty about buying things and still does. Now that I have my own successful career, I am doing just okay financially. I do not have extra money yet, mostly because of student loans and other debts, but I do not really have to watch my money. And yet, I find myself emulating my dad's behaviors all the time.

For example, my dad saves screws. Like if you were to get a piece of IKEA furniture and you had 3 leftover screws when you were done putting it together, my dad would save those. His garage is full of containers of screws/nails/nuts/bolts/etc. of every size and shape. He could probably match just about any screw you give him. Well when I was packing and cleaning the old apartment, I realized that I had taken one of the kitchen cabinet doors off because it wouldn't stay shut and I just didn't bother reattaching it because it was the glasses/mugs cabinet and I liked how it looked with an open front. But I wanted to put the cabinet door back on when I left so it didn't look broken. I had long since lost track of the screws from the door but, of course, I have a container a random screws in my tools, so I just sorted through that for a moment until I found four of similar size to the original and I used my drill gun to put the door back on. The entire time I was doing this, I was smiling because it was exactly like my dad. And as a side note, as I was unpacking, I found the four original cabinet screws and I decided to keep saving them.

Also, I organized my dad's garage a little bit last year for a goodbye party/picnic for the Swifts and I had to put some of his stuff into totes just to get it out of the way. In the process, I found an entire container of just old lamp wires and extension cables that he had saved. I was so annoyed and confused by this and I wanted to throw them all away but the potential wrath of Michel prevented me. Well when I was unpacking my office stuff today, I found an entire box of cords. Granted, these are all phone and electronics cords, but the principle is similar. I ended up sorting through all of them and getting rid of quite a few, but mostly I just made a more organized box of cords.

Yes those are small screws.

And the list goes on. My dad will wash and reuse Ziploc bags until they have holes. I totally wash and reuse bags now. I save containers from lunchmeats and take out and other durable items. (See random screws above in a Talenti Gelato jar.) I would say my motivation is less money and more environmental related, but the behavior is learned. And I'm so not as bad as him with everything. Like in typical man fashion, he will wear his underwear well past their prime. My mom and I joke that he never actually throws out old briefs, they just turn into spores and return to the wild like dandelion seeds. I admit, I do have a pair of Nike flip-flops that my dad has fixed for me like 10 times. I refuse to get rid of them and now they have become a challenge. Like how long can I keep wearing them. P.S. I bought them in 1998 for $19.99. I think I've got my money's worth.

The difference is, now I'm proud of it. I remember once when we were on the way to Florida (we drove down for vacation every year until I was 14) that my dad suddenly pulled over on the side of the highway. He got out and start walking back several hundred feet. He picked up something on the side of the road and returned to the car. Turns out he had spotted a big truck tire chain on the shoulder. He put it in the trunk and ended up bringing it back to NY. He didn't even own a big truck, but he figured his pulp truck driver (because he was still logging back then) or my Uncle Leon could use it because those chains are really expensive. I was mortified by this action. Picking up stuff on the side of the road?! What are you, a bum?! Fast forward about 15 years to when I am grad student at Purdue. I had just parked in the Marstellar St Garage and I was walking toward University Hall when I spotted a bungee cable on the ground. At first I walked past it and then I turned around, looked at it, and said in my head, "that's a nice bungee cable." I picked it up and walked back to my car and put it in the trunk and then turned around to go back toward University. At that moment a wave of recognition came over me and I thought, "holy shit I have become my dad." I immediately called him and told him the story. He was so proud.

Likewise with turkey carcasses. (Which might be the best opening sentence ever.) In past years when I have gone to friends' houses for Thanksgiving, I often inquire about the carcass after dinner. In my house the carcass was like gold because you boiled it down for broth which made the best turkey soup base. Apparently, though, some people just throw out the bones! Can you believe it?! What a waste! So I would politely ask if they minded if I took the carcass for soup? I would try to play it real cool, like when investors don't want to start selling all their shares too publicly, for fear of causing a panic. I didn't want the owner of the carcass to realize the value of what they were giving up. Well, I was so incredibly delighted a few years ago when I posted something on Facebook about making broth from turkey carcass and my cousin Emily commented on it. Emily and I have never been super close. I mean I really like her and she seems awesome. Now that we are adults and FB friends, I know we would be friends in real life, regardless of whether we were related. But she lived in MA growing up so we didn't see each other very often and with 28 cousins in the Morin family, we don't all know each other as well as in some smaller families. But she wrote something like, "The carcass is the best!" and proceeded to tell me that her friends and then fiancee looked at her a little crazy as she stuffed the whole turkey carcass into their cooler after that year's Thanksgiving gathering. We decided it is totally a Morin thing. My dad and Aunt Anne aren't super close either, but they can't deny that Morin thriftiness. And people can look at us like we are crazy, but we make the best soups. Similarly, my dad saves vegetable cuttings and peelings in the freezer and then boils them down for veggie broth every few weeks. I totally have an ongoing bag of veggies scraps in my freezer for the same purpose.

Even just this past February, I was driving home near Eagle Lake and I saw that state crews had just cut down a bunch of trees along Rt. 74. As soon as I got home, I told my dad and we drove out with the chainsaws. We nearly filled the back of his truck bed with scrap logs that would have just been left to rot. In fact, he is able to run our woodstove all winter with mainly free wood from pallets and trees left/given by others. I was happy to help my parents and my dad was delighted that I even thought of it. And that's exactly what I mean. There would have been a time when I wanted to curl up and die because my dad was walking along the side of the road with his chainsaw. But now, I was happy to tell my dad about the wood and we had a fun little adventure collecting it. I still get annoyed by my dad's excessive cheapness sometimes, but I also really respect my dad's thrift and resourcefulness, and I am so proud that he passed those traits along to me. He and I know that I am competent, capable, and hardworking, and I thank him for teaching me those lessons.

All and all, I am a direct mixture of my parents best and worst traits. I love my mom's sentimental, thoughtful nature, and I love my dad's resourcefulness and skills. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to become your parents after all.