Nature and nurture

My son is a very remarkable and interesting person, and has been since the moment he graced the planet and my life with his presence. Note I did not say "easy" or "sweet", though he can be sweet when he makes an effort. He has never been easy. He is too smart, too talented, too eclectic, and too damn stubborn to ever be easy, and he was born in a hurry. Patience is not his strong suit.

My son is a big, handsome charmer with a smile that knocks you off your feet, and dimples the size of New Jersy. Though he is truly is own man, he is also his father's son; intelligent, intellectually curious, physically skilled, a problem solver. More than anyone else, however, he reminds me of his two grandfathers. In any argument over which has the greater influence in the development in a personality, nature or nurture, the answer is almost always "both". My son proves the rule. He has known my father all his life. He never knew Dave's father. Yet both men live on in him, and I see little evidences of them in his complex personality every day.

My dad, who calls himself "Lovable Bill" is mercurial, charming and a natural salesman. He is not an easy person either, (though for different reasons). At 80, he is still a handsome man and he knows it. He thinks very well of himself. Bill is alternately completely selfish and completely generous. He has an incredible green thumb and used to have some of the most beautiful lawns and gardens in town, back in the day when he owned his own home. He has always been a bit of a male chauvinist, loving women without really thinking they were worth much, though he thought my mother, at least, was a "lady". I see some of these attributes in varying degrees in my son, especially the charm.

Dave's dad never got to meet my son. Dominic died two years before he was born, which was a terrible shame, because they would have really loved one another. Dominic could be stubborn and/or unreasonable, but most of my memories of him are filled with love. Dominic was blessed with so many gifts- everything but an education, the lack of which negatively affected his self-esteem. He was a master mechanic and could make or fix anything. He created a pen with a radio in it years before they become available on the market. He was a brilliant craftsman. He crafted his own violin and taught himself to play it. He taught himself to play the accordion, though he played it upside down because he was left-handed. He was a master builder, building or remodeling every house he ever owned. He was a master gardener. I remember helping him in his huge garden many years early in my marriage, and getting the benefit of the bounty that came from it. The first year of my marriage, Dave and I were helping rake leaves and Dave's wedding band slipped off his finger. We looked and looked and could not find it. As it started to get dark, we gave up and went home. The next day, Dominic called to say he'd found it. He'd gone out with a flash light to look for it and hadn't stopped looking until he found it. Such a romantic. He was a beautiful man, both physically and in his soul. My son even walks like him, an almost tiptoeing, rolling kind of a walk.

Like his grandfathers, my son is a beautiful man. He has many talents, skills and gifts and many of the personality traits of both my dad and Dave's. He is more than the sum of his parts, as are we all, but in my son, the influences that helped shape him are easy to see. It's not that I don't see traces of myself, or Dave, and any number of other people in my children. My daughter, for example, reminds me very much of her Aunt Rita. It's just that, with my son, there are times when it's almost like stepping back in time and seeing my dad as a young man, or Dave's dad as a young man. He's a better man than both of them, but they are there in him.