"It's Just The Way I Was Raised"

“Mom why are you cutting the turkey in half and throwing it away?”. “Oh, hey sweetie. I didn’t even hear you come in”. “Yeah, I just woke up. I was standing in the doorway watching you and then realizing that you do this every year, so I thought to ask you”? “Well, the short answer ( Janie rolls her eyes and chuckles because she knows that with mom, there is no such thing as a short answer) is that it’s what I always saw your gramma do.    It’s the way I was raised. Just like you are aware of the many different customs in our family? Most of them have just been passed on from generation to generation.

For instance, oh there I go babbling again instead of just answering your question. It’s the way we were raised, you know, actually talking. We didn’t have text, instant gram, Facebook or chat-snap like all you kids, so we talked a lot, a lot! Oh, how quickly I regress my sweet child. So, ok, where was I? Oh yeah, gramma would cut the turkey in half, season it and then put it in the oven. She roasted the best turkey ever!”. “Yes, she did Mom. But did you ever ask her why?” “ I did honey. Guess what her response was? “That’s the way I was raised”? “That’s right dear. So, I’ve done it that way all my life just like you have gotten accustomed to doing things the way that you’ve seen me doing it”.

Puzzled, Janie walked away still not fully comprehending the logic behind cutting the turkey in half and throwing it away? She was convinced that there must be a deeper meaning behind this. As she sat and continued to ruminate, she suddenly leaped off of her bed and ran back into the kitchen screaming “mom, mom, mom, I got it, I got it, I figured it out,...I think?

“You figured out what, Janie Lynn?”. “I figured out why gramma did that to the turkey. I got to thinking about the size of our oven today, and what gramma’s oven might have been like. So, what I came up with, is that grammas oven was too small to hold a large turkey so she would cut it in half. But I got a sneaky feeling that gramma did not throw away the cut half of the turkey Mom. You know gramma has a hard time throwing away a bubble gum wrapper!”

“Momma never did tell me why she did that, and for the life of me, I cannot believe that after all of these years it didn’t even dawn on me to ask her? But that’s how life is sometimes sweet-pea. We just kinda go with the flow and do things the way we see them done. We just assume that it’s the right way and don’t bother much inquiring much about things. It's just the way we were raised, hun”.

Well, while we are on the subject, I was wondering, why is that you_____________? just kidding Mom. Actually, I do have some questions but I'll save them for later, gotta run. Kisses"!

If you were to start a list, how many things might you jot down that you could say, “It’s just the way I was raised”, too?” As I ask the question my mind is targeting a surplus of articles where I could apply that phrase.

This has been especially challenging in my marriage. My bride was a latchkey, gen X’er, that grew up in a relatively affluent two kid family. She, being the older sister. She’s mentioned to me that her parents took them out to eat sometimes up to three times a week!  I, on the other hand, was raised on the streets of the inner city of New Orleans. I am the youngest of six and I know there were times growing up that we were so broke we couldn’t even pay attention! Some of the fondest memories I have were when I would get to go run errands with my Dad. I grew up in the era that “it took two hands to handle a Whopper”!  There was nothing I cherished more than when my dad would pull that ‘65 Nova into the Burger King parking lot. I guess by now you may have surmised that I am a baby boomer.

We were both raised so radically different, and that's totally ok. But nothing was going to convince me that the way I grew up watching and learning from my mom’s crazy mad domestic skilz, that there could possibly be any other way of doing things. Especially folding towels! Likewise, my bride also had her own set of engrams surrounding the way things were done in the environments where she was reared.

Truth be known, all of us have our own set of idiosyncrasies and quirks. We’ve got our own lampreys that have been clinging to us since our adolescence. Just because we were raised a certain way does not necessarily make it right or the only way. We can become very rigid, especially when we introduce a few other ingredients like pride, jealousy, narcissism, envy and striving. To name only a few.

Relationships can suffer hard blows when we are not willing to lay down “the way we were raised”, mentality. Especially if we are not willing to seek and explore ways to lay down and prefer one another, rather than our traditions.

I encourage you to perhaps consider getting in a quiet place and taking inventory of your “this is how I was raised”, list.  If any of them have become a point of contention in any relationship, how about releasing and exchanging them for peace and preferring others instead? By no stretch of the imagination am I imploring you to just throw away some of the wonderful ways that you do things as a result of how you were raised but my gut tells me you know the difference. ;)