This is an excellent thread. I regret not finding it sooner, as my various ups and downs are quite mundane in comparison.
I am a band geek born to band geeks. My folks met during the summer of 1976 in a group called the United States Collegiate Wind Band. There were two members from each state. Dad was a tuba player from Upper Michigan and Mom a trumpet player from Maine. They toured all the pretty parts of Europe (ironically, on the trip, much of the group got food poisoning from a dish that, save for a slight spelling change, is also my last name), stayed in touch, and eventually Mom came to Michigan, they got married (in Maine with an accidental flyover from the Blue Angels, performing at the local Naval Air Station) and here I am.
They came from different parts of the country and their backgrounds were pretty divergent as well. Dad's side of the family is close-knit (five kids and spouses, no marital strife or substance issues whatsoever) and tremendously musical. There were enough of us, mostly brass, that five or six relatives (from three generations) march with the local city band on the 4th of July. Several more would bring instruments for an impromptu patriotic concert on the boathouse at the lake later in the day. At one point, three of the five kids were music teachers (and a fourth was an art teacher). Dad has a 'Dad bod,' makes 'Dad jokes,' coached my Little League teams, deaned church camp every year. It's almost too good. I often fear that I'll never reach my potential in this business because I don't have the 'asshole gene' necessary to be really good, and Dad is why, because he doesn't have it either. He went into school administration, but was turned down repeatedly by the school district we lived in because he was perceived to be too "nice." So nice, in fact, that the district he worked for 15 years ran him out on a rail for no good reason. That said, he found a job running senior citizen programs in town (commute down from 30 miles to half a block) and is finding his second wind. 59th birthday was this week.
Mom had it different. Her dad was severely epileptic and died before she hit her teens, which led to her mom having a nervous breakdown and a brief stint in foster care. Regardless, she and her two siblings were raised on welfare, the main impact of that on me being that she's relentlessly cheap (though also quite thrifty). One of them served in the Air Force and got a degree from Columbia, the other has mostly scratched out a living in the lower middle class. Nana has spent a large part of her life trying to "fix" the people around her, which has led to Mom spending a large amount of time (roughly 15 years now), trying to "fix" me, whether it was relentless concern-trolling about my weight, my cleaning abilities or my propensity to bite my nails. It has reached the shouting match level at times. And yet, physically, we're very similar. Same blood type, same poor eyesight, and same tendency toward mood swings.
It's not perfect, but it's not bad.
