Parents

Hey people, What are you relationships with your parents like?
How do you relate to them on the subjects we see on this site?
No one is under obligation here. I am just interested in this subject.
ofthewood

I realize this relates to the dealing with non believers page,but Im talking specificaly parents.
We can move this to the above mentioned page if we have to.
ofthewood

im all like “yo mom change or die” and shes all “you smell bad”

so whatever

Why do people ask questions of things personal, and give no examples themselves?

My father’s a fan of progress. He grew up on a farm, worked damned hard too. When he was eleven or twelve a neighbor died, and nobody took notice for a week. My Grandfather was a parapalegic from a war and could do nothing about it, so my father scooped the rotting decaying body up into buckets with a shovel. My father enjoys leisure time, and he’s still by far one of the two busiest people I know, the other being my mom. He works all day, smokes constantly, and his brakes entail him reading up on trees and wood primarily (he’s big into billiards). He does not agree with everything I say, but definitely understands my scepticism about current world events. My father’s name is Hal. From his early teens to about seventeen he really really really liked to hallucinate. Shrooms. Acid. Ketamine(?), and one other that was big back then which I cannot recall. He tripped so much people called him Hallucinating Hal. He doesn’t know that I love to hallucinate too, and I’d probably be in the same boat if I had the money (or a sterile room to start a shroom grow, innoculate some shit). Even if he knows I trip, he doesn’t know that I’m tripping now.

My mother’s somewhat in the same boat, but she’s much much much more aloof. Too kind hearted in thinking that people in control of this country (or any country) could have selfish aims with which they could harm all the people within (or without). She hates it when I pick my nose, even outdoors. She’s dating a man who’s kinda an outdoors’y type, so she’s more receptive of what we speak of than she used to be. She likes cars, in the sense that she used to have to walk across the city to go to a monastary for schooling, and it’s an improvement upon that. She doesn’t care much for television, and whenever she does sit down and watch she’ll constantly be stitching, knitting, making a quilt, whatnot. Otherwise she’s gardening or cooking or cleaning up after my siblings and my sister’s children.

I love them both immensely, get along really well, but we do not keep in touch (what with me living three hours away and all). Don’t talk on the phone (every few months perhaps for half an hour?). I’d probably visit more if I had a car, or if I were an awesome biker. Speaking of biking, gonna bike some now.

My old man’s pretty set in his ways, always has been. Unfortunately these ways include running off with random women. He did it for good when I was 12 (they’re now married), so that was the end of that. Most people have had only bad things to say of him, and my own feelings are those of passive contempt. He visits occasionally and we talk about the same boring crap. He taught me a few decent things back in the day, but as far as I’m concerned he’s not my father anymore.

I get on better with my mother, we have a special sense of humour and lateral thinking. Yet I don’t really trust her, since she created an atmosphere at home full of relentless mockery directed at me, and backed up by my older siblings. It psychologically fucked me up in the end, I don’t talk much or share secrets with anyone these days. I used to be the family comedian but the constant ridicule drove that out of me. My mother’s fun to be around most of the time, but she has a lot to answer for. We get on mostly by cracking jokes all the time (she dosn’t humiliate me unless third parties are present to amplify it).

So yeah, not too pretty a story but this ain’t care-bear land…

I like my parents, they are kind. Sure they were fucked up in alot of ways, it does’nt matter as much when you don’t live with them anymore. Lately my mom and dad have had merrital friction. My mom say’s she wants to build a tree house on my clans land to escape it. Kinda hard situation because the land is our dream, and mom does’nt dream the same. It’s hard saying no to someone like a mom in need, though I’m going to. In a healthy community I would’nt have to, we would be of one culture and no conflict would arise. I now have a kid at 7 months, I hope to live with them always and I hope we grow together to be one people. I want that to exist now.

My mother could survive the apocalypse with one arm tied behind her back, and drag her friends and neighbors along for the ride. When she hears there’s an economic collapse on the horizon, she says “hell, I’ve been here my whole life, let me show you around.” She could take any god you care to name in two out of three rounds. She’ll rewild in her spare time, and barely notice that the “luxeries” are gone. We get along fine.

I haven’t seen my father in over a decade, and we haven’t spoken for five years. Good riddance to the asshole.

I wish my stepdad hadn’t turned to drink when he realized his job sucked. He was a nice man when he married my mother. Now, even after he’s cleaned up, he’s killed too many brain cells to ever really be functional again. Sadly, we’re all better off now that he’s gone. I hope he quits thinking my mother will take him back, and moves on somewhere he can be happy, being a beach bum like he was in his youth.

Could your mom come live with me please. thank you.

maybe she’d make me her nephew.

Hell, come on down. We ain’t moving (we own our land outright and 5 generations have lived there), but the more the merrier. A friend is someone you feed.

My dad lived in the forest with a bunch of other guys during the Seventies. He loved being outdoors, fishing, etc. He had a tattoo of a grizzly bear on his arm. Among the few stories he told me about his family, his grandfather got raked down the arms by a bear and stuttered from that moment on.

My mom took me camping a couple days after she birthed me. We camped a lot during my childhood, never campground camping, just picked a spot in the forest. To this day, she spends every weekend camping. She lives relatively low-tech as it is, in a fifth wheel in a field (down the road from Lost Valley intentional community in Oregon). She knows all kinds of stuff I wish I had learned before moving away. I told her that, and she says that she and her husband will come and show me how to fish and hunt and all that goes along with that.

Neither of my parents ever reacted badly to anything I’ve told them about. I’ve always felt accepted unconditionally. Maybe it helps that neither of them fit the mainstream stereotype either.

I love my parents, they don’t completely understand alot of things about me but they try. That’s saying alot since I am now their queer in too many ways to keep track of, transsexual, yet gender free, child. They kind of HAD to come along for the ride since 4 out of their 5 children are praying for the downfall of human civilization, are, or will soon be living in the woods, and 3 of the 5 are very strongly queer identified.
My mom is turning into a way woo woo, free love, born again hippie. Don’t know how else to describe it. It’s awkward for me to be around, but I can tolerate it fer sure.
My dad is an assistant principle at Aberdeen Junior High. He trys to get us, and makes it clear that he loves us, he’s cool.
They are both good parents.

any chance your mom would sell me 3 acres?

-ww

my father is a narcissistic, intimidating-to-the-point-of-violence ass. my mom is his minion. my younger brother has become the yuppie version of our father and my even younger brother committed suicide 12 years ago. i have no relationship with my family as of 6 months ago.

I’ve always felt really lucky to have my parents, and reading some of the postings here I am reminded why.

My father is quiet but always plugging away on some project, a characteristic I inherited. He has been a Zen practitioner for several decades now, but I can tell by looking at his bookshelf that he explored a lot of “alternative spiritualities” when he was younger. These days he spends his free time landscape gardening, both at home and the local Zen center. He is extremely hard-working: I don’t know that he’s ever taken a day off of work (except vacation days) and he has always picked up the slack from the rest of the family’s lack of housework (including cooking). He generally supports progressive politics, but is more critical than my mother. The only times I can recall him espousing civilization explicitly was to criticize my brothers’ uncouth table manners.

My mother has had her struggles with depression, like many in her family. She really doesn’t like her job, but hasn’t made the additional step of questioning the job culture altogether. She works in a library and is content to spend her free time reading novels and watching TV. She is uncritically liberal and is thrilled to have a president that can speak English coherently. She hates camping and has often used the word “civilization” positively.

I include my aunt because she helped my parents in raising me and my brothers when we were younger and because our relationship has grown closer in recent years. I’ve never really understood her and my mother’s relationship, my mom describes her as not as crazy as she pretends to be. She lives in a rural area (much to my mother’s chagrin) with her partner and several pets. Despite this, she lives mostly off of government food. She’s really into New Agey spiritualities (most recently Baha’i and Sylvia Browne [gag]) and susceptible to fuzzy thinking. Conversely, she is one of the most intuitive people I have known, probably why she was once a nurse. I told her a few months ago that I don’t hold much truck with politics and she agreed. We’ve also discussed the inevitability of societal collapse and 2012 predictions.

All of this is highly relevant to me right now because I will be moving in with my parents next month, having graduated from college last May. Explaining my completely reoriented worldview to my parents will be interesting. My father will probably be interested in my ideas, but won’t have much commentary. My mother will definitely be resistant. I’m really worried about how my family will fare when this civilization inevitably collapses. They don’t have much money saved up, and survivalism/preparedness is totally foreign to them. They own (via mortgage) their suburban house in a city that was thrown together with car-based transportation as the only option. I’m planning on moving in a few months to learn horticulture at a tech school about two hours from where my aunt lives. I think she would be quite receptive to rewilding and could probably help me get jobs on nearby farms. I have always understood that I would inevitably have to support my elders as they become to old to look after themselves, but I’m only recently coming to the understanding that this may (probably?) will be in a post-collapse context. I will try to convey this sense of duty to my brothers, who seem to lack all sense of responsibility.