Helicopter Moms: It's a nutty business

(Editor's note: Sometimes it's hard to tell whether you're tackling parenthood in the 21st century -- or being tackled by it. This is the latest in a series of reflections by UPI writers.)

ST. PAUL, Minn., Nov. 3 (UPI) -- One of the blades of a mom's helicopter is that of telling her kids the facts of family life -- those kernels of family history that makes them who they are.

Oral tradition was big in my family, particularly for my mom and aunts. They went beyond the family branches that grade school kids have to fill in as part of some human geography project. They gave depth and water to our roots -- sometimes odd, sometimes tragic and, lots of the time, seriously funny.

For example, my "How did your parents meet?" response is, "Over a bridge game" when my dad was a substitute player. He never proposed; he just assumed they'd marry even though she was engaged to someone else (and broke off the engagement less than a week before the wedding).

Then there's the story of my aunt and uncle who stayed the weekend with my parents -- as their honeymoon getaway. And the one about my hubby's mom knocking her beloved into the drink while honeymooning at a northern Minnesota lake. And those tales of the old country -- we're mainly a blend of Romanian and Slovenian with a dash of French and Swede thrown in.

When my girls ask about how their dad and I met, I always say, "I took his job, his apartment and his heart." I was hired to replace him at the UPI bureau in Charleston, W.Va., when he was transferred to a one-man operation in Morgantown, W.Va. I took over his shift and his apartment. And his heart? Well, we've been married for more than a quarter century, so ... .

This time of year always reminds me of my father-in-law. He grew pumpkins -- big and small -- on a plot of lake land in northern Minnesota. Every Halloween, we got what seemed like a gazillion of them for carving and baking. When they were younger (and smaller), the girls spent literally hours ON THE DINING ROOM TABLE scooping out innards of pumpkins that were nearly as high as they were tall. Their dad oversaw the actual pumpkin dissections, wielding carving knives to make spooky creations as dictated by the girls.

The girls are making their own family traditions and collecting their own oral traditions, ready to be passed along when they become moms and aunts. They're already talking about those pumpkin-carving marathons with their friends. And girls who are home at Halloween still carve pumpkins (and I still bake them down for pies).

That's what all this hovering is about, at least to me. It's a chance to introduce the girls to those juicy fun facts to know and tell their relatives, their foibles and their dreams.

Peeling back that bark from the family tree reveals the network of information that gives our particular branch life. The funky tales of relatives past give the girls a sense of belonging in a bigger scheme of family. They know that one of their relatives was a baker, another a milkman and several worked the rails. They know that my fretting when they got the measles stems from an aunt who went blind because of the disease.

And they may just learn that the nut doesn't fall too far from the tree.