We can sometimes tell when kids are very young the basic make-up of their personalities. These do change over time: some because they are influenced by peers, and some because life’s circumstances will change our attitude which can affect our personalities, but the basic foundation of our personality doesn’t usually change drastically. I always had a calm, easy-going personality. I like crafty things, and I remember my mother telling me as a very young child I always had a lot of stuffed animals or dolls that I played with. She said I almost never played with less than seven. She was always fascinated by that and now, especially since I have seven kids.
I remember how different my personality was from my brothers. Part of that I know was because they were boys and also because they were more curious about things, especially my brother Daniel. I don’t think there was anything that Daniel wasn’t curious about, when it came to how things worked. I remember hearing the dentist say things like, “If we are going to clean your teeth, you have to stop asking questions long enough for us to clean them”. He wanted to know how everything worked, why they needed to do it, and any other question imaginable. Daniel took apart toys before they were broke to see what made them run. Sometimes he would even have pieces left over, and yet the thing would still run. I remember him dismantling a remote control car that my parents bought for him, and he had all these little pieces left he said, “I didn’t need them to make the car run, they were extra.”
He provided the excitement in our lives, but sometimes that excitement was a little too exciting or dramatic. I remember him climbing the magnolia tree in the backyard, and this tree was huge. He got up very high, then he fell and somehow caught a lower branch. My mom had been swinging on a swing in the tree across from the magnolia, and after Daniel was on solid ground he ran over to her and said, “That was more fun than the rides at Wyandot Lake, can I do that again?” I’m sure you can imagine my mother’s response to that.
With all his curiosity about how things worked, Daniel was one of those people (even as an adult) that just seemed like he had a 24-hour guardian angel watching over him.
Image by Pam Patterson
