Raising a Kid

My sister and I were brought up to leave home. It wasn't systematic: my mother didn't have a master plan about how this would evolve, such as:
Age 6: Set table with folded napkins
Age 7: Separate dark and light laundry items
Age 8: Feed pets
Age 9: Iron shirts for ten cents each
Age 10: Bake cookies. Make scrambled eggs.
Nope, it wasn't organized. Any more than the rest of my life has been. A few systems built into the home environment would have been useful, says 20/20 hindsight.

Instead, we got being late for school because Dad had to shave just right and pat on the aftershave before he could drive us there. We got Mom in her panty girdle, sorting through stockings to find one with no visible snags. We got hanging out at the beauty parlor, inhaling perm solution and nail polish remover. We got hanging out at the college theatre, climbing to the catwalk, playing in the prop and costume rooms, flirting with the college boys. We got frozen peas. We got the best pork roast known to human kind, which neither one of us has ever been able to duplicate.

Were we raised right?
Was anyone?

All they could do was the best they knew. Dad gave us flamboyance and chutzpah and curiosity about our fellow creatures. Mom gave us books and poetry and her unshakeable belief that everything we did was a small miracle. And, working side by side if not together, they gave us the world to wade out into and see what we could accomplish. It hasn't been a cakewalk but we're both still curious.