Grew up in a "normal" family.
Mom ran the family, Dad did the bread-winning stuff.
However, Mom wasn't the least bit shy about manual labor, and literally built half our home while Dad was at work building moon rockets.
Mom had grown up in a family of mostly guys, her father was an inventor, hunter, outdoorsman, and ballistics expert. She understood what it was to be a boy and what boys had to do in the process of growing up.
She taught me the bachelor arts: how to cook, sew, knit (yes, and even crochet, which I never mastered), mend, wash clothes, and all the stuff that "you need to know how to do when you're living on your own."
Dad introduced me to wood carving, and I have some cool scars from the learning process. Dad did some of his own work on the cars, and I learned a little watching him tune engines and stuff.
But when it came to construction, my mom could seriously keep pace with Dad and set the pace for us kids. We built a cabin in one week during a summer vacation visit to our property in southeast Arizona. Mom cut boards, dug trenches, hammered nails, ran plumb lines and chalk lines, and generally functioned as foreman for the job. Dad was the hands-on architect. Built a salt-box cabin with sleeping for six out of 2x6 T&G, including the floor, roof, and door (massive gate hinges on that door). In a week. Mom could seriously slap lumber around.
The boys (three of us) were allowed to be boys, with all the attendant injuries and go with being boys. It wasn't about being "manly" or macho. Dad spent time with us, but his lessons tended to be more pragmatic and practical things (knots, carving, a little wrenching, how to study, how to set up a tent, how to build a campfire (although Mom did that too), how to trench around a camp to avoid flooding, how to hike in the wilderness and not get lost or dehydrated.
How to drive. Gawd, what phenomenally patient man.
We never went hunting, shooting, or fishing, but Mom & Dad made no objection when I got my own pellet guns or bought my first fishing boat. Mom gave me a Pearson recurved bow for Xmas and showed me how to string and shoot it (lessons from her own father).
Dad was a generally taciturn fellow, a voracious reader, and a very serviceable tenor to Mom's alto and soprano. There were all kinds of conversations I never had with Dad. Among them was the "normal" discussion of guns. I didn't discover until he was ninety that he actually had a preference in rifles, liking the Johnson 1941 Carbine over the M1 Garand and M1 Carbine. It was one of those "but you never asked" things. It was only after his death that I was to learn that he had been a personal aide for Count Alfred Korzybski. So many things I could have learned, had I only bothered to ask.
Mom's take on "keeping kids safe" can probably best be expressed in this little story:
When I was 18 and working for a local motor hotel in Tucson, I had worked three consecutive shifts and decided that instead of driving home I would go to the county fair instead. I pulled up at a red light, signaling for a left turn and, when the light turned green started the turn and promptly dozed off. And smacked head-on into a shiny Mustang. [Insert two hours of Keystone Cops hilarity] My car was actually drivable, so I drove it home. As I walked into the house with my head tied up in a makeshift bandage with lots of colorful splotches on it, Mom looked up from whatever she was doing and quoth:
"Don't bleed on the rug."
That was Mom. She knew boys, having had a crop of brothers. She knew they were messy and random. She was okay with that.
And, as it happened, we pretty much all turned out to be self sufficient.
I'm generally mechanically inept (where cars are concerned), but that's more my own fault, not theirs. Both of my brothers are quite handy in the auto maintenance department.
But I can handle household stuff, I can cook, and I have no trouble "batching it" when I must.
Guns? Well, that's a different story, but the short version is that I just woke up one day and realized family defense was my job. I'd have gotten there sooner, but . . . oh, well.
In summary: yeah, Mom pretty much ran the home and raised the kids, but she appreciated the nature of boys and just let us do it. Of course, it didn't hurt that the culture of the day was "suck it up; rub some dirt on it, kid."
My own kids are a different story. We'll do that another time.
