A woman I know can’t take a simple stroll through the autumn woods with her children without shouting, “Shale!” every time she glimpses sedimentary rock beneath the leaves. It has become a family joke. She can’t help it. Her father was a geologist. When she was a girl and they went walking together, he pointed out rock formations. Now, decades later, she does too. I myself can’t drive through a New England village with my children without crying, “Fanlight!” and “Cupola!” whenever we pass one. A fanlight is the small, semicircular-shaped window that you often see above the front door of Classical Revival farmhouses; a cupola is the little house-shaped ventilation device often seen atop a barn roof — and if you’d grown up with my father, you too would be unable to keep from announcing such architectural features to your own children.
It is humbling and charming, both, to consider the funny bits and pieces that we inherit from our parents. Far beyond the sober determination of our DNA, we carry into adulthood all manner of harmless quirks.
