for me, the moment when my mom looked me in the eye and told me that i was never obligated to speak to anyone, ever, is a moment that will stay with me forever. and i love that she made it crystal clear that if i didnt want to talk to someone for any reason, regardless of what they were saying or what society expects from me, i was always justified in exercising that decision to just be silent. and, well. you know how kids are about what their parents say with conviction, its like god itself hath spoken.
i think i mustve been relatively young at the time, maybe 11 or 12 years old. old enough to do laundry but not old enough to be out after dark, haha. both of my parents taught me a lot of things, things that i continue to make use of in my everyday life.
since my father died of cancer some years ago, it got me thinking about what i'll remember of my mother after she goes. given that i remember it now and shes not even gone, i think that'll be what sticks most, for me.
what sticks most with my dad is the times that he'd come into the kitchen when i was fixing some cereal, and well...i love sugar. i dont react much to it, like i dont get hyper or anything, but i love the taste of it, so i always have a plain cereal like cheerios with sugar sprinkled on top. so he'd come into the kitchen, seeing me with the cereal and putting sugar on it, and he'd stand there and look down at it (he was 6'5", pretty tall, so EVERYTHING was below him lol), and id eventually look up at him and say "...what?", and he'd look at me and just say, "ahhh, c'mon. put a little more sugar on it.". so now whenever i make my coffee and im scooping in the sugar, i can hear him in the back of my mind saying "ahhh, c'mon. you can put some more sugar on!". kind of an odd thing to remember, i guess, all things considered.

so how 'bout you? living or dead, away or at home, what's the most precious bit of advice or just all-around best memory you have of your parental unit(s)?

Sorry, what I learned was lots of BAD, that took me YEARS to "unlearn". But I did learn things from my Nana; every person has a story; don't be quick to judge. Be gentle with people, most of them are good, but lots of them were hurt in some way as children and are afraid. And from Grampa, a love of Sci-Fi.

I've mercifully forgotten a lot. I've searched my mind for something my mother might have said to me and can't find anything - all I can remember is her monologues complaining about my father. I remember a few things my father said - that God is in everything and once when I was freaking out about nuclear war, he asked 'What? do you wanna live forever?' (Uh, I'm not sure - but if I have to go, I'd prefer it not be in some nuclear conflagration.) He was an alcoholic, so the family was an alcoholic unit - I learned to always be thinking 5 moves ahead and to manipulate people to head off their anger.

My parents mostly taught my inappropriate things like, make sure you talk behind someone's back because it's not as funny if you say to their face.

My parents both passed away almost thirty years ago , when I was in my mid twenties. My mother used to say something that I still repeat frequently to myself. " Nothing is ever as bad , or as good as it seems". A nice even keel approach , that is not something innate to me. It still helps.

My father used to say " Oh Baba Rabba" , several times daily and in connection to nothing , or everything. His voice had a neutral to slightly positive inflection when he said it. He had a fourth grade education and was not at all religious , so it had a tenuous connection , at best , to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Rabba. He may have picked it up when he was fighting in North Africa during WWII , or , perhaps , not. I say it occasionally and it always makes me smile , without fail.

Mark Twain had a great quote , which while certainly not true for everyone , fits me to a T. " When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years." Evidently , it wasn't Twain that actually said it.
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/10/10/twain-father/ , irregardless of who said it , it's gold for me.

I'm old enough that I'm going to claim a Grandfather Clause , and throw in something that is kind of a personal mantra. I don't have a clue where I heard/read it , but it certainly didn't originate with me. " The only thing we can control is our attitude". We can't control who loves us or doesn't , who is having good times or bad , if we get that promotion or we get a flat tire in the boonies... can't control that stuff , but we can control our attitude.

If my parents have ever taught me anything it would be the following.

1. Never ever be ashamed of who you are
2. Don't get people back. If they hurt you it's because they're hurting.
3. Don't let anybody ever disrespect you

I realize 2 and 3 kind of contradict each other, but that's because it all depends on how you deal with things. You don't have to necessarily be rude or tell someone off to handle a situation, I think.

My mother (who recently passed away at nearly 90) advise me when I was in my teens that before deciding to do something to consider how the decision might look or might affect my life or the life of another ten or fifteen or twenty years down the road.

"Enjoy the time in school, you´ll miss the school." That, was the best piece of knowledge my parents ever gave me. Because now that I´m out of school, I realize how hard the life is after it.

My bio-parents didn't teach me much... they usually weren't there to teach me anything, but my soon to be mother in law has taught me a hell of a lot and has been like a mum to me.

One of the most important things she's ever said to me is "Be who you want to be, don't let society force you to be someone you don't want to be. If you want to like pink or blue then like them because you like them, not because society says you should like them."

My parents taught me not to shit my pants. Ultimately I like to think I've gotten more use out of that than any "inspirational" message. My mom might be kind of an emotionally unavailable distant piece of shit normally, but at least there's that.

I have garnered much from my paternal and maternal figures. They have shown me not to touch the wire when it is screaming at my fingers to grasp it, or not to stick my fingers in the wall-planted sad face's eye sockets. They have taught me never to eat meat raw, no matter how convinced I was that I could turn, and not to chew the dirt from beneath my neighbor's porch. I miss those days, however. Those were bolder, happier times....

I was trying to find something philosophical in that sentence... but, it's just not coming to me, right now.