finally "getting it"

When you're a child, and your parents tell you not to do something, it's more likely that you do what they tell you not to do out of curiosity or sheer rebellion. However, sometimes it takes personal experience to truly understand why they didn't want you to do that something in the first place.

A child won't always understand why they have restrictions, but all their parents want is the best for their child. This goes for tradition, family values and stories as well. Parents can tell stories about their childhood over and over again, yet it won't clearly register with the child until they have experienced a story similar to theirs. It really is great to grow up and finally comprehend why your parents have been lecturing to you all these years. I've realized once I moved away to college, why my parents were always on my back for certain things. Once you live alone, you understand more about society and how the world works. Parents can hound you about the electric bill until their face is blue. It's not until the bill is in your name that you finally understand why they went all "psycho" on you for forgetting to turn your bathroom light off.

As for the jokes that Graces father tells in "Caroline’s wedding", she finally starts to understand the humor and family values of his jokes. He probably wants to make sure that his children hold this tradition and really embrace it the way he did. Grace states, "These were our bedtime stories. Tales that haunted our parents and made them laugh at the same time. We never understood them until we were fully grown and they became our sole inheritance". She finally realized once she was grown, through experience and constant reminders from her father, that the stories and jokes she once thought were embarrassing and frivolous were actually inspiring, funny and meaningful.
           The jokes her father tells captures hope for the Haitian people and I think she admires how he presents the struggles Haitian people must face with a sense of humor. Everyone appreciates some comedy when times get rough. For example, it was unheard of to joke about 9/11 right after it happened because it was such a traumatic event. However, once comedians started to incorporate humor into it all, people started to relax and feel more at ease. I think it was very special that her father was almost protecting his children in a sense by telling jokes about the hardships the Haitians faces, rather than portraying the world to be cruel and violent, because not all places are like that.

When you grow older, you begin to realize that this world isn't perfect and also begin to understand why your parents were so persistent about certain things. Parents lecture and embarrass their children for all the right reasons, weather the child likes it or not.