My sister went to a meeting at Vancouver. I am going to attend a nephrology conference at Philadelphia. My elder brother lives in Illinois. We ended up having a family get-together at my brother's home.

You don't have to be Hercule Poirot to see that the three of us would gossip about our parents. And you've probably heard the complaint that one's mum who doesn't really listen to her children because she thinks there's nothing they could say she doesn't already know; a mum who refuses to consider new ways of looking at things simply because she is your mum (traditional, misguided, nagging, old-fashioned, conservative, authoritative – pick your favorite descriptive word here).

And you know what? The three of us soon came to the same conclusion that we are never open-minded ourselves. Ever since my wife met me, she has thought that there were some magic spells that make me say no to every creative suggestion she would come up with. As for the inertia to new stuff, my brother's son hates it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. How much that has to do with genetics and how much with having grown up in a traditional family, I cannot say.

But really, secretly, when I look back at ourselves in my family, I find it an excellent way to relearn what we thought we had already known.