One day you’ll catch yourself making your mom’s face or saying your dad’s line. People stay alive in tiny reflexes.

Mannerisms transfer without anybody’s consent. After enough years in the same house a particular sigh or a stock phrase gets installed in you, and it surfaces when you are tired or annoyed, sometimes decades later. It can be unsettling, and it is also a kind of continuity, with people carrying on inside the gestures of whoever raised them.

Catch one of these in yourself this week and decide whether you want to keep it. Some are worth inheriting and a few are worth putting down on purpose. Mentioning it to the person you got it from will probably make them laugh.