On easter mornings growing up, my sister and I would sit in our shared room and listen to our dad the easter bunny go thump, thump, thumping very loudly (he must be a bunny of extraordinary size) down the long hall to the family/dining room. I don’t know how this ridiculous thumping became a tradition. I guess my D.O.D. (dear ol’ dad) just acted silly one year and it stuck.
Sis and I would have a sleepover every Christmas Eve (long, long after we stopped sharing a room–in fact, I think we did this until she got married). We didn’t bother so much with the cookies for Santa (who we never believed in) but we adamently required carrots for his reindeer. The reindeer always took a nibble by morning.
On Christmas morning we would run to the tree like every other American child and snatch our stockings from the fireplace. But, our stockings were shaped like dolls and the stocking part was the doll’s apron. So, my clever and creative mother would have taken full advantage of the unusual stocking to hide little gifts. The dolls always had on a new pair of underwear, often had on earings or hair clips and were sometimes decked out in some way to represent our lives that year. One Christmas, my stocking doll was made out as a cheerleader (shocking, I know, but I went to a very small school so basically if you wanted to, you could cheer…in 5th and 6th grade, I wanted to) and my sister’s was rolled up in toilet paper (she had taken to "rolling" friends houses for a late-night adventure).
Dad is famous for his pancakes. He used to pour the batter into letters to spell out our names. He would make bunches and bunches of "silver dollar" pancakes and get a kick out of counting how many I could eat. A lot. 20? 30? Jen didn’t like pancakes.
So many little things became traditions in my house, growing up. And, Jen and I wouldn’t let them die. We liked the traditions. We made sure they happened again, and again. One of the things I am excited about in raising my son is starting new traditions for him, for our family. Although I’m sure some of these will be intentional (especially those focused around holidays), I am curious to see what unintentional events/habits will be turned into traditions for him. My guess is that my son will take what he deems beautiful and want to experience it over and over again. Beauty is like that–it makes you beg for more. And there is so much beauty to be found in childhood. Like a grown, 6 ft tall man hopping down a hallway to the delight of his daughters. Like that book that my son will love so much that he will ask me to read it to him again, and again. Or that wonderful place he will want to visit, again. So, I will attempt to raise him creatively and expose him to little bits of beauty…and read the book again….and go back to the zoo, or the park, or wherever. again. And we will make memories.
