Traditions. Tradition Troubles, & Codes

A friend of mine is giving a workshop on family traditions. She called me for ideas. So, while fixing supper I've been tossing some thoughts about in my mind.

What motivates the creation of a tradition?

Traditions seem to spring up around personal and family values. Our family values discussion of ideas, stories, and family history. My sisters and I created a family newsletter we called The Leafy Alternative. I began a newsletter about raising our family. I call it The Family Messenger. My father introduced his daughters to "Table Topic Dinner Discussions". He would read excerpts from magazine and newspaper articles and ask us questions.

My husband and I began our own version of discussions. They began as "car talks" or "couch talks". These began innocently. While driving home from church we would review behavior -- what was appropriate and what wasn't. My mom would play "practice church" with her girls. So I tried it with our girls. We "practiced" sitting still on the couch for the length of the church service. The girls might have felt like hostages at first. However, they could hear and smell a meal being prepared while they waited and their Dad would visit with them. "What did you talk about in your class today?" This often led to lively and interesting discussions for us all. I would chime in from the kitchen. We credit these "talks" as the beginning of our on-going family conversations and discussions--loved by all!

Families that value music create traditions involving singing or playing instruments. The "instruments" played in my home while growing up were the radio and the record player. We spent many happy hours singing along with Joan Baez and other folk singers.

My absolutely favorite tradition is reading aloud. When I was of college age living at home between semesters I recall reading aloud the Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander to my two youngest sisters, with whom I temporarily shared a bedroom. Then I would sing a hymn to them before we went to sleep.

Holidays are tradition magnets. At birthdays we always sing, "For she's a jolly good fellow" and give three cheers, "hip-hip-hooray!". I joke that our family tradition is "holiday birthdays".

A summer tradition of my youth was the yearly oddysey to my mother's girlhood home. My mom would sew matching outfits of "crop-tops" and "peddle pusher pants" for us to wear. We would be riding the Greyhound bus from our small Northern California town to Idaho and it helped us be identified as a group. Once there the summer trip would not be complete without a drive in the back of a pickup up into the Targhee National Forest to pick huckleberries--just as my mom's family had done each year while she was growing up.

I wondered what other traditions my parents might have had so I gave them a call. My dad says as a boy he ate his mother's homemade biscuits every morning for breakfast. He says his dad voted straight Democratic ticket since 1932. His family listened to the Christmas Eve radio broadcast of calls coming from all over the world to wish the king of the British Empire overwhich the sun never set a "Merry Christmas". He told me his dad enjoyed listening to a German singing "Silent Night" over the radio on Christmas Eve. He also listened to the heavy-weight championship fights on the radio.

Be aware of traditions that are unneccesarily binding. I recently read in a novel where a tradition of wearing rented high school graduation robes was introduced to do away with an exclusive tradition of girls wearing a new white formal dress and carrying red roses. I remember being frustrated in a small town congration where a particular women's event was observed the same way every year so as not to offend previous leaders of the church women's organization.

I fell into "tradition troubles" of my own making. Every Christmas each of my girls received a doll. Multiply six girls by ten or more dolls each and pretty soon the house is full of dolls. The same problem happened with Easter plush animals. Another tradition which backfired was giving an elaborate birthday party for each girl every year, including a cleverly decorated cake. Luckily, in this case the older girls picked up the baton and orchestrated the games for the younger girls. They even learned how to decorate cakes. I also ambitiously began making scrapbook albums for each girl. It's easy for traditions to become demanding taskmasters.

Traditons should not be confused with "code". It is my personal code not to shop on Sunday. It was my grandmother's code to wear a hat and gloves when she went to town.

When I married, I soon learned that my husband and his family place great value on doing routine tasks together. Whether this is a tradition or a code I have yet to decide.

I highly recommend the book THE SEVENTEEN TRADITIONS by Ralph Nader. Another proponent of traditions is the late author/illustrator Tasha Tudor. I have thoroughly enjoyed and recommend MRS. SHARP'S TRADITIONS by Sarah Ban Breathnach.

Traditions are a way of celebrating and creating hooks upon which to place our memories and values.

Relishing the Exquisite Moment

June 28, 1991 Friday

I have a recipe for people who feel their lives are too stressful. Add ONE more element of stress (preferably with a ONE week time limit). That's what this week has been like for me.

As if it weren't enough with me working full-time (as a manager) and Steve going to school taking four classes and being scheduled to work full-time-- I decide in the same week to do some "real" cooking rather than convenience cooking AND sign Laura up for an art class.

Of course I forgot about the mandatory sexual harassment workshop when I signed Laura up and paid the $30. I knew about the Public Services Team meeting but I didn't know it was moved from Whitmore (near an hourly drop-in daycare) to Holladay and changed from 8 a.m. to 7:30 a.m. AND I was asked to bring a fresh-fruit dish (for which I had to make an extra trip to the store).

So now instead of one extra stress there's a half dozen. Not to mention no time for laundry or fixing lunches or meals. Plus the girls having to be tended from 7 or 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 at night on two days and noon to nine on one day. The apron I began sewing on my vacation waits patiently to be finished as do a half dozen outfits I cut out to sew the girls in early April.

The plus to all this has been that the little time I HAVE been with my girls we've been outside at parks (we've tried three now), and visiting friends.

This moment seems particularly exquisite. This little park wedged in among the old houses and duplexes near the university is quiet (only us here). The temperature and soft breeze is perfect and I have a crisp view of our majestic peaks framed in the forground by a church steeple and deciduous and evergreen trees. How sublime it would be to come over here casually whenever the fancy struck.

As for the week that is past-- we muddled through as we knew we would. The kitten we found on Monday lost interest in us when we wouldn't let it sleep in the house. Steve and I didn't make our transportation connection Tuesday so Steve had to call in to work and they came and got him. Laura was late for class everyday. SIGH Hopefully the food in the refrigerator won't spoil before I can prepare it (all this weekend!).

Why Try so Hard to fit in when you were born to Stand Out?

I was born with a port wine stain hemangioma which covers a large part of the right side of my face. When my mother first saw me she cried, for me. I was blythly unaware of my uniqueness (so far as memory serves) until 4th or 5th grade and even then it was no big deal to me.

I was a package deal, meaning I had an outgoing nature, an optimistic personality, and innate confidence. Little may have been known at the time of my birth about the cause of this type of birthmark. It is now known that it occurs in .3% of births (or 1 in 1000 as compared to Downs Syndrome which is about 1 in 800 births), that it is not hereditary, and that it has nothing to do with what happened to the mother during pregnancy. Another part of my "package deal" was that I was born to wonderful parents who didn't let my anomaly stop them from providing me with five siblings. I would say that perhaps, if anything, my birthmark may have been more of a challenge to THEM. Another part of my "package" was that I was a bit on the clumsy side and had the misfortune of tripping as a toddler and knocking out my front tooth. When it grew back in it was slightly deformed.

So here I was, a tall gangly blonde with a birthmark and an ugly big tooth. That is a recipe for adolescent disaster. (I jokingly referred to myself as "Big Ethel". My best friend looked like "Veronica" and my other best friend looked like "Betty". No kidding. All we were missing was an Archie, Reggie, and Jughead.) Add to that a mother with little or no fashion sense (according to me), and a father whose employment required frequent relocations (we moved every two to four years) and the anxiety ratchets up. Socially I was either unconfident, incompetent, or a combination. What comes first--the chicken or the egg? Still, I elected not to wear make-up on a daily basis -- didn't want the inconvenience. Oh, I neglected to say all this was balanced out with a god-given Venus-de-Milo figure. I figured it was God's sense of humor. But I always had friends. I took this for granted 'till I had children of my own. As a youth I mistakenly thought that if one was beautiful, smart, graceful, and friendly that one would be "popular", which equated to me at the time "dating" which I thought meant "happy". Darn it, I was happy and I didn't even know it! My children were everything I wasn't and yet everything I was and I watched them not date and struggle with not having a true friend.

I was told by a trusted source that my birthmark would be made up to me "many times over". I credit my birthmark for sifting through my associates and singling out the best people to be my friends. I credit my birthmark for reining in my innate vanity and helping me focus on developing my mind and not abusing my physical attributes. I credit my birthmark for giving me nothing but happy memories of my teen years-- I was always "good ol' Viv" to the boys (which I HATED at the time). I was part of a good crowd (which veered ocassionaly, but never while I was in their company).

Fast-forward to college years. I didn't realize then that I was never perceived as a social threat to anyone, and so never lacked for friends. I received a proposal of marriage at the age of 18 from a very nice young man I'd met at a dance. He was in Army Basic Training following a two-year-full-time mission for his church. Not only that, he was good looking, sweet and fun to be with. I am ashamed to say now that for two reasons I declined. #1) It had never occurred to me NOT to graduate from college, for which I was preparing and #2) he didn't run with my crowd. "Where," I was to ask myself many times, "was an adult, peer, or mentor who could have helped me navigate these waters?"

Fast forward another twelve years, during whcih I earn an AA degree, a BS degree, and MLS degree, but not an Mrs. degree. I began my "career". On my 30th birthday I emancipated myself from the haunting hope that my "prince charming" was just around the next bend. I decided to date any comers and live outside of the orthodox mate-hunting-of-my-denomination mecca. I was FREE! Less than two months later I met my husband right where I was living. Go figure.

I share all of this to illustrate that my birthmark had nothing to do with all this and yet everything to do with all this. I wanted to be NORMAL. There's a favorite quote from the movie WHAT A GIRL WANTS. It goes, "Why do you try so hard to fit in when you were born to stand out?" My best friend in high school and I liked a silly movie, PUFF-N-STUFF, in which is a song with a refrain, "Different is hard, different is lonely, diffierent is trouble for you only. Different is heartache, different is pain, but I'd rather be different than be the same."

I began wearing make-up daily shortly after the birth of my third child. My children hated my make-up but accepted it. My husband prefereed me without make-up too (kissing is less fun when accompanied by "don't mess up my make-up!"). I've had several laser treatments, which have helped a lot. I indulge in a treatment whenever I have a lot of sick leave built up and would like two weeks of paid time off to pack for a move or some such thing. So, here again, the birthmark is a blessing. My kids and I joke that I really do turn into an ogre (folowing a lazer treatment). Just call us Fiona and Shrek and the Shrekies. I think we're The Incredibles as well.

So much for all that. The Lord has a program taylor-made for each of us to help us learn and grow. My birthmark is really my ONLY health challenge--how great is that? But I've been given other/additional opportunites. I am so grateful to come to know the Savior through these and the miracle of forgivenessand His love. That gift is priceless and precious.