Family

Today I have been thinking about families.  It is getting close to Thanksgiving, so all the memories of prior years are starting to creep in.

I remember early Thanksgiving mornings hearing my Mom get up to baste the turkey.  I guess people used to do that?!?

I remember setting the table with all the dishes from the china cabinet and using the pretty serving dishes.  I remember my Mom's pumpkin pie (which I have never been able to duplicate, btw.)

I have always loved the preparation for the party.  I just told my friend, Thea, the other day how I love party prep and then when everyone gets there I am just tired and want to go sit down and watch, hehehe.  Actually, that is my party philosophy...I LOVE planning the party, shopping, thinking about what dishes and platters to use, setting them out, setting all the vignettes and thinking about the "flow" of guests as they get food and socialize.  But, I don't think I am really a hostess, because when everyone gets there I want to sit/stand and talk to everyone and I completely forget about restocking the food/drink and making sure everyone is comfortable.  I want to plan the party, but I also want to be part of the party!  So, once everyone gets to my house, they are pretty much on their own, I guess...like family.   (wow, that was a very round-a-bout way to get back to the family theme.)

But really, aren't families funny when you REALLY think about them?  We are all so different.  We all think we are the normal ones and everyone else is weird.  But, we are all just our own thing.  Two individuals get together and each bring their histories and memories and start something completely new.  We create our families, sometimes the traditional way, sometimes non-traditionally.  Sometimes we mix it up and try both ways.  We get to choose which traditions to keep and which new ones to create!  Personally, I like to decide the week before a traditional holiday how I am going to do it that year.  I don't feel pressure (anymore) to do it traditionally if I don't particularly feel like it that year.  One Christmas I was just tired of spending two days in the kitchen cooking holiday meals that (seemingly) only I enjoyed, so I went on holiday strike.  I made tacos for Christmas dinner.  It took 20 minutes.  To this day, we have tacos for Christmas dinner (are you kidding me?!?).

My family loves it!  It became our OWN family tradition!  This is how I learned about traditions...there is really nothing magic about them.  The best ones just happen naturally (and evidently sometimes out of frustration).

Today I texted my (3) sisters to tell them how much I was going to miss them this Thanksgiving.  One of them responded by saying "...sometimes the holidays are just not the same crazy madness and I miss the utter chaos."  I couldn't have said it better.  I love and miss the weirdness of the chaos of our "traditional" holidays... not that we are not creating our own chaos and madness :-P