In Search of Some Traditions

Woof Woof!

You know those springy, coil door-stoppers that make a funny noise if you stub your toe on them? They’re literally a mounted spring with a rubber stopper on the end and they’re usually on a baseboard?  Well, in my family, growing up, whenever we’d hit that and hear that “sproing boing” sound reverberate, someone, would bark in response.  Yes, they would actually imitate the sound of a dog going, “Woof!”  Its weird, but its a family tradition.  No one ever really asked my mom, the one who started it and who would faithfully remember to do it every time someone accidentally hit the thing, why we did it, but now, whenever it happens at my house, I bark like Pavlov’s dog hearing that bell (only barking instead of drooling and licking my chops).  My son, now nearly 2 and a half, thinks that I’m a real space cadet for doing something so weird - he pauses and smirks when I do it because he knows, even at his young age, that the action makes no sense, but it sounds so empty if no one does it.  Its like picking up a penny when you see one, or walking out of the way instead of going under a ladder.  Its a tradition that taken on superstition status.   

The reason I’m writing about something so random is that I keep reading about family traditions, however zany, and how important they are to establish with your kids. Whether its making pancakes together every Sunday morning or Friday night movie night - something routine and predictable and comforting - and something special that kids can look forward to doing with their family. I can hear burly Tevye singing now.   There is nothing more lame in my opinion, then forcing a tradition upon unwilling participants.  Like nerd mom declaring to her reluctant kids, “Scrabble time! Get out your thinking caps!”.  I’m not going to do this - well - I’ll try not to.  I’d love for something fun to happen organically, that we can repeat all together, at will.  Over the summer, I’d say our local bike rides together that would invariably end up at our favorite park with our pail and shovel were a pretty good tradition.  And now, when I’m with Charlie all day, we nap together, I take him to the library or play group in the afternoon and we have a treat somewhere (usually a muffin). But I’m looking forward to something unique and highly memorable.  Something that only we have.

Yes, those are marinara stains.

Recently my mom emailed me some scans of paper napkins she’d saved from years gone by.  That sounds like the opening sentence from an episode of Hoarder’s, but I assure you, she’s undiagnosed and just sentimental.  The reason she’d saved these used paper napkins from places like Pizza Hut and Earl’s is that these were the same restaurants that my family frequented and to pass the time while we waited for our order (half canadian/half hawaiian pan pizza), my artist mother would take out her trusty black Staedtler ink pen from her purse (fine-nibbed and permanent! big responsibility for little girls) and we would play “squiggles” a make-something-out-of-this doodle-and-guess-what-it-is game.  We were IN LOVE with squiggles and to this day my sister and I fill the void by playing each other on Draw Something on our iPhones (she from Vancouver and I in Burlington).  This is the kind of tradition I know will never leave my memory and my heart and its weird enough that now, even though I'm usually inclined to, I can’t just ask someone I’m dining with to play with me (most people don’t enjoy the challenge of drawing on a surface that may rip at any moment should the pen be wielded in a careless manner) and besides, we tend to dine at places with cloth napkins now, thank heavens.   I never asked my mom why she never stole one of my dad’s reporter notepads that he had stacked by the dozens in our house to play our game on, but I don’t think the memory would have been the same if she had.