One Generation Gives Way to the Next

When our sons were small, my husband and I invented our own customs for Christmas, because my parents and his lived hundreds of miles away. Making the holiday special was up to us. We missed our extended families, but we were free to do whatever appealed to us—there was no other schedule or tradition to consider.

A few years ago

We read “The Night Before Christmas,” filled stockings with candy, assembled big toys like the play kitchen, and added batteries to toy guitars and handheld games. We took a bite out of the cookies left for Santa and scribbled “Thanks!” on the notes our sons wrote (Santa has good manners). 

As our boys got older and Santa became a sweet memory instead of an actual visitor, our habits changed. The four of us began cooking elaborate meals together—three days of them. Christmas Eve Eve’s dinner would be whatever the group craved—maybe Southern BBQ or cassoulet. An Italian feast (calzones, fagotch*, and homemade pasta) became a required ritual for either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, and the third meal might be something fancy like Beef Wellington. Later we welcomed our sons’ girlfriends (now wives) into the kitchen.

When they married, we understood some traditions would have to flex; after all, our daughters-in-law and their families have traditions, too. Changes have already begun. This Christmas the six of us will be together on Christmas Eve. My husband and I will miss our three-day extravaganza, but believe this is the right way forward.

If we have grandchildren, I envision more changes on the horizon. I’ve watched and learned from friends and family who have married children and grandchildren. They’ve all had to adapt and invent new approaches to holiday gatherings. My brother and sister-in-law spend either Thanksgiving or Christmas with their married child and her family, but not both. Other relatives get together after Christmas, because their child’s divorce means accommodating two separate parents and three sets of grandparents. A friend doesn’t see her children and grandchild until New Year’s Day—scheduling the group at Christmas has gotten too complicated.

My friends and family don’t relish being alone on Christmas, but they accept the situation and make the best of it. As grandparents, they are no longer the center of holiday celebrations—their adult children and grandchildren are. It’s their turn now.

I expect changes will continue for my family. As my husband and I age and grandchildren arrive, we’ll adapt again and again. Gracefully, I hope. After all, this is how life is supposed to go. One generation gives way to the next. Inherent in raising children is the assumption they’ll become independent adults, and as a parent, I will be less central. One day, they’ll be responsible for arranging (and cleaning up!) our holiday celebrations, and eventually their children will do the same for them. 

That’s as it should be.

 *The family’s phonetic spelling for a form of focaccia in which ground meat, tomato paste, fennel seed and other spices are spread on bread dough, rolled up, baked, and sliced into pinwheels.

Meditation on Autumn Equinox

Long before a turning point is evident, tiny shifts lead to change: The last cut of the axe before a tree falls, the gathering force of an avalanche before it lets go, the final few cells piling up to a clot that blocks flow and becomes the stroke, the gradual loosening of a sleepy child’s fingers before the toy slides to the floor, the droop and dangle of a leaf before it drops, the new insight added to insight as a mind is changed. 

At autumn equinox, a near balance is struck when day and night are almost the same length before the northern hemisphere tilts toward winter. Minutes of daylight have been slipping away since June, and September’s days, though still sunny, are cooler. I don’t welcome the coming darkness, but accept it. And autumn has its compensations: apples, fires, and glorious colors.

August Travel

During the drive from home to being away, my mind travels extra time merging memories of past trips with plans for the next weeks. The years that pacifier inventory and gentle shampoo were critical has slowly morphed into double checking the packing of face creams, medications and comfortable shoes. Very slowly, but with determined forward motion, until time starts happening instead of moving. 

Corn grows as far as the eye can see along the highway. Rivers and ponds look high for a second or third year. Construction has moved about twenty miles further south than the prior trip, but large trucks are still annoying in the cone-formed single lane. Too early for lunch, breakfast’s beverage wanting out, the discussion changes from the morning news and towards where to stop for a comfort break or whether to push on for an early burger. 

August has always been vacation month for our family. What started out of necessity because of participation in post-season youth ball tournaments grew into tradition. Kids would get new sneakers and fresh summer clothes to avoid back-to-school shopping after returning home. Vacation in September is sweeter once untangled from kid schedules, but some places close Labor Day weekend making it hard to rent a kayak or find a soft-serve cone after time on the beach.

Weighted down by sun screen and sun prevention clothing, watching birds swoop into the water for food and parents with preschoolers playing in the shallow spots, I remember a skinny teenager in a two piece subconsciously flirting with a boy, an older teen stranded with a car breakdown near a forbidden quarry, a honeymooning young woman and all the years leading to this person in this moment. Feet resting in shoreline water, a comfy chair, an umbrella and a book. Storing up another year.

Simple Peace

Sixty-six degrees at eight in the morning on July 4 in Door County. My hands smell of lavender from making bouquets and the harvest piles up in an old, rusty green Suburban Garden wagon. The cold spring delayed sprigs maturing, but the first varieties are now ready. These mornings of working at a table with a sweeping view of blooming lavender rows, friends bent over the bushy plants, and collies running offer a respite from news and worries.

Yes, the world is dipping and swaying for huge reasons, and it is hard to be proud of the state of our nation. I couldn’t get into the goofy happiness of a small town 4^th of July parade and snapping pictures of kids on decorated tractor wagons and the grocery store staff pushing decorated shopping carts. I haven’t absorbed the sickening news of another mass shooter at a different parade. National discord and gun violence keep Americans in an uncomfortable state of anxiety so I’m looking for moments of simple pleasure to build personal peace of mind. I’m talking really simple pleasures:

Fresh peas, shelled by someone else.

Sunshine and cool air this morning.

Birdsong.

Two fawns playing in a neighbors’ yard.

Straight from the field strawberries.

Farmers market greens and cherry tomatoes.

Giggles of a happy infant granddaughter.

Our eight-year-old granddaughter singing.

Music while working.

A short pile of books.

Family and good friends a call or text away.

Some days you must restore your own core to keep pushing through your role in the bigger world. Here’s hoping you can create a list of simple pleasures to support minutes of personal peace.

Roadblock

A screeching, beeping monster clawed a mountain of dirt from my front yard, pirouetting in a repetitive mechanical dance.

In a surprising moment of consideration, the monster’s keepers preserved my ratty, overgrown boulevard garden, which fringed the gaping hole where sidewalk used to be. As if that garden is worth the care they gave it! They didn’t know I’d gladly be rid of the hosta and daylilies.

Workers in neon green coveralls appeared waist deep in the front yard. Urban prairie dogs. Do they like standing in holes, dirty and damp? Being where the rest of us don’t go? Searching for a pipe—hidden—but not exactly a treasure. 

Weeks later, cars still charge up to the roadblock in disbelief, apparently thinking, You can’t stop me, I’ll get through. Some seem to contemplate launching à la Thelma and Louise over the one-foot precipice into the scraped dirt and escaping, only to accept reality, veer into a nearby parking lot, and cut through the alley. Back on their way.

That’s how this summer, or really this whole year, has felt because of COVID. We’ve hurried toward the life we wanted, only to see—again—not here, not now. Go around, adapt, try again.

At night it’s peaceful. No clattering buses driving by. No thumping bass from passing cars or snatches of song from cyclists.

Silent orange hazard lights blink like fireflies.