Unexpected Traditions

My Grandma Jensen was a talented musician and a professional secretary; I doubt she thought of herself as "a knitter," and I don't imagine that, fifty years ago, she was trying to start a tradition when she made a small scarf for my father of variegated wool yarn.  The scarf was a small and simple thing:  just rows and rows of knit stitch.  Dad wore that scarf on his mission to France and for many years after, until the treasure eventually fell apart.  Twenty-five years ago, when my brother left to serve in Washington, D.C., Grandma was asked to make a similar scarf for him.  Now that my son is similarly serving a mission, I purchased some variegated wool and began work on a scarf for him.

The ladies at the store tried to redirect my attention to yarns that were less expensive and more bulky, warning (truly) that such a scarf as I described would be costly and “take forever” to complete; I can now see why Grandma’s scarves were (as I thought) somewhat narrow and short!  Though my amateurish knitting is imperfect and though I was unable to locate the primary color variety that I remember from my youth, my son’s scarf in shades of avocado and copper – and which works up looking suspiciously like camouflage – is part of Grandma’s larger, if inadvertent, tradition.  I was not the recipient of a handmade scarf; yet as I make time to work on one for my son, I become a part of her tradition of love and effort and have hope to connect my children to the qualities I've admired in her life.

Many of our most cherished traditions are like this.  Mothers plan and work to create what we think will be meaningful ways to mark the lives of our family members; but the seemingly insignificant, unexpected things often are the ones about which memories are made.  The Christmas my oldest children began to read, I had a few gifts wrapped for one and nothing ready for some others; I wanted to set out the gifts but avoid discontent, so I made up a simple code and let everyone wonder and hope each gift could be for him.  The next year I had prepared better and saw no need for a code, but the hopeful Code Crackers pleaded in favor of the “tradition.”  And so it continues:  when my children are assigned to write about Christmas Traditions, they always mention the fun of The Code.  

 (Incidentally, this was the way my husband got his wish that we open presents one at a time:  our inadvertent tradition has unexpectedly facilitated anticipation of and appreciation for each gift, rather than a greedy hoarding and unwrapping frenzy on Christmas morning.)

When our oldest child was eight, I had a conversation with an experienced mother and grandmother who provided comfort when she shared this principle with me.  Her eight children were fairly close in age and she knew first-hand the struggles I faced at the time.  She talked about her own high expectations, her health challenges, and about the times when she had felt like a grumpy failure as a mother; but she reminded me that people have selective memories.  She explained that as a parent, she was amazed to hear her adult children reminisce about their happy childhood – and the stories often began with, “Do you remember how we always used to…?” 

“What they remembered might have happened once or twice,” she said with a shrug, “but to them it was our family tradition.”  Looking at the neighbor with admiration, I realized this was probably because a tradition of real love undergirded everything, even the occasional unpleasantness.   

Which gave me hope.