We were raised in a house steeped in tradition
- col-lee-elliot-aging-graciously
- May 31, 2025
- 216
I am a traditionalist, and even at my age, I still fight hard to maintain those I’ve practiced all my life. Thus it is that I boldly announced a week ago, “I don’t care if anyone else eats, but I am going to make a Memorial Day picnic even if I have to eat it all myself.”
For me this means homemade, from scratch potato salad, and baked beans, and hamburgers, corn on the cob and broccoli on the grill. The pronouncement is keeping me fed for a week.
Four hours in the kitchen, cooking, tasting (as much as I can taste since COVID), Memorial Day morning gave me the old feeling back but made me wonder if I might be a bit stubborn. Everything from scratch is fun to make, but cleaning up the pans and big dishes is not. I had forgotten that. Tasting as you go also dampens your appetite when it is time to eat, unless the grill, recovering from winter, doesn’t work right away and you are given an hour or so of extra time.
We were raised in a house steeped in tradition, and I tried to raise my family the same way. Memorial Day was always the first picnic of the year, held in our sunny backyard for our whole family and anyone else who wanted to join us. We had an old-fashioned picnic table with attached benches, a charcoal grill and plenty of comfy lawn chairs for the elders to watch crochet or badminton games.
After the (get this) women cleaned up, we went to the park to watch fireworks. Everyone complained about the traffic. In our teens we went to the park to seek out boys and didn’t worry at all about the traffic as we walked home. Memorial Day, like every other holiday, was something you could count on year after year.
When I think back to “the good, old days” in my life, I recall my father was involved in WWII from 1941-45. He was drafted and stationed in England, treating war casualties. I remember the day he told us he would be leaving and how scary it was.
While he was stationed in the states, we lived in an Army camp in New Orleans, and then he was just gone. Mother would send the letters we wrote to him every week and knitted many hats and gloves for him to give to those he treated.
We saw weeks-old pictures of what was going on in the war on the few occasions we went to the movies. It frightened us, and we would go home crying. Four years is a long time for a father to be removed from his vulnerable aged children. We were thrilled when the war was over, and our father was with us for Memorial Day picnics.
Different things separate us today. There are still fathers and now mothers being separated from their children by war. More than that, so many of us are separated simply by distance. It just isn’t feasible for whole families to travel for a one-day occasion.
I still firmly believe in traditions as the glue that holds families and friends together. Outside forces are now destroying the memories, the events, the traditions our country has been built on. I do not understand the reasons for that. In order to know where we are going, we have to know where we have been and why.
I’m a little tired of potato salad and beans (Mother’s recipes) this week, but not of the memories and the lessons learned through the traditions we could always count on. I hope you had a thoughtful Memorial Day … that you remembered its meanings and will continue to create and cherish your own traditions.