The History of Us

I come from a family mired in tradition. We've discussed this before, so this should not come as any kind of shock. Maybe I'm weird, but I've never really thought of this as a bad thing, even as a teenager. Okay, so Fruitcake Day is my personal hell, I'll cop to that. But, in general, I love family traditions. I love making biscuits from my great-grandmother's recipe. I love hanging the Christmas tree ornaments that I made with Memo when I was two years old. I love the tortoise shell comb that I keep in my cedar chest. I love that I have a cedar chest.

Living in the South, tradition was a part of every day. People there do things a certain way simply because that's how they've always been done. In the mountains, traditions seem slightly more malleable, like the creation of Bluegrass based on the influences of a few hundred years of folk music. In San Francisco, I feel like tradition is a bit like water: continuously swirling around my ankles, slipping through my fingers, inconstant and reliably undependable. Living here makes me feel somehow more "old school" than I've ever felt before.

Case in point: every year my family makes jam. We've done this for four generations, in lieu of giftcards or whatnot for teachers, friends, and colleagues. The recipe, while really simple, is a mass of edits, proportion changes, and scribbles. This year, I made my own jam for the first time. I felt an enormous sense of pride staring at the plastic cups lined up on my kitchen table, capped in wax and covered with saran wrap and green ribbon. And then, handing it out to my coworkers, I felt the strangest mixture of embarrassment and shyness. It was the kind of feeling I used to get in elementary school, whenever I had something to say and wanted to raise my hand. How odd is that?

I suppose that there is a part of me that still feels slightly out-of-place in this uber-trendy city. I feel somehow as though, by upholding traditions, I am betraying the forward-thinking person I present myself to be. Intellectually, I know that's ridiculous. And, regardless of the small insecurity I feel, I know that I will not change into someone who throws my history to the wind. It was just a surprise to meet this piece of myself that I thought I'd outgrown.

This is so stream-of-consciousness, and I have no idea what I wanted to say. (Way to go with the planning of this one, right?) So yeah. I guess that's all for now. Will you send me your traditions?