Tradition

Black eyed peas. Supposedly if you eat them on New Year's, you are rewarded with prosperity and good luck throughout the year. My friend's husband eats a cheese ball. Another friend eats miso soup.

Where did this come from? How did your family decide that eating that particular item was the key to year long happiness?

My family has traditions too and no doubt they would seem strange to someone outside my blood line. My grandmother, for example, always danced with her poultry. Every Thanksgiving, Grandma would hold up the naked turkey by it's wings and spin it around, singing her 'thanks' to it for feeding us. She was a little weird.

My uncle and I went and visited my mom every Sunday for over a year. We stopped by the grocery store down the hill and bought her flowers and an iced latte. Sometimes we got a ridiculous balloon instead or a small plant. My uncle sometimes brought Beanie Babies that he'd found on a goodwill trip. We drove into Ballard without talking much, me silently staring out the window watching the seasons change. Occasionally he'd go into a rage at another driver-it was usually worse on the way back home. After our visit.

Our visit began with the smell of almost death. Old people stumbling through the hallways with stained pants and creaky wheelchairs. The hallway was a horror movie.  But she was so happy to see us. Sometimes she was sleeping but usually she was wide awake, waiting for us to come around the curtain to tell her anything that wasn't connected to the hospital bed she lay in.

We usually left at lunch time, the tray's arrival a good time for my uncle to say it was time to go. I never argued. It got harder to leave and even harder to stay towards the end...She'd cry a lot.

My uncle and I would walk back down the hall silently, trying not to see. He'd immediately light up when we got back to the truck. Sometimes I'd indulge-if I didn't want to feel.

The conversation in the car on the way home was often about what we were 'going to do'. We never knew and eventually the conversation die. A lot can be said in a silent car ride.

He'd drop me off and I'd go into my dark apartment and feel sad. The days would turn and I'd pretend to care that I wasn't working for a week. Sunday would come around again and I'd be back in the truck with my uncle, on my way to mom.

This year while preparing a roast chicken for Thanksgiving I thought of grandma. I sprinkled on the spices and shoved butter under it's skin and as I lifted it to move it to the roasting pan, I did a little spin. "Thanks little chicken for being here for me to eat." And then I laughed.

Tradition.