Memorial Day and New Traditions

I think it is tough to have a holiday tradition with a very small family. I wish for a big picnic feast or parade. When I was a child (yes, back in the sixties!) we put crepe paper on our bikes and rode in the Memorial Day parade to the cemetary. Our bike baskets were full of lilacs and we would put them on the graves of relatives. We would ride in the parade with our friends but at the end, we would go with our families and wander through the cemetary that my great-grandfather helped start.

There were veterans walking in the front of the parade but the first one was always a very old man riding in the oldest fire truck our small town had. He wore his uniform with the big flat brimmed hat and stood in the truck because he was too frail to walk the 1/2 mile to the cemetary. My grandfather had fought in WWI but this man was really old. My grandmother said he fought in the Spanish American War (1898).

On the anniversary of the 100 year founding of the cemetary, my grandmother read a poem she wrote about when she was a little girl marching in the parade. The old men in uniforms were from the Civil War. I am still looking for the poem but she was in her nineties and was the last living child of one of the founders of the cemetary. It was a huge day for her and I remember how proud she was to have her family there.

Now I live in my husband's community. It has taken me awhile to figure out why I feel out of sorts on days like today. Yardwork doesn't feel right, we have a VERY small family. Five. So it was time to start a new family traition. We went to the cemetaries and took pictures of the tombstones of my husband's ancestors. We are going to make a family tree for our son with pictures so he better understands where he came from. It is a start. But still not a parade with red, white and blue crepe paper in the spokes of his bike.

Why are there a million things in Mom's head?

One day recently, my son was yammering on some incredibly detailed story about some lego whatever that was important to him. I must have appeared distracted so he asked "What's wrong?" I told him of the groceries I needed to get, the oil change in the van, my job as a restaurant inspector, the bulletin board at school that needs changing, and then to be at his school so I could listen to 15 first graders all read the same book to me for 30 minutes. His next words really stopped me. "Your head must be stuffed full, like infinity plus one" Yes darling, mommy's head is stuffed full of the lives of all the people I love and just a little bit of my life.

I just hope he didn't get the stuffed head line from the old Sally Field movie Sybil. Her neighbor boy said Sybils head was just stuffed full of people. And look where that got her!!

This is my first blog, aw isn't the blog virgin cute? I am married with one child still at home and three others who got smart and left. I have a very flexible job in which I am a restaurant consultant. We are living on an urban Indian reservation with my Native American husband of 9 years. Being a green-eyed Blondie from farm stock, I don't blend here very well. In fact there is one of my husbands uncles always referrs to me as "oh you're that white woman that married my nephew"

I also have a long time love affair with books and food. And if there are books about food. I want them. Mysteries involving people who get killed while eating dinner