My unofficial staycation began with 3 snow days, one of which was a miraculous, unheard of snowless snow day. As a midwesterner born in IA and raised in WI, I am used to the idea that it has to snow so much that you can't open your door for school to close. Here apparently if someone even whispers that it might snow, no matter if it's only for 10 minutes, that is enough to get out of school. While I am kind of amazed, I am definitely not complaining. I despise snow, cold, and anything winter related and would prefer to stay at home whenever stuff like that happens. The only white Christmas that interests me is a musical involving Bing Crosby.
Needless to say it was not my Christmas wish to be besieged by snow. After a trip to the grocery store and the liquor store, Mz. Blu and I settled in the living room to do some painting, enjoy a bowl of mojitos and watch out the window disgustedly as our neighbors literally skied down the sidewalk or donned snow shoes to walk the few blocks to the grocery store. I mean come on...it was barely 4 inches. Somehow in the midst of all the insanity, I did manage to get off my unplowed street and to the airport. I spent a week in AZ with my mom and grandma.
My parents have been divorced since I was a baby, and my dad is not really big into holidays, so I have made a habit of being with my mom during Christmas. I spent most of my Christmas times in IA with my grandma, my mom, and my aunt. We would attend midnight mass at the church I was baptized in, then come home and stuff the turkey. This was a time to drink sherry and eat fudge, to hang out and tell stories. This is when I learned how to cook (which is good because it eventually became my job to make the family meals). I always kind of loved our traditions. On Christmas mornings we would do a gift exchange, then my uncle, aunt, and three cousins would come over for dinner. Some years they would go to my aunt's house leaving dinner a much smaller and intimate affair. Either way, the core members of my Christmas were always the women of my family. Shortly after I was born my mom, my godmother, and my grandmother put together an annual party that would take place after Christmas and before the new year. It was a multi-generational party where we would get together with our girlfriends and have a nice brunch with my godmother's famous homemade sticky buns and fruit slush, and my grandma's rum cake and applesauce cake.
I remember the few Christmases I did spend abroad (one clubbing and feeding elephants in Thailand, one eating Chinese food in Spain)even though I was definitely down for the adventure, I missed being home. I missed the familiar routine of friends and family. But I guess this too is a part of growing up, adapting to new circumstances. Traditions are only actions repeated over time, and breaking them doesn't necessarily mean losing the meaning of time spent with family.
Now that my mom is in AZ and my grandma spends her winters there, we don't have white Christmases or big family dinners. We attended midnight mass at my mom's church and had Wassle (spike cider with cranberry juice and angostina bitters). Instead of turkey, mom made a standing rib roast and instead of the annual, we hosted a brunch with some of my grandma's friends. It was smaller, but fun and evidence that there are more important things than doing everything the exact same way. It makes me wonder what it will be like when I have my own family. What traditions will form the foundation of my children's memories and what will it mean to them?
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