Rituals and Traditions

Our son is visiting for a couple of weeks, interspersing hikes, beach walks, kayaking, and relaxing on the deck with his virtual work. He also brought his little dog, Sassy, the cockapoo my husband and I fostered, and our son ended up adopting. It's been fun having our "granddoggie" with us. That fluffy pup is also the subject of the first chapter I've written for my upcoming book, another memoir of sorts - but this time the life story of our beloved Penny. Penny is our dog who passed away a little less than a year ago. We're still getting over it...or not.

Anyway, having our son with us has me thinking about family traditions. I've been trying to recall what traditions my family had when I was growing up, and wondering if "traditions" are the stuff of only the privileged few. I've racked my brain and have remembered only one. I've asked my siblings if they have any memory of things we did as a family that they would categorize as a tradition. They, like me, were empty-handed. I guess, when you’re in survival mode, establishing traditions isn’t a high priority.

There was one thing I think we all would call a “tradition.” What is it?  The Green Death. The Green Death was a truly awful lime Jell-O salad our mother made every Thanksgiving. Mixed in with the green stuff were walnuts, pineapple, and cottage cheese. As a kid, I thought the cottage cheese was especially disgusting! We took it for granted that the dreaded salad would show up at every Thanksgiving table and didn't think much of it - it had always been there and always would be.

Then, the first holiday my stepfather was with us, he named the ubiquitous side dish. "What's that?" he asked, as it was placed on the table. "The Green Death?" Needless to say, we all burst out laughing and, from that point on, that was its name. It's one of the few really funny memories of that time in our lives.

It seems a lot of traditions revolve around holidays and food. I guess it's a time we're all together, usually focused on a meal (or several!), and we tend to create habits around the offerings. Which brings me to one tradition we've established with our son.

Each time he comes to visit us here at the beach, we make a pineapple upside-down cake. Why? The first year he visited, he was reminiscing about his experience in Boy Scouts and how they would always cook the cake - in a cast-iron Dutch oven - over the campfire. We decided to get our own cast-iron Dutch oven and try it out.

That first year, we followed the online instructions for campfire cooking, and the thing didn’t get hot enough. We finally took it out, baked it in the oven, and ate cake around midnight. The second year, we went straight for the oven, but only after a snafu creating the butter/brown sugar glaze: It burnt, and we started over from scratch. We were delayed that year, too! The third year, we went back to the campfire and ended up burning the thing into a giant charcoal briquet. We tried again the next night and found success - again in the oven.

Since these early experiments, we've learned: go straight to the oven and keep an eye on it. It's been perfect ever since. I'm not sure what's better about the whole tradition: the process of making it and laughing about our exploits from years past...or the warm deliciousness of the cake itself.

It doesn't matter. It's just a cake. And, of course, so much more.