What I’m Reading: Time Commentary, Traditions

Just read a commentary in the Jan. 5 2009 (!) issue of Time (last week's man of the year issue - talk about time warp!), called Listen to the Kids. Nancy Gibbs is writing about how important traditions are to kids, and it made me think about Travis and Brendan and me. She says, "Some traditions are accidents, elevated into ceremonies." That made me think of how one time, a couple years ago, Brendan and a couple of his friends came to visit here, and I happened to have a bag of socks that I'd bought, and I gave them each a pair of socks, and that turned into a tradition, that every time Brendan comes to see me, he gets at least one pair of new socks. When he got here for Christmas this year, there was a fresh pair of socks waiting for him on the bed in the spare room.

Another neat thought from the commentary was that though new traditions move us forward, older traditions "reel us back to where we came from." What an interesting idea that traditions can take us both forwards and back. That is so true for my boys and I. I was commenting to someone recently that Christmas can be difficult for Travis and Brendan and I right now because we don't really have a central gathering place, a family home. Someone else is living in our family home right now. Brendan's in a house he's lived in a few months, Travis is in a house he's about to move out of, and I'm in a trailer on the woods 150 miles away from them. But we are held together by something else, something intangible, call it memories, call it tradition.

When I see Travis, I will give him his Christmas stocking with some beef jerky in it, a tradition that started somewhere along the way. When Brendan was here on Christmas, there was little tradition about it, but all that mattered was that we were together. As Nancy Gibbs says, "It is the sense of tradition that makes us whole." I like that. I think Travis and Brendan and I have a sense of tradition, even as our lives continue to evolve and change. I hope and pray that that helps them feel whole.

As Nancy Gibbs says, "Traditions survive; they are made of love and longing for what we value, and so we hold them close and take them wherever we go." I can think of no better gift to give my sons, this Christmas, and always.