Trading Traditions

We didn't have our Tofurkey Bowl this year. No, that's not some bizarre vegetarian dish. It's the name I'd given our annual football game a few years back. But this year it didn't happen. No one was up for it.

"Maybe tomorrow," someone said.
"How 'bout we play football at Christmas?" someone else said when "tomorrow" rolled around.

Some people just don't understand traditions-- I, the family traditionalist, thought to myself.

Friday night we got invited over to Aunt Susie and Uncle Wayne's house to make springerle cookies. I'd had the cookies before in my pre-glutard days; they've been making them since before my dad was even born. But never had I ever had the experience of making them.

Experience the scene with me....

As you walk into my great aunt and uncle's house, you see three of the cousins (from my generation, but about ten years younger) sitting on the couch with a pile of beads, a pile of thin leather strips, and a pile of finished bracelets. Before you can even process what's going on there, you're distracted by the smell of anise. So. Much. Anise. Sitting at the table is my dad's cousin Richard, measuring and cutting the leather strips that will be used by his daughter and her cousins to make the bracelets that are being sent to the orphanage in Haiti.

As you follow your nose to find out where the anise smell is coming from, you walk past Richard into the kitchen, where you'll see Uncle Wayne himself rolling out a large pile of cookie dough into a neat rectangle. Stay a little longer, and you'll see him take another rolling pin-- but this one has imprints on it!-- and roll it carefully over the rolled out dough. Then he'll take a pizza cutter and methodically cut the imprinted squares and place them on a cookie sheet.

You'll see Aunt Susie take that cookie sheet and carry it into the next room. As you follow her, you'll pass her son (my dad's cousin) Bob at the mixer, whipping up the next batch of cookie dough for Uncle Wayne to roll out. Keep following Aunt Susie with the cookie tray, and you'll see her hand it to her daughter Susan, who will lead the process of trimming the edges of each square and brushing them to remove any excess flour.

"How many cookies are we making?"
"Oh, 90 dozen."
"90 cookies... so about 8 doz... WAIT. 90 dozen?!?!"

Yep. 90 dozen. Because it turns out that all those years I've seen springerle cookies around, I was missing out on the fact that this is a tradition that has been going on since well before I was born-- and well before the days of the Tofurkey Bowl. Grandpa Alstadt used to make them, but when he died, Aunt Susie and Uncle Wayne carried on the tradition. Some evening early in the holiday season, the family gathers to make sure that there will be plenty of springerles to give to the rest of the family and to their friends. I'm not sure when the tradition expanded to include other projects, but the girls made quite the pile of bracelets for the orphanage in Haiti (I got to help for a bit until I became Uncle Wayne's apprentice at the rolling station) and someone had packed a large pile of gift bags to be taken to the men at the City Mission.

I still like the Tofurkey Bowl annual football game. But it was pretty cool to learn another family tradition, too. And maybe it's okay if traditions change and grow as the years go on, after all.

Gimpy Pigeon

Are there parts of life that make you happy? -- I asked one of my friends who'd just had a terrible day.

"Oh sure," he said, "but they're the absurdities... the man at the deli who you never really talk to but he knows your coffee order by heart; the pigeon with the club foot down by the ferry..." and he kept listing other absurdities that are true especially in New York-- but he lost me after the pigeon. I interrupted him--

Sorry, but I have to go back to that pigeon. With the club foot. If you were that pigeon, you'd probably think your life sucked and was pointless.

"And it does and it is! Poor stupid pigeon."

But his life isn't pointless; he made you smile! Poor pigeon hobbles around on his club foot and probably thinks he doesn't make a difference anywhere, and yet he makes you smile every time you see him.

--
I used to be better at finding joy in the little things; finding something to smile about in the absurdities. I used to be better about remembering that everything happens for a reason and to find comfort in that. Maybe it's part of getting older; I just hope it doesn't mean I'm getting cynical... but I have a harder time doing that lately. I wish I could find that pigeon and somehow explain to it that its gimpy foot still brings joy to people's lives. I wish I could remind myself that my gimpy mistakes and shortcomings can still be used for good; that it's okay that my life isn't coming together the way I always thought it would or doesn't look like the lives of the people around me. That even if my walk is different it can still be encouraging to others whose paths I cross.

Memory Overload

Washington Heights
Budget car rental
Central Park
SAT tutoring
the Apple store
wine and cheese parties
music on my ipod
mentoring
Alphabet City
making sushi
Dutch Blitz
books on my dresser

Everything reminds me; everything makes it harder to forget.

"It'll get easier."
"You'll get over it."
"You'll be fine."

But it's not.
And I haven't.
And I'm not.