When Momma K, Queen of Petroville was kind enough to name my post about the Catholic Church a “Perfect Post” I was honored. The best part, however, was getting a chance to see a lot of great blogs that I had not visited before. Someone had nominated Panther Girl at The Dog’s Breakfast for her touching post about her son and dealing with the death of his father. I have some experience in this area since I lost my father at a young age and, as a result, Panther Girl and I bonded.

So, I’m happy to have her as my first non-holiday family tradition. Please welcome Panther Girl and go on over and say hi.

I’ve never been a big “tradition” person. My family growing up did certain things over and over, but I’d define them more as habits than traditions. Sundays alternated between my father’s mother and my mother’s mother cooking ginormous meals, enslaving the women before and after while the men unbuckled their swollen bellies in front of the tube. (I would usually sneak downstairs, in feminist defiance against the almighty dishtowel.) Even the holidays held very little tradition. We’d usually open our Christmas gifts alone while my mother clanged the coffee pot around in the kitchen. Easter brought out the patent leather shoes and spongy coats that made us look like peeps. The most festive holiday around our place was Halloween, but I think that’s only because it allowed my parents to flex their racist muscles by dressing us up as Aunt Jemima and Buckwheat.

When I had my first child, my daughter, there was a part of me that wanted to create some family traditions but I just didn’t know how. Luckily, it just happened. The night before her first birthday, my husband and I were reminiscing about the previous year…how we had gone out to dinner and ate soft shell crab while I experienced some weak contractions every 20 minutes or so. We went home, went to sleep and the next morning I was in full-blown labor.

We thought it would be cute to eat softshell crab again as our daughter was turning one, and from that year on we continued the “tradition”. Three divorces and one kid later, I continue to eat the early labor meal each year on my kids’ birthdays…. softshell crab for Emma, and chicken fajitas for Lucas. They think it’s really fun, and it inevitably leads to a walk down memory lane about the day they were born. Kids love that stuff.