What Matters Most
This weekend was full of emotional moments. This time of year we often reflect on memories long past and without breaking out into Anastasia Song, things get frosty...
Teary eyed.
I miss Grandma's fudge, her peanut brittle, the sound of the family huddling over their instrument of choice to join the chorus of Christmas song. People ushers from one room to the next, the carpet soft between my toes, the smell of cinnamon and delicious desserts in the air. The holidays meant everyone put on a happy face and we pretended it was all alright.
The tree, the tradition, the food; it all fills you to the brim with happiness.
Now that my grandparents have passed, the holiday gatherings have dissolved. Everyone has their own smaller gathering, and years go by between our meetings. No more fudge and cookies, no more stacks of family recipes and tins of goodies that greet you at the door. No more Pictionary from the back room and no more smashed pennies on the train tracks.
Now I have my own children. My own void to fill with tradition and also the new family. I've married into a Scandinavian family that has not yet lost their patriarch. The great grandparents are still alive, though slowly losing their health and deterring family, so some tradition still lingers. This means as my children play, conversation gathers over coffee, I'm somewhere snapping details that will long be forgotten and priceless in a decade or two.
I wish I knew what my grandma kept above the stove when we were watching the pot of boiling sugar so closely. I remember the smell, but not the exact prayer pressed in paper over her shelf in the bathroom. I don't remember the exact details of the fringe that hung from her handmade doilies on the counter. None of those things exist anymore and everyone's memories are questionably fading with time.
So, I snap my childrens' details, their background noise. I covet my husband's living grandfather and try to capture all I can before it's gone too soon.
Marriage is full of an array of priceless gifts. To my husband, to his father and his father's father, 'thank you.'
Teary eyed.
I miss Grandma's fudge, her peanut brittle, the sound of the family huddling over their instrument of choice to join the chorus of Christmas song. People ushers from one room to the next, the carpet soft between my toes, the smell of cinnamon and delicious desserts in the air. The holidays meant everyone put on a happy face and we pretended it was all alright.
The tree, the tradition, the food; it all fills you to the brim with happiness.
Now that my grandparents have passed, the holiday gatherings have dissolved. Everyone has their own smaller gathering, and years go by between our meetings. No more fudge and cookies, no more stacks of family recipes and tins of goodies that greet you at the door. No more Pictionary from the back room and no more smashed pennies on the train tracks.
Now I have my own children. My own void to fill with tradition and also the new family. I've married into a Scandinavian family that has not yet lost their patriarch. The great grandparents are still alive, though slowly losing their health and deterring family, so some tradition still lingers. This means as my children play, conversation gathers over coffee, I'm somewhere snapping details that will long be forgotten and priceless in a decade or two.
I wish I knew what my grandma kept above the stove when we were watching the pot of boiling sugar so closely. I remember the smell, but not the exact prayer pressed in paper over her shelf in the bathroom. I don't remember the exact details of the fringe that hung from her handmade doilies on the counter. None of those things exist anymore and everyone's memories are questionably fading with time.
So, I snap my childrens' details, their background noise. I covet my husband's living grandfather and try to capture all I can before it's gone too soon.
Marriage is full of an array of priceless gifts. To my husband, to his father and his father's father, 'thank you.'
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