P52, Somewhat: Week 15, "Tradition"

I grew up in a family with traditions.  We knew, more or less, what to expect at every major holiday, and it was nice to know what was coming.  Now that I'm a parent myself, I want Kaleb to benefit from these same types of traditions.  But the pressures of wanting him to have the perfect Rockwellian holidays, as I remember having in my own childhood.

What I have discovered is this: I probably actually never had a holiday that went perfectly according to my parents' plans.  My family holidays with Kaleb will probably never go perfectly either.  And that's ok.  Just as I never had any sense of things going wrong as a kid, Kaleb probably won't either.  In fact, the most important tradition is to simply spend time with Kaleb and do things to make his holidays special and memorable, just as my parents did for my brother and me when we were kids.

This year, for the first time, Kaleb and I dyed eggs.  Assuming I already had all the supplies we'd need, I didn't bother to read the directions of the egg dying kid my dad had given us.  I bought some eggs, and hard boiled 20 of them.  18 of them survived the boiling without cracking, and they were set aside to be colored.  On the day we were to dye the eggs, however, I realized we had no vinegar to add to the dye water to help the color adhere to the egg shells.  A quick glance around Google hinted that I might be able to use lemon juice instead, and I decided it would just have to work.  Kaleb and I spent some time dying the eggs, six at a time in three rounds.  They came out with plenty of imperfections, not at all what I had hoped for my first attempt at sharing this activity with Kaleb.  But you know what?  He didn't notice those imperfections at all!  He was overjoyed to be able to help, to get to participate in something new and fun.  When it was all finished, I couldn't pry Kaleb out of the kitchen.  He actually wanted to stand atop his stool and watch the eggs drying on the counter.

I suppose it was a success after all.