Blog 3

My childhood was much different than most people in a sense. Even though having divorced parents or parents in different households is somewhat a norm, most children traditionally spend a majority of their time in the mother’s house. For my brother and me this situation was opposite. My father raised us as a single dad and my mother was almost completely absent. These living arrangements and relationships made our family traditions difficult and most of the time we would only be able to have traditions with my father’s side of the family.

My dad has a rather large family. He has 7 brothers, most of which have more than one child themselves. When I was very young we didn’t really need a reason to get together. It seemed as though tradition was getting together at least once a week. We would all gather at my grandparents’ house to hang out and eat food. I am not sure why, but over the years this has drastically changed.

We went from seeing each other often to having a new tradition of making sure that we gathered for pretty much any major holiday making sure to include even some smaller holidays that most people don’t traditionally celebrate with their families as a whole like father’s day and St. Patrick’s Day.  

Now it is rare to even have a holiday get together and when we do actually have one it is no surprise when one or more people don’t show up. Having these discussions over the traditions we all have it is kind of saddening to me that my family has seemingly drifted apart. It is as if we no longer care enough about one another enough to fit family life into our busy lives. It seems unreal to me that cousins, who once were inseparable, now have not seen each other in so long that we haven’t met each others’ 5 year olds.

If I could change the family traditions, I would bring back the old ways. I would want to have those weekly family gatherings that we all once enjoyed in hopes that our children could have those same memories and relationships. I would want to bring back the holidays the way they used to be when we were younger and also try to intertwine my mother’s side of the family that I feel we missed out on.

P.S . Another tradition I would like to see brought back is the use of cursive writing.