We Have No Family Tradition For That

Letting go of family traditions that don't fit in favor of a grace that does

Yesterday, my youngest son turned ten. Ten is a big birthday in our family. Nearly every birthday has traditions associated with it, things handed down that, for the most part, were never meant to be more than a single moment for an individual child but somehow made enough of an impression on the others than they took root, and are now part of the overall Who We Are. A child turning ten in our family looks forward to lunch out at a restaurant of their choosing with a parent (they select who takes them, as well), and their inaugural viewing of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark that evening. That’s in addition to the things every birthday person, young or old, enjoys here: a full day without chores, selecting everything on the day’s meny, and a dessert (rarely a cake) of their choice with which to celebrate.

Our family uses The Keeping Company’s spinner and spiral to countdown to birthdays. Highly recommend!

Birthdays here have shifted a bit as the older kids have moved on and married. Once upon a time each birthday morning featured a group dance to the Beatles song, “Birthday.” Somehow, it died out, and now the only the kids at home who remember it are those in their later teens. We still decorate bedroom doors with streamers, but the tradition of waking to an oversized mylar balloon tied to the foot of your bed has now become coming to your spot at the table and finding your chair decorated, your balloon anchored, and your gifts staged. Subtle changes, but important ones that have adapted with the changing needs of our family.

One of the greatest heartaches, I’ve found, for women is the pain of having to make those adaptations. We are creatures of habit, and too often find our joy bound up in those small continuations of tradition. Though we could rarely name it, we see the repeated acts as proof of our nurturing our ability to provide a safe harbor in the midst of a messy world. It’s an assurance, too, that our offering of self— our very mothering— is still needed, still relevant to that growing person who so quickly seems to be outpacing this life we’ve curated for them. We laugh at the outdated traditions, but we insist upon them, because some piece of us needs these things.

But when your kids start leaving the nest, it’s harder and harder to hold the reins of anything, even birthday celebrations for tender 9 year-olds suddenly finding themselves 10 just because the calendar says so. Yes, you held your firstborn son’s hands as he turned 10, and you danced. He wasn’t your height yet (so long ago!) and you can still remember the moment his awkward foot squashed yours, and the way the unkempt tangle of his strawberry blonde curls flopped over his eyes over and over. You treasure that moment, but you won’t get it again. That’s what makes it so precious, such a delicate thing to turn over in your mind from time to time. It doesn’t make it a mandate for this child, this newly-minted 10 year-old who was only known to God back when you danced with that first son.

Not dancing doesn’t mean you failed. It doesn’t mean you lost your touch, you no longer love enough, or your kids won’t have good memories. It means things have changed.

As they do.

As I was making the birthday boy’s requested breakfast yesterday morning (crepes, filled with sweetened cream cheese, and topped with blueberry compote), I received a text. Normally I’ve tucked my phone far away while I’m cooking, but birthdays bring a good number of calls and texts and even videos from friends and family, so it was near just in case. This text was from my second son, who lives two hours away. Five words:

Can I stop by today?

As I’ve said, my son lives two hours away. He does not stop by. But yesterday, he did. He arrived in time to greet the birthday boy and I as we returned home from lunch. He came to deliver a gift of a fishing rod to his little brother, and to participate in target shooting on the far end of our property— a favorite activity of my youngest son’s. The two of them have always had a special bond, my second son and my sixth. You never can tell who will form those most intimate connections in large families; God has a way of finding specific threads in the overall quilt and tying them especially tight. These two are knotted, despite a 13 year age difference. But even knowing that, two hours on a preciously rare day off is a huge gesture for a law enforcement officer, too big an ask. As a mother, I would never have even suggested it. And yet, unprompted, he came.

We have no tradition for that.

Later still, as I prepared to make the birthday dinner (a casserole that started as this years ago, but has endured much revision), I had another surprise. My firstborn son, who had come for dinner and a movie out with the oldest teens just the night before, was headed over. He lives only an hour away, but an hour is an hour—especially when you’ve already dropped off your gift and said your happy birthdays. A phone call could have, would have, more than sufficed. And yet, as the family’s youngest boy blew out the candles on his lemon cobbler last night, the table was nearly as full as it was when he celebrated his first or third birthday.

We have no tradition for that, either.

I used to view families in a very limited way. I used to think they grew, adding babies every few years, and then they stopped. I used to think they reached a pinnacle—a magical place where all the memories were made—and then shrank. I think this is a pretty common view. It’s the one that leads us to drop $10K on a single, “once in a lifetime” vacation just before all of our kids are fully teenagers. It’s also what convinces us to cling to what worked when everyone was under 12 even as we see it slipping into obsolescence. Viewing family life through the lens of somehow having an expiration date makes us force things long past their comfort, and creates an uneasy season where our growing kids are brought painfully into the knowledge that we, their mothers, are investing more in keeping traditions alive than we are in seeing them as individuals who can no longer fit in the spaces we have created for them.

Families never stop growing. That’s what I’ve learned. Whether it’s the season of your own babies, or the season of weddings, or the season of grandchildren. Families are God’s exponential growth formula; they continue to stretch far beyond what we can see. And traditions? Some of them can stretch without breaking, too. Some of them can be pulled to cover those newly elongated limbs without becoming uncomfortably tight. Those traditions are beautiful— and are usually the most simple and natural of all.

But in a growing family, in a season where change is more the norm than constancy, those moments where something happens for which you have no precedent are somehow most precious of all. Those moments when the expected is interrupted and what has always happened is suddenly upended are uniquely beautiful.

Hold space for that as you age, friends. Keep your hands open to receive the things you don’t even know to ask for rather than closing your fingers desperately over what once was.

I took very few picture yesterday, just a handful to mark the occasion. One of them, I know for sure, will end up in the little family photo books I have printed each month. I took it from a distance, a bit removed from the fray. My family is gathering around the table, some in their seats with plates, some still getting their food, others lingering over conversation. It’s not a perfect image of us. Many aren’t present. You can’t even see most people’s faces. But as I took the photo, I was deeply, almost painfully aware that what I was seeing was so much more than what I would have asked for a decade ago, when my birthday boy was first born. That version of myself couldn’t have seen the deep joy in the spontaneous addition of two out of town siblings to a family birthday dinner. That version of me would have only seen what hadn’t happened. No dance! No everyone!

That version of me would have missed out on something far more meaningful:

A birthday, celebrated for the sheer love of the one who God gave us on that day. His joy, his uniqueness, him. And yes, the men who traveled to tell him, face to face, that they cannot envision a world where he isn’t their brother.

We have no tradition for that. But I see now, we don’t need to.

In Christ,

Heather