Christmas Tradition

Tonight our family went to Home for the Holidays at our club with our friends the Toms and the Peruns. It is an annual tradition for us to spend time together at Christmas. Even though we start by sitting as family units around the one large round table we quickly move seats. The mothers sit together, the girls sit together and the fathers with poor Drew, the only male child are thrown together.

For our girls it is the first down time they have had since they all just finished exams today. For the fathers it becomes a discussion about where the best new food and drink spots are that have opened recently and when the three of them can go visit them as a triumvirate. For the moms it is a lot of catching up since life has us pulled in different directions.

I took a picture of the girls by the Christmas tree tonight. I quickly was reminded of a trip we took to New York at Christmas time seven years ago. We talk often about that trip. To me it feels like it was just yesterday, probably because I still wear the same clothes. In fact while looking at the pictures I realized I just got the coat I wore on that trip dry-cleaned. The mother’s have not changed much.

But seeing our daughters go from nine or ten to sixteen and seventeen is a big change. Not only have they become adults and matured in looks, but the conversation has changed from mother’s telling them things, like which way is uptown and which is down to discussions and opinions about what is going on in the world.

Tonight during a conversation about kids the girls babysit for and the differences in behavior Carter said she was going to be a strict mother and not put up with any trouble. I turned to my friend Stephanie and said, “Well, she was trained by me.”

“Yeah, Mom. I can’t believe that every time I wanted candy or gum from a gumball machine you told me that it said it was broken.”

“Carter, it worked. I never had to give you candy.”

It was much easier back then. Santa was always watching. The store could be “out” of cookies. The vending machines could all be broken. I don’t care how little sleep you get in those early years of childrearing, it is easier then than it is when they are older. But I have to say that it is much more fun to have a conversation with your grown up child about philosophy, or literature or what is happening in the news.

The years go quickly, I hope in the next seven years we will still be gathering at Home for the Holidays dinners with our friends and our kids. The kids can get older, but us parents will stay just the way we have always been.