On the edge

Talking about traditions with Bestest this morning made me realize that I was born on the edge.

I was born November 25, 1949, right before the 1950's, that magical beginning of the age of plastic.  Credit cards, chairs, toys like the world had never seen before accompanied me as I grew up.

The rhythms and traditions of my childhood were the last remnants of a world not based on the pure commercialism that television was bringing into being.

Our year began with New Years, a time when our family got together for a long night while the parents played Bridge and the children gathered in the basement toy room to entertain each other.

Valentine's Day began by making paper envelopes at school, homemade cookies at home and bringing the two together for an afternoon of sharing tiny cards, picked out and signed personally in pencil, for all the students in the classroom.

St. Patrick's Day was eagerly anticipated as a day to wear green to school and sing Irish songs, but there was no thought of pinching those who did not.

May Day culminated in making little paper baskets shaped like cones and making paper flowers at school. At home we also made those baskets, or wove them out of paper strips before picking flowers around the neighborhood to fill them. Then, usually early in the morning, before people were out and about, we would hang them on door knobs, ring the bells and run like mad for cover. No one chased us and no one kissed us. That part of the tradition was already dying out.

Decoration Day would find the porch filled with those peculiar tall-handled baskets filled with flowers for the graves. We would take them out and hear stories about those relatives who had already passed on.

In the summer we looked forward to band concerts on the square every week and on some magical day my mother and grandmother designated, we made trolley cars out of shoe boxes with windows cut in the sides. I remember saving colored cellophane to make stained glass windows and tying a shoe string on the front to pull them. After dark, we would put a candle stub on a jar lid, cut a chimney hole in the roof, and pull our trolley around the block.

The fourth of July found us eagerly awaiting the purchase of new cap guns and, if we were lucky, new holsters and even cowboy outfits with boots and hats. The day was spent shooting each other, banging box after box of caps on rocks with hammers and burning snakes on rocks until dark. Then our dad would set off the sparklers and sometimes we would catch a glimpse of fireworks far away up in the sky.

Labor Day was only the weekend before school for us, a day to lay out the new shoes and maybe the new outfit we couldn't wait to wear.

Halloween was the beginning of the big holidays. We would collaborate with my mother who would make elaborate costumes for us and then take us trick-or-treating around the neighborhood to show them off. Sometimes we had to go inside for pictures, but then the treats would be extra special -- like popcorn balls, or caramel apples.

Thanksgiving and my birthday often coincided, but there was no mingling here. Thanksgiving was a gathering of the entire extended family, in the middle of the day, for turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, marshmallow salad, mashed potatoes, cranberry jelly and deviled eggs -- it was all about family and food.  My birthday was waking up to find presents on the buffet in the dining room and waiting all day until dinner time. I got to pick the kind of cake I wanted, almost always chocolate with red roses, and my father would bring it home when he came. Then we would eat a favorite dinner, have cake and ice cream and, at last, open presents, usually something to wear and something to play with.

Our Christmas tradition started early when the Sears catalogue came. We would make list after list of the toys we wanted and long paper chains that we could pluck off one day at a time in place of the Lenten calendars my children had. About a week before Christmas my father would take us to pick out a huge tree and come home to set it up and wire it to the woodwork in the living room. The next day we would decorate it with boxes of old glass ornaments and bubbling lights. We had regular lights too, that were big and got very hot. In the end we added the tinsel, one strand at a time and then sat back in awe to admire this family creation that meant Christmas was almost here. Sprinkle in a few Christmas Carols here and there and that was it until we went for a drive Christmas Eve. Looking for Santy Claus up in the sky, or visiting my paternal grandmother, whatever it was called, it was giving my mother a chance to wrap presents that would be opened when we discovered Santy Claus had come.

These were the routines of my childhood some of which I tried to carry on for my children, but many that simply dissolved as credit added to available cash and more mothers went back to work. There was more money to spend over time, but less time to spend it in.