On Today, which is a Wednesday, I bought a friend a lemonade and talked about important things and unimportant things, and complained about things that are unchangeable but frustrating. An eagle flew very low in front of the building where we sat, followed by another. It’s still baffling to me that bald eagles have become an ordinary sight. I see eagles more often than I see trash can animals! From there, I visited my favorite grocery store, where the produce is so beautiful and irresistible that I bought:

broccoli, kale, carrots, more carrots, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, garlic, leeks, and two large cabbages.

I stocked up on yogurt based greek-style dips, thinking they were vegan-friendly, (we aren’t vegan,) it wasn’t until I was in the checkout line that I realized there is absolutely nothing vegan about yogurt. Except maybe the vanilla flavoring. The checkout cashier, who was a real, live, cash-accepting person, had the most beautiful smile and when she said, “have a great day,” I really felt like she meant it.

On Today, which is a Wednesday, when driving home from the grocery store, I passed a semi that had crashed into a car, and for a few horrible moments, I thought I might see something awful when I got closer—but what I saw was a beautiful young lady on the sidewalk, talking on a cell phone and wearing a very big smile. She was clearly the driver of the smashed car, and beside her was a very big man, who was clearly the driver of the semi. They were both unharmed. She was smiling. (He wasn’t.) Everything would be okay.

There was a bald eagle on one of the trees closest to the eastbound bridge over the river, the one I cross to get home. It was a juvenile, kind of spotty still. The eagles have been amazing these past few winters. Everybody’s been talking about it for the past two years—”have you seen the eagles?!” We’ve all seen the eagles, but are none the less amazed by their presence.

On Today, which is a Wednesday, I passed a man walking down the sidewalk on Main Street with a cross of ashes on his forehead. He was older, wearing a casual suit. Where was he going? Had he walked to the nearby Catholic church for Mass during his lunch break? Was he headed back to the office on this ordinary, yet extraordinary Wednesday? Ash Wednesday is a required day of fasting in the Catholic Church—it seemed had he chosen the Bread of Life for lunch on this one.

On Today, which is a Wednesday, I was introduced to the incredible staff of one of our local homeless shelters, five people who were so alive and filled with joy that the room roared with it. I can’t remember all their names; I’m bad with names. A friend told me that it’s a belief that being bad with names is just an excuse for not caring enough, but I am here to tell you that couldn’t be further from the truth. I care so much about knowing peoples names, yet they escape me so often, and even if I know a name, I’m seldom confident enough to use them aloud. Like names, I’ve been trying for the better part of a decade to learn to identify all the types of clouds, to call them by name aloud. “Hello, Cirrus! Hello, Altostratus!” But clouds are so much like people, as much as I try try try to remember, I just can’t keep the correct names and faces together. “Hello, clouds,” I say aloud in the same way I say, “Hello, friend.”

On Tonight, which was a Wednesday night, there was a New Moon of which I caught a glimpse before it sank below the horizon, the horizon which holds the river trees and power plant stacks I’ve known all my life, not a picturesque way to view the sunset. Pretty ugly. But home. The air was warm and the sky was very clear and the stars were beautiful on my walk to meet my daughter as she came home from ballet. Last week we found ourselves driving out in the countryside and we stuck our heads out the windows of the van to see what constellations we could find. Constellations are a lot like clouds—after all these years, I’m afraid I still only know Orion.

Wednesdays turn to Thursdays, which turn to Fridays, turn to birthdays, turn to holidays, turn to months and years and decades and lifetimes. All this time washes away down the road and I will forget things. I will forget the man with the ashes on his forehead, I will forget the topics discussed over lemonade. I will continue to forget the names of clouds and humans and constellations. But even as I forget, I will keep trying to remember because all of these tiny beautiful things, all these little specks of light make up an incredible, small—incredibly small—life that is a part of other small lives, that are part of a huge picture, a mosaic of Existence, in which the small things are actually pretty important after all.

Alright, folks, here we go. An attempt to throw out into the world something I think we are all craving more of—something bright in our mailboxes, a little snippet of sunlight, one we know to be true, not artificially created, but from the realm of one home, and through the old fashioned method of The Post Office delivered into yours.

I am NOT a business person. I am not an organized person. I’m very, very good at coming up with half-baked ideas and trying to make them work out, but ultimately failing or losing interest, or allowing them to fizzle out. Like the tattoos that I’ve never gotten, I need to really think long and hard about something before jumping in, or I’ll just be filed with disappointment and guilt about having done a shoddy job at something that could have been great.

This is not a very promising introduction, is it? I’m also not a salesman.

BUT, I’ve got my whole family on board with this one, and am ready to introduce to you, a hand-held publication called The Villagers’ Sunbeam. (Ok, I know I just changed my Substack name to The Villager’ Sunshine, simply because I like the word “sunshine.” But the truth is, it feels a little arrogant. Like, “here I am! A whole sun full of shine, just for you!” No, no, I’m much smaller—just a little square of light on kitchen floor. Just an itty bitty beam. But, maybe significant to some.

So, yes, the Villagers’ Sunbeam is prepared at my own kitchen table by my own hands and the hands of my daughters who will definitely be contributing some. It will consist of two or three pages only—a Substack post, which can also be found right here for free, and another page of extras. It will be a mixed offering; maybe a recipe? Maybe a knitting pattern? Maybe more writings? Maybe a bit of art that you can cut out and keep or let die in the recycling bin? A sticker? It will be a surprise! But whatever it is, it will be a tangible bit of life, something not powered with blue light, something you can share in real life, not just digitally. Pass it across the table, mail it on to a friend, donate it to someone who has a bird so they can line their birdcage with it. Think of it as a stone in the path toward your own village—just a little handheld prompt toward connection with others.

So, here’s how to participate:

Okay, let me begin by saying: I hate money. I hate money! I hate that money dictates everything, I hate that money is needed for things like food, clothing, and shelter. I don't mind giving money, I’m actually pretty good at spending and giving without thought, which is NOT a good way to be when your income requires a pretty strict budget… but what I hate most of all about money is asking for it. Or accepting it. Let me be clear: I wish so much that I could just send this out for nothing. Sometimes we buy lottery tickets to have a chance at that possibility! But for now, it is not possible for me to do this for free. AND SO, if you are NOT INTERESTED (or if you think this is a dumb idea with or without applying a monetary value to it,) that is A-OK! You will always be able to read my Substack posts here for free! (And if you like folk music, you can follow my YouTube channel or my Patreon page and learn lots of folk songs also for free!) please feel no pressure to join this mailed newsletter!

But, IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PARTICIPATE, here’s what to do: Subscribe to my Substack for a “pledge” which should be set at a fixed $5/month—this should offset the cost of paper, printer ink, stamps and envelopes—but MOST IMPORTANTLY, please send me an email to:

cobbledshop@gmail.com

WITH THE SUBJECT LINE:

The Villagers Sunbeam: Sign Me Up!

Or something like that so I don’t miss anyone. And in the body of the email, please put your preferred snail mail mailing address! My first issue will be sent in March, and this will a monthly mailing.

And that’s it! Thank you for your support, friends! I am excited about this little project… excited to share a little beam of light!!

I kind of love online trends that involve looking back on personal histories. I loved the 2019 (which I thought was a movement from just last year, but Martin googled it and found it was much longer ago) “ten years ago” trend, even though I believed at the time (I still believe) that it was a conspiracy to further develop facial recognition without our consent. I love seeing people’s past lives lined up beside the current, and I love seeing how people’s children have grown, how their lives and hairstyles have changed. It’s fun!

The recent “2016” trend took me off guard. Okay, it was ten years ago, but what’s so special about 2016? I couldn’t come up with any fresh conspiracies, neither have I jumped aboard, but I have really enjoyed seeing the then-and-nows all over my Instagram feed. For some reason, the 2016 trend seemed to be holding a lot of nostalgia for people, more than the previous throwback trend that just kind of compared faces from a decade apart. I was a bit confused, but then I happened upon a news article that tried to decipher the trend, and it made a lot of sense.

The article claimed that people see 2016 as “the last good year.” From then on, the world has been in somewhat of a downward spiral in terms of global and US politics, which has had an affect on our collective mental health as a generation, but that wasn’t the crux of it—they cited phone usage as the primary downfall of our happiness. According to the article, 2016 was the last year we were able to enjoy our phones and put them down to live our real life. Since then, our devices have pulled us in and become a constant companion, feeding us doom and gloom in some form or another 24 hours a day. 2016, they say, is when we left behind “simpler times” and in general, “real life” in exchange for online-everything, social media as our sole communities, and never-ending news and events streaming.

This makes absolute sense to me. I see it! Even though that wasn’t exactly my experience (for me, I’d say 2021 was the year everything changed for me,) I see clearly the line where the phones took over. It bewilders me that it wasn’t ignited by Covid, like so many other societal changes we’ve seen and felt, no, it was just a lifestyle choice that we all made. Crazy! I remember when Martin and I would sit down at the kitchen table at the end of the day with a cup of coffee and “catch up” on Instagram. There was a purpose and there was an end—you had a few followers to post for (I posted about every day, maybe twice a day) and you followed a handful of people who genuinely interested you. Nowadays, I find myself reaching for my phone all day long to see what’s going on, only to be fed mostly advertisements, which makes me feel unfulfilled, so I keep scrolling in order to see more "real” people accounts. And how much do I even care about the majority of the accounts I’m seeing? Let’s just see:

I just opened up my Instagram and the first thing I see is “Fitz & Floyd.” I have never heard of Fitz & Floyd before this moment, they seem to be… dishes? Home things? Their motto is “One Look and You Know.” I don’t even know what that means. One of their items is a cookie jar that is shaped like a pickup truck. Fitz & Floyd is so far from my own decorating style that I have no words. But I have to scroll past that ad in order to get to the very next thing, an ad, from “allure,” which I think is a magazine? Allure asks someone “what is your game day beauty routine?” I do not have game days. I do not have a beauty routine. I do not read this kind of magazine—oh, I just looked, it’s a beauty magazine! lol! Can you even imagine me reading a beauty magazine! (Maybe they are trying to give me a hint! “IT’S TIME, ANNIE, IT’S TIME!")

My next immediate ad is from “Visit Ft. Meyers.” Um. Okay. (Alright, this one is not SO far off the mark, since I DO have beloveds in Florida now, but Fr. Meyers is not where they are, nor is it where I would want to go if I had the time, money, lack of travel anxiety, etc.)

Closed Instagram. Reopened Instagram. Ad: Douglas Toys. Very cute stuffed walrus that I definitely don’t need in my life. No thanks, Doug.

You get where I’m going with this ridiculousness.

What began as an online community has become a constant source of FOMO, but without ever supplying anything we actually care about or need. It’s just an empty longing for something that doesn’t really exist anymore.

And crazier—everyone is unhappy. Or at least more unhappy than we were in 2016. (Again, this isn’t my experience, but the experience of people on average. I’d venture to say heavier than average.) Here we are, admitting our misery with a nostalgic social media trend! What on earth!

It’s time, folks. It’s time to hang it up, and we are all feeling it.

Real life is beautiful. I miss it. I recognize that in my own life, I am filling empty spaces with my phone that used to be filled with the tedium of mothering in the early years. I spend a lot of time wandering around these days, waiting for someone to need me. I have allowed my hands to fill that time with scrolling instead of with any other activity. That’s so stupid! My precious life, wasted on looking at advertisements for magazines I don’t want to read, trips I don’t want to take, stuffed animals I don’t want to buy, home boutiques I don’t understand. And yet, I still reach. As do most of us, evidently.

So, what’s next? Well, obviously change is what’s next. Alongside this trend of reminiscing on happier times, there have surfaced some new movements: the analog movement, the decorate-your-house-however-you-want movement, the slow-and-purposeful-living movement. I’ve noticed a turn away from consumerism overall (“buy local!” “buy organic!”) in favor of more community-based experiences and a mindset of doing without. This doesn’t seem like good news for business people who are in the “goods” part of goods & services, nor does it bode well for the advertisers bombarding us, but it does seem like a healthy move for social humans.

Whatever was so special about 2016, pre-Screen Takeover, let’s get back there. What’s stopping us? I tell my kids: “You are in charge of You.” (ALL THE TIME, I say this.) It applies to each of us, all the time, through all the trends and movements.

As for me, whether or not 2016 was my last good year, I am all about throwing our phones out an upper window and getting back to face-to-face commerce and society. I have such a love-hate relationship with social media… mostly these days it’s hate. No longer in a phase of life where I’m lacking human contact, I don’t need social media as a lifeline. I think a lot of women my age feel the same way—for awhile, Instagram was our window to the outside world, a little naptime escape. Nowadays, I don’t have time for that kind of time-suck. My life is filled to the brim with fulfilling life happenings, and if I need a break or a reset, I can just walk out my door and find what I need in world outside my house. I can just pick up the sweater I’ve been knitting for six months and work on it. I wonder how the young moms are feeling these days? Is Instagram a lifeline for them, or just a distraction always at their fingertips?

2016 was definitely a year I was in need of a lifeline. Man, oh man. That was the year of a terrible commission job that was bringing home paychecks of $0. That was the year I begrudgingly had to leave our homestead and animals to move back to our downtown house. So much sadness and worry. Four little girls, nobody more than 9 years old. I definitely would not have ever categorized it as my “last good year,” not by a long shot. But you know, nostalgia has a way of turning our hearts and memories. I remember the anxiety, but what I feel in my heart for 2016 is beauty.

Here we are in 2026. Plenty of anxieties, but plenty of beauty. Let’s make more room for the beauty so that in 2036 we can look back at Now and remember how good it was.

Our winter times in this home are filled with traditions. Every year when I post about some of them on social media, or tell people about them—Saint Lucia Day, making wassail, Advent songs, etc., people ask me to share more. Many people have expressed a desire to establish more traditions in their homes to share with their children and grandchildren, but don’t really know where or how to begin. Well, I thought I’d share a bit about our traditions, so that you, too, can saddle your holiday season and beyond with even more events to keep track of and food to prepare! (Just kidding! The holidays might be an overwhelming time to take on new events, but you’ve got a whole year that’s worth celebrating!)

There are two things about tradition that I have noticed over the years. One is that the kids love it—it gives them a deeper sense of rhythm throughout the year than simply preparing for the next thing, especially Christmas. I educated my girls under a sweet philosophy when they were small—I’d call it Waldorf Lite—which gave us oodles of ideas for marking small holidays. Waldorf-style holidays have a great focus on the traditions and celebrations of the ancient agricultural year as well as the typical holidays of both our liturgical and our secular calendars. It’s been a lovely journey to learn more about celebrations that have been largely forgotten, while also having many opportunities for crafting and feasting! Our most heavy combined genetic heritage between Martin and myself is German, and our faith is Catholicism, both of which lend themselves to tradition, commemoration, and celebration.

I’d say I have three things in my back pocket for marking our traditions throughout the year:

1. I love to cook, bake, set a table, and have people over. Now, let me tell you, sometimes when I invite people who have never visited our home before, I invite them to “our hovel” so that they know that I don’t believe my house is in any way like their house. Frankly, it would be easy for me to shy away from inviting people to our home. We live in a sketchy neighborhood, our house is very small, it’s falling apart, it’s not really like most other homes I have visited and admired. But, I love it, and I love people, so with a small word of warning, I invite them anyway. The cooking, baking, table-making is something I find so fun! I keep a stockpile (note: a “stockpile” is a great thing to have for entertaining. I have many different stockpiles) of tablecloths, candles, candlesticks, serving dishes, twinkle lights. This is because I never “clear out” like I probably should. And we have our traditional foods but also, do not let Aldi fall beneath your radar beam—many a gathering in my home has been catered by the Aldi fancy chocolates & jams endcap.

2. I love, love, love crafting! I have a stockpile (hee hee!) of crafting supplies, so when some tradition calls for, for example, making paper lanterns (Martinmas, November 11) I am prepared. Now, I don’t want to condone hoarder behavior because I know it can be a really unhealthy way to exist, but let me just say, it does make things easier when you always have what you need on hand, somewhere, in the recesses of your home. Also, you don’t have to proclaim yourself a hoarder, you just say you have stockpiles. That sounds organized and intentional. Vocabulary is the key difference between preparedness and slovenliness.

3. THIS BOOK:

I don’t remember how I found this book, it was likely recommended to me by my sister-in-law, but it has ignited and helped to evolve so many of our beloved traditions! I wish I could sit with each of you and page through it, showing you our most creased and practiced sections, the crafts, the little songs, the readings. If you have one book about building folk-style traditions with your children throughout the year, make it this one!

So, with those things tucked into my arsenal of celebratory tools, I’ll give your a brief rundown of some of our favorite traditions, holiday and otherwise. (And at the end, I’ll give you permission to throw everything you’ve read out the window and do whatever you want, because that’s how the best traditions are born.)

Obviously, Christmastime is full to the brim with activities and days to keep. I hesitate to invite anyone to add more to their plate than the Holiday Season already sets before you, but then, there must have been a time when my kids were little that I wasn’t running around quite so maniacally in the weeks of Advent. Little kids are different than big kids—considerably less busy!

Our Advent starts each year with getting our Christmas tree and putting up our advent wreath so we can light candles and sing our advent song. The song we sing is brought to our family from Martin’s childhood, and it’s “light the Advent candle one, now our waiting has begun…” you can Google search that line and find the song, it was written by Mary Lu Walker in 1975. After we sing the verse(s) appropriate for that week, we sing some Christmas carols together. It’s a sweet tradition that we practiced nightly for many Advents, but that now has been hard to make happen with the kids scattered in so many directions in the evening. [takes deep breath to stifle emotion.]

But we also cut our tree on the first Sunday of Advent, which I know is against many Catholics’ philosophy of keeping the Advent season out of Christmas, but, once a tradition is established, IT DOES NOT DIE, and we all know it only takes one fun experience with kids—even if it’s a bad idea!—to make something a tradition. We go to a local tree farm and wander around in the field fighting for awhile, generally at least two kids start crying, we make a choice, we take a picture, and 6/7 of us go home happy while one will be left holding a tree grudge for the entire holiday season because she didn’t get her top choice of evergreen. It’s beautiful.

December is filled with notable days. Saint Nicholas Day on December 6th! We leave our shoes out on the piano (supposed to be by the fireplace, but alas…) and in the morning, we discover that Good Saint Nick has gifted us some fine little treasures. Always chocolate, in the form of coins and oranges, and usually something small like a wooden animal, some pens, a pair of socks. Tradition says that he threw coins down the chimney of some sad poor without-a-dowry girls in order that they might be eligible for marriage. Every year Greta hopes to find marriage eligibility in her shoes in the form of a cute boyfriend, but so far, just chocolate.

December 13 is Saint Lucia Day, the feast of Saint Lucy, venerated in the Catholic church as a virgin martyr who had her eyes gouged out. (Evidently, the eye part may or may not have really happened, but it makes her very memorable.) Her feast day comes in the darkest days of the year, and her name, meaning “light,” makes her day a good “light” celebration, as well as one of the cultural celebrations that we all envied in the American Girl books about Kirsten Larson from our childhoods, RIGHT?? We have for our Saint Lucia Day white “gowns” (These are the chemises from our Historic Rendezvous costumes) tied with a red sash (a playsilk or scarf) and on the head of the chosen Saint Lucia for that year there is a wreath of boxwood stems and candles. Yes, yes, I use real candles; no, no, it doesn’t make me nervous. I made the head wreath a bajillion years ago from floral wire, the kind that is thick and covered in brown papery stuff. It works VERY well, because I was able to bend in little wibbles to hold the candles. Each year I wake up long before dawn and re-green the wreath (we have boxwood bushes in front of our house) and stick in fresh candles. The night before (sometimes all through the night) I make some kind of breakfast roll (I don’t do the traditional saffron rolls. Saffron is ridiculously expensive and the one year we did make them we did not love eating them, beautiful as they looked. I do cinnamon rolls, or more often, a challah loaf or regular yeast rolls) and I typically do an overnight ham in the oven. Otherwise, it’s heavy on citrus (flu season!) and chocolate (you might sense a theme in our traditional fare!) but it’s a lovely breakfast together, no matter what we eat. The tradition is that whoever is Saint Lucia for that year goes around from room to room waking up the whole family, carrying a tray (ahem, cutting board) full of food to tempt them out of their beds. This all happens as the sun is coming up. It really is one of our favorite festivities.

Solstice! I love the sun! The best Winter Solstice celebration we ever had was when we were living in the country and it was a very snowy winter and we all trekked outside (the kids were so little!) in snow clothes, and we made a bonfire and sat around it singing together. That was SO fun and pleasant. Since then we’ve had a number of Solstice parties, sometimes with an outdoor bonfire, sometimes not. The Solstice parties are usually thrown together last minute and include some kind of soup and bread combo, and wassail, which Martin makes from cheap red wine and orange juice heated on the stove with spices. The theme of our solstice parties is warmth, candlelight, togetherness with friends and family, and many times, music. (Solstice is a great opportunity to throw a quick party together because expectations are so low! What is a Solstice party? It’s whatever you want it to be! And the best part is, it’s a twice a year thing!)

We all know about Christmas and New Years. Yes, yes, let’s move on toward spring.

We LOVE Valentine’s Day around here and have most years hosted a small gathering of young friends for tea and (YOU GUESSED IT!) chocolate. But the bigger tradition is that the night before I make very special invitations for the girls and leave them at the top of the stairs.

This tradition started so many years ago, and what’s funny is that the Valentine’s breakfast is not at all special. It’s just breakfast but with a red table cloth, candles, and invitations! I guess I do usually make something like a pastry, or a dutch baby, or thumbprint cookies, but honestly, this only seems like a big deal because I don’t make breakfast on a daily basis. Our breakfasts are usually tea and leftover cake because we make cakes all the time, which sounds a bit lavish, but it’s just part of our life, I guess. Cake.

On May Day—May 1st—we go around delivering cookies and/or flowers to our beloved neighbors. In our area on May 1st, there are really very few flowers blooming, but we do have yard violets, so we either make small bouquets or we make shortbread cookies with candied violets on top (glued on with sugar water.) For one neighbor in particular (a beloved friend who was a large part of Martin’s childhood and a large part of my highschool-college years) we sing a May Day song. Here are some links to the songs we sing on May Day, for ourselves and for others:

Bedfordshire May Carol

Hail, Hail, the First of May (written by Dave Webber, not traditional)

I dream of having a fun and beautiful May Day celebration with dancing and a May Pole and a May Queen, etc., but the weather in Indiana at the beginning of May is more often than not disgusting and it’s at the very least wildly unpredictable, so this vision has never become reality for us.

On the First Nice Day in May (very specific) we have Pinata Day, which has actually only happened once or twice, but is a tradition we cherish nonetheless. It’s exactly what it sounds like: We buy a pinata and fill it with candy and play pinata. This is a celebration that happens with my side of the family, the cousins and all, at my parents’ house because they have a really great pinata tree. Last year, there were no nice days in May, so we didn’t get to celebrate, and we’ve all felt very woeful since.

Here’s a very attainable summertime tradition if it happens to be part of your library’s activities: The “five-hour prize” at our library’s summer reading program every year is a gift certificate for Dairy Queen ice cream. Sometime mid-summer, once those prizes have been collected, we go to Dairy Queen and get gross ice cream and drive out to a nearby nature trail and we walk on the trail while we eat our free ice cream.

And the year goes marching on! We love Michaelmas, where we have a nice dinner together as a family and fill the table vases with Michaelmas Daisies, which are those very cute asters that bloom in yards in September.

We love Halloween where we get to make costumes, which we start thinking about and planning for in August, but inevitably don’t start on construction until October 30th. I love November 1 and 2nd (All Saints Day and All Souls Day) when, every year, I say, “THIS is the year we go to the cemeteries and pray for the dead and study gravestones!” and in all my 18 years of parenting, I still have never done that.

But one we REALLY love is Martinmas because it’s the beginning of the light celebrations, which really gets us ready for dark season, and begins my annual obsession with lighting candles all the time. The best thing to do for Martinmas is to gather your friends and all the children and make/supply lanterns for them and lead them on a lantern walk through the darkness. I know this will shock you, but THERE ARE SONGS for the lantern walks! (I can’t link the song because I’m out of space, but if you are interested you can search “Annie Hatke glimmer lantern glimmer” on YouTube and you will find the video and the explanation of Martinmas!)

Remembering our various lantern walks makes me so happy. Some years we just choose a variety of lantern (there are many types!) and make them together, light them all over the house and have a nice dinner by lanternlight. One year we made tiny little paper lanterns that held little battery powered votive candles and we hung them all over the kitchen ceiling. Tissue paper glued to jars is a classic design as well.

Well, that pretty much gets us back to where we began. I skipped some of our celebrations in this rundown, because there are really so many. We love birthdays and half birthdays and anniversaries. We love celebrating arbitrary dates, stuffed animals’ birthdays, stuffed animals’ weddings, commemorative dates of favorite authors or events. Generally speaking, if it’s an excuse to eat cake, we’re in!

Here’s the important thing to remember about traditions: it doesn’t really matter to anyone but you. There’s no need to be lavish, there’s no need to put a lot of money and effort into these events, there’s definitely no need to keep up with what anyone else on social media is doing. Just think of something fun that would make you and your family happy each year, and do it!

You can start a tradition for the day you read this post about traditions. You can say “this will be our traditional Clam Chowder Day (I say that because I made clam chowder for the first time today, and it was actually delicious!) and every year on January 11th you can make clam chowder and read Robert McCloskey’s “One Morning in Maine” (the inspiration for my clam chowder because they have it for lunch) and it might become a really special day for your family because maybe you all love clam chowder, or it might become one of those terrible family memories that entertains for generations because you all actually hate clam chowder but THIS IS THE TRADITION, DARN IT! and that’s not unlike some of our own traditions, where there are lots of complaints and crying, but we’re in it so deep that I can’t cut the activity out of our repertoire so it instead becomes one of those “Character Building Opportunities” that will be remembered at gatherings long after I am gone.

In any case, it doesn’t matter. You don’t any special stuff. Our traditional New Years tablecloth is a piece of fabric our neighbors brought us from their travels. We didn’t know if it was meant to be a tablecloth (the years of washing tell me it probably was) but it felt festive, so we started using it on New Years. But you could do something tht requires less than a tablecloth—a festive dinner where you move the table to a diferent place in the house to eat. You can have bathroom dinner! Ew, no, nevermind. You could pack some snacks in a paper grocery bag and take it to a public woods for a kick-off-the-summer picnic on a day of your choosing. Or have people over to celebrate your dog’s birthday. You could do choose a random but admirable historic figure to celebrate yearly. What if you had an impromptu gathering on the day you see your first fall leaf on the ground, or your first dandelion in the yard. (OK, actually, Dandelion Day would be a super fun tradition, when the dandelions get plentiful enough for use, you could make dandelion focaccia bread and a big fresh spring salad, and drink prosecco with your friends and PLEASE SOMEONE ADOPT THIS HOLIDAY, I’M BOOKED.

It’s about what brings you joy and helps you to see the good bits in this life. There are so many… and a dandelion is definitely wonderful enough to celebrate. I AM going to establish that among our traditional celebrations! I hope that you might consider doing so too—or start up anything else!—in your own beautiful and unique way.

(Photo of Greta from 2018)

My life is much like anyone else’s—ups & downs, twists & turns, good days & bad days, magic and slog. This is how it is for everyone, with seasonal storms of positive and negative.

My favorite thing, though, is when the negative gets swooped away dramatically by a positive. You’re going along thinking “this is NOT what I want to be doing right now,” when BAM! Something absolutely SPARKLING happens to you, and your perspective has suddenly changed, all is bright, and things are all of a sudden beautiful.

In my head I call these Magic Moments, and one such moment happened to me last night. It was so wonderful, it was like the warmest of hugs!

My girls each got a pair of ice skates for Christmas. We have an ice skating rink just across the river from us—about a 15 minute walk, about a 3-4 minute drive—very near. It’s a sweet little rink with a lovely staff of young people, affordable community-based prices, skate rentals, a vending machine, bathrooms that are just gross enough to be part of the experience without being a scary health hazard, and a sense of safety about it. People just leave their possessions all over the place inside, it’s great! They have a homeschool skate time on Tuesdays that are at a discounted price, and we've really enjoyed that. The girls and their friends all love ice skating (and one of their friends works at the rink!) so it’s no surprise that for the past couple of winters they have spent a lot of time there.

Now, I love ice skating too, and join when I can, but the girls have been going so often that it’s typically an outing that requires me to do a simple drop-off and pick-up, leaving Sylvi and myself alone for a few hours to do whatever we might do in that span of time. However, last night when they were all getting ready to go, the big girls really wanted Sylvi to come along, and Sylvi herself was all for it.

Oh boy. This was not what I’d planned for my evening. Martin was in the middle of an on-shift weekend, we’d hosted his family for Christmas that day, I had spent the day and night previous cleaning and cooking to be ready for his family. I was wiped. Also, it was cold. (I mean, of course it was. Hi, January!) And Sylvi is not an accomplished skater—she’s actually a terrible skater. She just holds on to me while I pull her around the ice, until she discovers the fun of playing noodle-legs and falling down and I inevitably spend the second half of the session picking her up off the ice over and over while she cackles at her own hilarity. She hates skating with anyone else besides me, even though her sisters beg for a turn hauling her around. Sometimes it’s really wonderful, but wonderful or not, it’s always an event that takes a lot of energy and maternal patience.

Of course, we joined. And of course we were late. Because of course Sylvi didn’t really want to wear layers because of the potential rumples, and there were tears, then a run back inside after everyone was buckled in the car because Sylvi wanted cookies for the journey. And of course when we made it to the rink I had trouble parking, making us even slower to get to the session. And of course, once inside, Sylvi and I spent twenty minutes in the building, fussing with her skate adjustments to get them to the perfect state of comfort. And of course we went out to the ice only to realize we’d lost a mitten somewhere and had to go back inside to look for it. And of course the big reason she’d wanted to go was for vending machine snacks, for which I had no money, but for which she begged anyhow. And of course within the first half hour I felt like I had made a mistake in giving in and coming along to the ice skating rink.

But then—

BuT tHeN!!!

Okay, wait, I have to backtrack—

Last time I joined the girls skating I had left Sylvi with Martin, so I’d been able to skate myself. Usually the speakers are proclaiming pop music, a lot of Taylor Swift and artist completely unknown to me because I am geriatric in my life and in my listening. But this time they randomly played “I See the Light” from the movie Tangled, which is not by any means Sylvi’s favorite movie, but it IS her favorite soundtrack, and we listen to it ALL THE TIME. It’s really adorable the way she sings along with such gusto to all the songs. When that song came on, my other girls and I all squealed and wished that Sylvi had been there to hear her favorite song playing over the loudspeakers at the skating rink! Alas, we just had to tell her about it, and she was happy to hear it, but wished she had been there in the flesh for what was clearly a very special moment in time.

(okay, back to real time now)—LUCKY FOR HER, it happened again! And lucky for me, it happened almost as soon as she and I had finally made it onto the ice together after such a process. The song began to play and she noticed immediately, and absolutely lit up.

(Photo from two years ago, but that’s the reindeer balaclava!)

And suddenly, with that simple occurrence of her favorite song playing in one of her favorite places, the struggle that had been, up until that moment, of getting a five year old onto the ice rink at 8pm simply melted away and all that I cared about was her joyful smile shining up at me from the depths of her reindeer balaclava, her immense happiness so radiant that the little bits of ice fluff covering the front of her coat all just melted away. (Okay, maaaybe an exaggeration.)

And that was it. That was all I needed. A cheesy Disney song turned my frustration of momming into a moment of “how can this possibly be my life, how am I so worthy of existing in this absolute dreamland of motherhood?!”

It’s always like that for me, I’m always grumbling about the dreary parts of mothering or life in general, and then I’m often shown in a swift and simple way that everything is beautiful. The tantrum happening when its time to leave the house, the going back inside for a cookie, the arms full of stuff, the dropped mittens—it’s all part of the path to seeing the absolute magic that is right in front of my face all the time, if I would just open my eyes and see it.

(This is Anja at the rink 10 years ago!)