Challenge #39 - Contribution

Family traditions

A weird thing happened when my wife got pregnant with our first child.  I started listening to country music.  Now I always enjoyed country music, but it was never my ‘go to’ genre as a teenager or young adult.  My wife hypothesized that having kids sent me back to my roots, which was on the farm, where my dad always listened to country music in his truck, the tractor, and combine.  These were very fond childhood memories. I think she was on to something there. The country music allowed me to connect back to my roots and prepared me for fatherhood with the only reference that I had, my family and family experience. A key component of that rooted family experience and memories is branded on me in traditions.

As a young single adult, traditions didn’t really hold much meaning.  Now with children, I find myself digging up old nuanced rituals and traditions that I didn’t even realize were occurring at the time but were retained in the memory bank.  I wake my kids up with the same song my mom woke me up with, and I tell my kids, “You’re going to wake your kids up with this song one day!”