Did You Miss Me?

Yeah, I didn't blog for a few days. I went to MA to see Catherine Billman, then to NJ to see the Murphy's. I will be posting about the various drivers I encountered along the way (in NY, MA, CONN, NY again and NJ)later,but for now let's just say the driving (about 750 miles with that bad back) was nothing compared to the tree that fell on and levelled my mother and father's garage Sunday night/Monday morning. The neighbor's giant (I mean over 71 years old because the neighbor has lived there 71 years) walnut tree uprooted itself (no wind, no rain) and took out our garage and "summer house" (half of the garage had been converted by my father to what we called the summer house, a place where we ate our Sunday meals with extended family in the, duh, summertime). Gone, all gone. I'll post the pics from Licia's cellphone later. It is sad to make a list of things for the insurance company when you're making a list of things that were such a part of your family history. But, nobody was hurt, and actually if the tree had fallen ten feet in another direction, somebody would've been killed. We make our trees big in Jersey.

So here's a prompt for you. Family traditions. What did your family do/have as tradition that made those family times special? Here are a few of mine:

1) eating in the now-flattened summer house and then listening to everyone talk while I swam in the pool, which was just a few feet away. I'm not proud that I splashed my family from the pool sometimes, but maybe it was refreshing.

2) sitting on my father's lap way late at night in the hottest part of summer when it was too hot to sleep and we had to have the porch light off (June bugs, big ones) and listening to his stories and the "Anne Boleyn" song. My siblings were there, but I choose to ignore that and make it a father-daughter tradition.

3) switching from summer to Christmas -- opening presents on Christmas Eve because my fater was a UPS man in the city, and he didn't get home until midnight, that biggest package night of the year (dude, I said biggest package).

4) name any Sunday and my extended family was at our house. My mother was the only cook of the three Lamb sisters, my grandmother died before I was born, so there we were, all crowded into a house with no dining room, eating in the living room. But that's not the whole tradition. We'd eat early, then everyone would stay and we'd eat deli (cold cuts, if you're from Jersey) and watch TV.

5) sitting around at the dining room table (when we finally had a dining room) with the ladies in my family while the male relatives watched sports or whatever. This was when I was older, and my friends from school always wanted to come over because my women were so cool.

Okay, that's it. I can't type on D's split keyboard anymore. If there are aton of typos, blame them on ergonomics. Gotta go: first day back at work, unless you count the two hours I was there yesterday. Whatchu got for family traditions? BTW, you're forgiven for not wondering what happened to me over the weekend. You're busy, I'm busy. But it's time to step up to the plate and blog . . . draft