Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.

At the present moment, I'm not sure we have any family traditions that stand out to me. We do make a big deal about birthdays and Christmas. On our birthdays, we get spoiled rotten for the entire day. I love these days because it is like we are all celebrating, not just the one with the birthday. 

However, in the not-so-distant past, my parents would host giant weekend gatherings on long weekends throughout the year. Lifelong friends from the city would pack up their campers and tents and begin arriving Friday evening. These were major highlights of my life growing up and into my adulthood. They were technically work parties, but I am not certain how much work was actually being done. There was drinking and carousing of course. That is the way we are. 

The beauty of these weekend gatherings is that they went on for decades, and I grew up with the kids that were there. Right into adulthood, we all saw each other periodically, at least once or twice a year. I watched as my parents and their friends aged, and children grew up, having children of their own. For a while, these weekends had a great many little ones running around. They were such fun times.

I will list the activities we engaged in on those weekends. Some of these activities are quite funny.

Working in Mama's gardens. When a car would drive by, we'd all pray to the sun god in the silliest of ways. You'd have to see it, it is hard to describe. We'd all reach our hands to our toes, then reach up our hands to the sky, making a great racket by making a delightfully silly sound. 

Daylong hikes in the Stein Valley, an old-growth forest we were very fortunate to live near, belonging to the local First Nation people. The Stein River was a major attraction. We are very fortunate that the First Nation community allows the public to visit and enjoy the beauty that exists there. We'd also head to Lillooet, a nearby town, and hike to Cayoosh Falls. 

We would have funny skits and perform for each other. 

We went on snipe hunts, where we would fool newcomers into believing in fictional creatures called 'snipes.' We would hunt for them using sacks, pretending to catch them, making a huge scene.

Mama would host a tacky gift exchange. It was an elaborate event. People would often dress up in tacky ways. Children took part too and were happy to receive whatever gift they got. To them, the gift was a treasure.

My mom and the other moms would cook and bake pies. This was annoying for my mom I think. The men would be out all day hiking and drinking from their flasks, coming home obnoxiously. That was the impression I had as a child. 

Evenings were bonfires, games, and music. A lot of carousing. The men sometimes streaked naked down the highway. 

It breaks my heart to realize these weekends, as they once were, are a thing of the past. Mama died a couple of years ago, and most of my parent's friends are getting too old to travel. My dad and his guy friends still get together some weekends. I grieve for these weekends and saying goodbye to the way things were is very difficult for me. My mama's friend has Alzheimer's, and at mama's funeral, it was so hard to see that the person she was had been replaced with a vacantly expressed shell of her former self. That was hard. When I hugged her and told her Mama would be glad she was there, she did get tears in her eyes. There was a part of her that still existed.

I forgot about another tradition that became lost with time. When all of our family members' children were little, every year, we would have a giant Easter egg hunt on my parent's property. We made it a weekend event. A lot of my friends that I grew up with would come with their children too. My SIL's sister would bring her children too. She was a part of our family, too, because she was always at all of our gatherings. She tragically passed away from cancer not very long ago. 

See, it's quite heart-wrenching, getting older, is it not? It seems in midlife we are saying goodbye to more and more of our loved ones. Only ten years ago we were still all together with all of our bodies and minds intact. I am grateful for the memories that I have. Maybe we can continue gathering in some kind of form. It won't ever be the same as it was though. 

The smell of apples in the Fall brings me back. The crisp coolness in the air. Hearing the women roaring with laughter from the kitchen, where they were mass-baking apple pies.