We recently celebrated Patience’s 11th birthday with a party attended by fewer children than adults. That’s not a statement of her popularity so much as a comment about how far out of town we live. By the time she and her friends are old enough to drive, parties with silly hats and sillier games will exist only in the “documents” file on someone’s computer (or in “the Cloud”). Typically, the most memorable things to happen at any event are missed by everyone taking pictures with their cell phones. They do, however, live forever in the telling and re-telling.

So far as I can remember, there have been few parties or holidays in our family that went by without a “Smile, You’re On Candid Camera” moment or a catastrophe rivaled only by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (if you remember that reference, you really did pay attention in class!) Patience’s party was no exception.

Throwing money to the wind, Chris (my daughter and Patience’s grandmother) ordered a large cake from a large bakery in a large store. The cake was round, surrounded by cupcakes and decorated to look like a monster. The bakery worker placed the cake in a large box and shut the lid. Unfortunately, the cake was too tall for the box and the decoration on the top was flattened into a monster blob. She didn’t have time to wait for repairs, so Chris brought the cake home “as is”. 

Everyone had been fed and presents opened when Torrey (Patience’s mother) lifted the box to move it from the kitchen bar to the table. She didn’t think to put a supporting hand underneath the box and, given its size, couldn’t have managed that in any case.  Those bakery boxes have all the tensile strength of a wet Kleenex so, yup, the box folded completely and the cake fell, icing first, to the floor. We sang “Happy Birthday” over bowls of ice cream. What was that about “always expecting the unexpected”?

With five kids, Christmas at our house was always fraught with surprises. “Joy to the World” began with the Morgan kids and mom going from one end of the block to the other, regaling the neighborhood with Christmas carols. Sometimes, we were even singing the same carol at the same time. Some of the neighbors would offer hot chocolate and cookies, or candy. I’m pretty sure, now, that they figured we’d not sing if our mouths were otherwise occupied.

Midnight mass on Christmas eve was always remembered by which kid (or kids) had fallen asleep before communion was offered. As you get older, you learn you can get by with a few winks by resting your forehead on your folded hands. Unless you snore, people will assume you’re deep in prayer. For years, I didn’t have a clue what the words meant, but I loved Gregorian Chant. By the time I’d taken four years of Latin and could translate, the mass was being said in English and we had contemporary hymns. We very nearly became Episcopalians when the music featured bongos, flutes and drums.  Dad was not thrilled, but, on the other hand, he didn’t know where the Episcopalians went to church.

We shared Christmas dinner a couple of times with the firemen and it was years before I figured out that gravy didn’t always need to be the rich, dark brown (bordering on black) that our grandmother served. Our turkey thawed in cold water in the deep kitchen sink; dressing was cooked inside the turkey; leftovers were left on the kitchen cabinet for snacking; some things were stored in the refrigerator in cans, and nobody died of salmonella. You only got sick if you ate too many of grandma’s cookies. Only dad ate the fruitcake and it took years before I realized it wasn’t the cake he liked so much as the brandy it was soaked in.

When the Golden Girls or the “gang” on e-mail reminisce about family traditions, I often wonder how many of those “traditions” are derived from catastrophes or just plain silly things that happened in their family before they were old enough to remember or generations before they were born. Why else would you hang a pickle on a Christmas tree?