As Mom and I were driving, I thought of "Family Traditions". I could not remember them clearly with all the brain surgeries I have had but when Mom reminded me, the memories came flooding back. Some memories were there to begin with too.

I never really gave "traditions" a thought in our family till Mom and I were taking a car ride the other day in April of 2003. She mentioned to me that our family had LOTS of traditions while growing up! I could not really think of any but that is mostly because of my old brainstem lesion before it was taken out. It takes away short-term memory and some of my long-term memory. Once Mom would talk about the tradition, I would remember it quite clearly. Some of them I had no trouble recalling at all the memory.The first tradition I remember with Mom's help is the "Easter bunny". The day before Easter I and my three older sisters would color the eggs with Momma. At first we would hard-boil the eggs so they would not break,of course. Then, we would buy coloring kits from the grocery store and do it that way. Then, came the big Easter egg Hunt! Mom, on Easter morning, would hide the eggs. We,of course,thought the Easter bunny laid the eggs. Mom would hide the eggs according to HEIGHT. The taller kids, Anna and Kristina got the eggs up high that were usually behind the clock and behind the patio curtain. Julie and I got the eggs that were low, like the one in the bookshelf. Mom was COOL that way. All of us got an Easter bunny present till we were 18 years old. Even though we knew the bunny did not exist. The second tradition was during Christmas and always "Going out to the Barn" on Christmas Eve. You see, my sister, Kristina, kept horses for quite some time and every Christmas Mom and us four girls would go to the barn on Christmas Eve before we went to Granny's for Christmas Eve dinner. At the barn, we would put my baby doll in the little manger we had set up and had hay around it and talk how this must have been what it was like when baby Jesus was born. This was our way of going to church. Some years we did go to church when we were smaller but mostly we just went to "The Barn" and talked about Jesus and God. I totally forgot about this till Mom reminded me of it and then I remembered bringing my baby doll to lay in the manger! I was very young at that time. We always had a thing about presents since there were so many of us kids. We each got one present from Mom and Dad and one present from Santa Claus. When we were older, we got just a present from Mom and just a present from Dad. The third tradition was going to Granny and Gramp's house EVERY Christmas Eve for Dinner and then on Christmas Day we would have Dinner at OUR house! Just for you Yankee's out there, in Texas we call lunch-lunch and dinner-dinner. We do NOT call Dinner as lunch and Supper as dinner! Got that strait now? OK. Our family usually got the Christmas shopping done late. We still had time to wrap the presents in wrapping paper. Ever now and then we would wrap in newspaper. The relatives would just laugh at us. We would get teased sometimes. My Aunt Karen usually would end up doing the Christmas shopping for Uncle John-Boy. Uncle John would get to the opening of presents part and he would NOT KNOW what HE GOT ME! Uncle John was usually in a hurry to pick up a date on Christmas Eve. Mom and Granny would just laugh! Uncle John passed in 1991. He is greatly missed. Gramps has been the strong arm of the family always supporting quietly in the shadows. At least that is my viewpoint of what I have seen as an outsider. He passed in 1997 I believe. He is greatly missed by Granny.Back to the tradition...Our WHOLE family would load up, ALL four of us girls and Mom, sometimes the animals too, and drive to Granny's which was either in Irving or in Grapevine. She moved from Irving to Grapevine. We would make one dish, like salad or jello and bring it to Granny's. What I remember about Granny's: It was always an immaculate house, always clean with a candy dish FULL of candy! We could never get the house dirty though! Granny would always have a little miniature "town" underneath the Christmas tree. She had a Christmas tree every year till we got older and were in college and Gramps had already passed on. Now that Anna has moved back to Texas with the great grandchildren, Granny has a Christmas tree again. As a child, when we would get to Granny's, I would spend about an hour going through all the presents and making a little stack of all the "Henry-Lang" presents! Lang was Mom's last name and then Kristina's when she changed it too. We USED to only open ONE present on Christmas Eve night and then open the rest of the presents with the other sisters presents on Christmas morning at our house. That tradition has changed. Now, we open ALL presents on Christmas Eve at Granny's. Until we turned 18 years, we used to get $50 each to the nieces from our Great Uncle George and Aunt Joy. When Anna and Julie got married, they each got a plant from Uncle George and Aunt Joy. They are Granny's brother and sister-in-law. I cherish each Christmas Eve. We have not gone to "The Barn" in about 15-20 years. Each year Granny's dog gets our dog something for Christmas. A doggy snack. It is very sweet. Sometimes, that dog buys the human a present too! In the morning, we would wake up early and it would be Christmas morning, the 4th tradition of the Henry-Lang household. We would open presents and Dad would come out to visit us sometime later in the morning around 11 or 12pm usually. He would bring his presents for us and we would have our individual presents for him under the tree. We would then have morning coffee cake and orange juice and then we would do the dishes. (Yes, some people did not have dishwashers back then!) We would each do chores around the house to get ready for the relatives that night to come while Mom worked on getting the turkey bird in the oven and making the homemade dressing inside of the bird. I have always loved corn and Mom hates it. Mom asks herself, "Where did I go wrong?" (Smile) Mom would make an old German recipe of stuffing that is made INSIDE the bird! It is fantastic! Mom would always cook about a 25 pound bird so we would have plenty of leftovers to make sandwiches with. Now on to the 5th tradition. The Fifth tradition is Mom making donuts out of biscuits in the deep fryer and going up on the roof to watch the sun rise! We would drink orange juice or "OJ" as it was called, before I knew anything about OJ Simpson. I remember Mom laying out the newspaper and plugging in the fryer and pouring in the vegtable oil. We had to stay back though because it got real hot and she did not want us to get burned! We would be hungry because it was 5am in the morning when Mom would get us up to prepare to watch the sun rise so we would end up eating a lot of the donuts after they cooled and she would end up just making many more! We finally made enough to have some on the roof though with OJ and so we got the ladder out and climbed up! It was all of us: Mom, Anna, Kris, Julie and Me. The reason Mom did this was because I told her I had never seen the sun rise. I was only about seven years old. The Sixth Tradition in our family was that we never had to share with another sister or parent! That was the nice part but we all sisters were so giving that we would always end up sharing with each other. That is just the way we were brought up. We were brought up to be nice and polite and respect people and to not yell. That was also another rule in our house. No yelling. If we yelled we had to do the dishes for an extra week. We contribute to the house and family members even to this day and I am 32 years old and Julie is 34 and Kris is 38 and Anna is 38. I am about to be 33 and Anna is about to be 39 years. We all help Mom with finances and give little presents to each other. The Seventh tradition is the Putting of the Trophies on the Mantle place for 2 weeks for everyone to see and then taking it down and the child putting it in their room. I have to tell you a funny story on this one though. Julie and I were the younger of the four sisters and we were age 6 and 7 and had not earned any trophies yet. Anna and Kristina were age 12 and 10 respectively. They had been earning trophies for softball and soccer. Julie and I felt left out. So, Mom went and got two trophies for us and she put two sayings on the plaques. On Julie's it said, "Wise Thinker" because she was. And on mine it said, "Champion in Math"! Well, the first grade had put me in the slow math learners course and Mom had kept on telling them I could do well in math. They would not believe her. So,when I showed my math teacher the trophy, she put me in Advanced Math and I made strait A's the whole year! Isn't that ironic? Julie and I started earning our own trophies later in life. Soccer for me and softball for Julie. This just goes to show you what a small town school it was back then. That was when the population was about 2,700 people in Colleyville, Texas. They did things backwards back then. The Eighth Tradition was when Mom had her paper route during the summer of 1980. That was during the dreaded HEAT WAVE in North Texas of 1980. Kris, Julie and I would get up at midnight and help Mom with her paper-route. I would usually sleep off/on in the cab of the pick-up truck while Julie and Kris rolled papers in the back and Mom and Kris threw the papers to the houses. We would get dogs coming up to the truck and we would get scared of them biting us but they never did. At 3:30am in the morning the bank clock read 101 degrees farenheit! Now, that is hot! I was only ten years old at that time! I will never forget it! We lived without air conditioning too for about 12 days also! UGH! Mom had the paper route to earn extra money while she was a social worker. We would always get a donut after the paper route then go home and watch a tv show and then fall asleep while Mom was getting ready for her day job as a social worker. We could sleep late because it was the summer and we did not have school. The Ninth tradition was staying up late in the summer time. Mom would take us for walks or to a movie. We could stay up as late as 11pm. Sometimes we would just stay up late and talk. Mom enjoyed it because she got to spend more time with us than when she did during the school year. Also, what we were doing became a custom with the other parents around our streets. The Swaims, enjoyed their children much more. Their daughter was my best friend during elementary school and middle school. Shelly has really softened up a bit since the diagnosis of my brainstem lesion and its removal eight and a half years later. We are good friends. One of the many Springtime and Summertime Traditions of the Henry-Lang household and the Tenth tradition was Going to Bar brook swimming pool! I believe it is closed nowadays. Mom would drive us up there every year. It was a good two hours from Colleyville. Colleyville is where we grew up. We had certain rules at the pool. First,of course,you could not pee in it. Second, if you did not know how to swim yet, you had to "wear your swim rings" and you could only go out in the water to your ankles. If you were older but could not swim yet,you had to "wear your life belt" and you could only go out to your knees. If you KNOW how to swim, you can wear your life belt and go out to your waist! Then, came the BIG TEST. When you were old enough, you had to swim on your own to the middle of the pool to the dock. If you had on you life belt and could swim that far out and make it to the dock, then you were granted permission to swim on your own with /without a life belt. I swam there from ages 5 to 14. It was quite fun! The Eleventh Tradition is going to the Grocery Store-"Skaggs" in Hurst,Texas. It is now called "Albertson's". We would sometimes get ALL the neighborhood kids going with Mom and us girls to the grocery store. Mom just made everything fun! This was the time and place where one would let the kids ride in the back of the pickup truck or in the car with the hatch up and the kids sitting with their feet hanging out while the car was traveling down the highway. You would never find that today. The neighborhood kids and us girls would ride in the back of the HORNET car with the groceries with the hatch up while Mom drove down Highway 26 home. Of course,I did not think it was fun back then, but now looking back I consider myself to be a part of the fun days! Funny how nostalgic one becomes. Funny things would happen to us while shopping at Skaggs. First, Mom would seperate us kids and we would get assignments in the store, each of us would have a section to "master"! Mom could then get the shopping done in HALF the time! One time, Kris did not come with us to the grocery store but I believe Mom thought she did. So, it was just Julie and I with Mom at the check-out and Mom started yelling at us as to where Kris was. Julie and I were still very young and scared of Mom's yelling so we did not say anything. Kris was four years older than me and I was about 5-6 years old at the time. Mom said angrily, "Kris better meet us out at the car!" We had the store clerk push the groceries to the car and then Mom, Julie and I got in. Mom's face was beet red she was so mad! Julie and I were so scared! Mom then decided to just leave Kris at the grocery store and go back to get her later! Then, as we were leaving the store and pulling out, Julie said in a quiet voice, "Mom, Kris stayed home this time." Mom got real quiet. Then she laughed. Then Julie and I laughed and then we got a drink at the McDonalds. MOTHERS! You gotta love them! I understand now what she was going through back then! That is all the family traditions of the maternal side here in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Now,I want to talk about the traditions of my Dad's side, John Henry who is remarried as of 1989. I have relatives that I do not even know about! That is because I do not get along very well with my step-mother. The First Tradition is Always expecting Dad, while driving down to his parents house in South Texas, Palacous, to stop by the side of the road and ask Julie and I religious questions. He did that about every other year til Julie and I were eighteen years of age. We would drive down and visit Grandma and Granddaddy every other Thanksgiving usually. Sometimes, when Julie and I were younger, we would fly down and Granddaddy would pick us up at the Houston Hobby Airport and then we would drive to Palacous. That was fun when Granddaddy would pick us up or sometimes Uncle Herb would pick us up too! Uncle James was still quite young. I NEVER knew the answer to what Dad would be asking, but BLESS Julie's heart, she would whisper it to me in my good ear, and I would tell Dad the answer. Dad was worried about Julie and I having not been baptized yet. He was overly concerned about this. Mom's attitude was that we could choose for ourselves when the time was right. Mom and Dad divorced when I was just four years old. I think Dad was worried we would go to HECK. Julie got baptized when she was 19 years I believe and I got baptized when I was 18 years. I got baptized just about four months before I was diagnosed with my inoperable brainstem lesion. God works in mysterious ways! The Second Tradition is going to church with Dad and talking in church but Dad got mad. So, Julie and I would talk in Sign Language. (ASL) Dad eventually got tired of that though so he banned talking in Sign Language. Julie and I did not go to church anymore with him after that. Dad lived an hour and a half away I should explain, and we would go to his church maybe two Sundays a month. It got to be too much period, even with the ban of Sign Language,so Julie and I just stopped going. The Third Tradition is going to Grandma's every Thanksgiving or every other Thanksgiving! For awhile Anna and Kris would go down with Julie and I. Then, it was just Julie and I. The grown-ups would sit in the Dining room while the cousins, all the grandkids, would sit in the kitchen at the kitchen table. Cousin Phillip would get so mad about that too! He wanted to sit where the grown-ups were! Grandma always made extra turkey and on the day we would leave, she would make turkey sandwiches for us all. She would get a turkey with a bunch of dark meat for Dad likes dark meat. I like white meat. Grandma would make the best sweet pickles too! Kris and I loved them too! She would make an extra special jar just for Kris and I to take home! Oh how I loved that! Anyway, we would load up on sweet pickles and turkey sandwiches home for the LONG eight hour trip home. We would stop at gas stations on the way to use the rest room and buy drinks. Grandma is the BEST! The Fourth Tradition is going hunting. I only went once but the males in the family went every year around Thanksgiving time. I begged Granddaddy to take me quail hunting one time. I was really into rifle and hunting because my Gramps, my Mom's Dad, had taught me how to shoot. He took me to the rifle range in Irving, Texas. It is off of Highway 348 on the way down Highway 114. I do not think it is there anymore. Anyway, I had to have Uncle Herb and Uncle James talk Granddaddy into letting me go with "The Boys". I remember I had to put on long pants and an orange vest and wear a hat and everything! It was weird! I was not used to it at all! I remember seeing some quail. I pulled my rifle close to me. I pointed to the quail. Looking down the scope, I pulled the trigger. The backlash into my shoulder was like a cannon going off! My word! I thought my shoulder was going to fall off! I missed but cousin Phillip got the quail!  It fell to the ground about 500 feet away. The dog ran after it. Granddaddy had a Labrador retriever that he suppossedly trained but it did not do any good. He just ran in circles and Phillip and I went and got the quail. We headed back to the house and got ready for supper. Grandma fixed the quail for eating. That was the LAST time I ever did anything like that!Grandma was proud of me for going and being "one of the boys"! The Fifth tradition is going to see Grandmother Henry at her house which was across the farmland from Grandma and Granddaddy's house. Grandmother Henry was Dad's grandma. She is my great grandma on my dad's side. She would fix Dad, Julie and I chicken salad sandwiches everytime we visited and then be sure to make them for the trip home before we left. Sometimes we would have Grandma's turkey sandwiches and Grandmother Henry's chicken salad sandwiches! Then, at the times we would visit that was not at Thanksgiving, Grandmother Henry would just make us her Chicken Salad sandwiches. Eventually, Grandmother Henry had to go into a nursing home. She was around 85 years old I believe. She was one tough old lady! I miss her. So does Daddy because Daddy was her favorite grandchild. Dad is the oldest of the three sons, then comes Uncle Herb, then Uncle James. Grandmother Henry eventually died. Granddaddy just recently died also. Last year in fact. We all miss him terribly so. Grandma is still going strong like a trooper! Family Traditions are very important and should be honored and held in high regard in each family. Make a note of your traditions and cherish them.