what's your tradition? - #13

And it better be a good one.

Have you ever started a tradition? Have you ever tried?

Recently I edited a piece for work about starting new holiday self-care traditions. The piece was great, but it was really just holiday-oriented self-care tips, not traditions. Going for a walk is self-care, but it’s not a tradition unless it’s a specific walk. I gave this feedback to the writer and she hit me in the face with a dictionary: “traditions are something that’s passed from generation to generation.” Well damned if she wasn’t right. I’d already become adept at climbing and descending hills I was not going to die on, so we changed the piece to “starting new holiday self-care practices,” and I spent the rest of the day wondering how tradition had managed to move itself in my mind from a generational habit to the very narrow window of yearly, monthly, or dare I say weekly ritual. Is it tradition to start each week by screaming into your pillow? Is it tradition to text your friend two rabbit emojis at the beginning of the month? Is it tradition to start NaMoWriMo every year only to stop one week in?

In my own time-wasting way, irritated with this new take on traditions, I became somewhat obsessed with proving the dictionary wrong. Traditions are not generational. All they are is sacred practices — things you do with some sort of built-in time recurrence, simply because that’s what you do. But in the past few panda pen years, my traditions had all weakened to the point of disintegrating, and moving didn’t help. I needed a tradition. I craved it. And I found the perfect inspiration for it while dicking around on Instagram, as one does: 

“Speak your love language to yourself, too.” 

It was just a few words on an entirely disposable image. It wasn’t even the first image in the carousel. But it was enough for me. Here was a tradition in the making. My actual love language is Words of Affirmation, but I wasn’t interested in writing myself a yearly love letter, so I took myself on a date, thus establishing Date Yourself Day™. A completely self-explanatory tradition I was going to codify into personal law as the second Saturday in November for forever. 

For my big day, I was going to go mountain biking, then to a cider house with an incredible grilled cheese and amazing atmosphere, followed by a trip to my favorite nursery for their Christmas launch event where I’d buy all our decorations. Then I’d come home, decorate the house, and watch one of my favorite Christmas movies. I’d go to bed worn out but delighted. 

I wanted to make Date Yourself Day my own personal recurring holiday. But like most holidays, the big if is whether the holiday itself can bear the weight of its own anticipation. Can you guess where this is going.

The day started on my personal favorite day-starting type of high: I thought I looked hot. I wore eyeliner. I had a cute outfit for my MTB ride, and an even cuter post-ride outfit for the rest of the day. I should’ve just stood in the mirror for 8 hours and written the god damned letter because at 9:30am, things started to turn. I couldn’t find the bike pump. Nor could I find any bike lube. Nor could I put it together that Ben had taken both on his road trip, which I knew, and my brain did not remember until I spent 25 minutes looking for them. Once I did that quiet expression of rage where you roll your neck and your eyes and your jaw at the same time, mad at someone else until all your therapy reminds you you can only be mad at yourself, I figured, how bad could it be? I was running late to my own date, and I needed to get to the trail.

Many of you ride bikes, but for those who don’t, here is a primer on why this was stupid. Mountain bikes get muddy. And in order to keep your bike in good shape, you need to wash it when you get home. But equally as critical, you need to re-lube the chain after you wash it. It’s sort of like if you wash your face but never use moisturizer. Or if you ski all day but never wear chapstick. Or if you’re in the sun and never wear sunscreen. Or if you never put oil in your car. Or if you throw food into the pan without butter or oil. As you can likely surmise from all these examples, I did wash the bike. I did not lube the chain. 

My bike sounded and felt like a horror house tricycle. It felt like my own bones were grinding against each other with each pedal stroke. Why did I do a loop? How long was this fucking loop before the sound of metal trying to destroy itself would finally relent? I asked person after person if they had chain lube. No, no, sexist look of male superiority accompanied by a no even though true superiority would mean having the chain lube, and finally, at the final mile of the loop, an older woman on an older bike had the tiniest, cutest bottle of chain lube I’ve ever seen. 

I could have kissed her. I was resurrected. I was chuffed. I went for another five miles. But unfortunately it wasn’t the only lube I needed. I’d worn new bibs, and they... did not work out. I stood for the rest of the ride whether the terrain called for it or not, and when I spun up to the truck, feeling smug about fast I’d taken down that second loop, I dismounted and promptly limped, legs akimbo, into the truck. 

It was off to lunch. Part of what I love about the cider house is the outdoor seating and ambience. It’s a jovial, popular place with maybe 6 or so fire pits outside. I couldn’t wait to sit next to the fire, watch the people, and read my book with my favorite meal. I got a cup of hot cider and a grilled cheese, went to the patio, and… no one was there. And it was windy. And my hair kept getting in my mouth, and the pages wouldn’t stay open, and the fire was just smoke, and then I somehow immediately had indigestion. I threw away half the meal, got into the truck to pour the remainder of the cider in my travel mug, forgetting to pour out the remaining decaf before I did so, and unbuttoned my pants, staring into the middle distance. 

But there was still the nursery, and honestly, there are very few things that could stir the delight that “holiday decor event” stirs in me. I’m sure you know where this is going, but let’s pretend for a second, like I did in the car, that this was going to be what I thought it would be. Bring to mind for a moment what “holiday decor” might mean at a nursery. Garland, surely. Wreaths, absolutely. Some small trees, a selection of outdoor lights. I’m not looking for National Lampoon’s level Christmas lights, just something that tells the neighbors I’m friendlier than my perennially pursed-lipped face might indicate. 

They had not one single string of garland. Nary a light to be seen. The closet thing to a wreath was the tire hung on the wall as a planter. And the one singular not-an-entire-holiday-decor-event-warranting item they did have was ornaments. ORNAMENTS! And each was, I don’t know, at the cheapest, $9.99. Which, to be fair, is a reasonable price for a handcrafted ornament. But I’m not trying to spend $900 to decorate a tree that I’ve sliced from its brethren simply because I once read an article that it’s more environmentally friendly to chop your own tree locally than to buy a plastic one that’s been shipped from China. I found one charming ornament to give as a gift, absolutely refusing to have driven an hour and a half to experience not one modicum of joy. At the register, I made one last attempt at saving the day. 

“Do you know if you have things like wreaths or lights? I can’t find any.” Maybe I’m just dumb. I am open to that.

“Sorry honey, we don’t carry that kind of thing. I’m not sure why, really.”

“Do you know where around here I might be able to find some?”

“Oh, well, hmm.. Well I guess the only place that would have that kind of thing is Walmart, over in town.”

Walmart is about the last place I imagined myself on Date Yourself Day, but with bow-legged, sour-stomached determination, I drove to Cortez to find myself at a massive desert-rat Walmart. Come Hell or high customers, I was going to decorate the fucking house for Christmas. The only problem now was yet another thing Ben had explicitly told me he was taking with him on his road trip that my brain had erased until it proved relevant to me: the bike lock. I sat in the Walmart parking lot, looking in the rear view mirror at my fancy ass brand new mountain bike on the rack, free for the taking. But who steals a bike in broad daylight? How much crime could there really be in Cortez Colorado anyway?

With a crime rate of 37 per one thousand residents, Cortez has one of the highest crime rates in America compared to all communities of all sizes - from the smallest towns to the very largest cities. One's chance of becoming a victim of either violent or property crime here is one in 27.

Well. Teaches me to Google anything. In that moment, it was the bike or Christmas lights. I am not a big gambler. But I am a very big Christmas person. Into Hell I went. 

Upon entry, aisle after aisle of prominent first-glance displays were dedicated to every pseudo-Christian’s favorite capitalist tradition of buying garbage. And buy garbage they did — every single shelf was empty. It was November 13th. Peering over one shoulder to see if I could still see my truck (and thus bike) in the parking lot, I found an employee.

“Excuse me, do you know if there are any Christmas lights anywhere?” 

“There’ll be some in the Garden Center.” And he pointed to the furthest point in the store. I’d made it to Mordor only to realize I still had to get to the fucking volcano. I took one last glance through the automatic doors at my bike in the parking lot, and then I hobble-sprinted to the garden section. 

Have you ever played or been witness to an “everything you can carry” game? Typically they’re in the context of shopping spree awards, but because I was panicked, this is the game I played with myself. I didn’t grab a cart like a normal person. Instead, I slowly did the math of what “9 ft of lights” really was and attempted to carry as many boxes as I could, wrapping plastic garland around my neck and stuffing extension cords under my armpits before waddle-jogging to the register. 

All to see no one gave a shit about my bike and I could’ve just shopped like a normal person. With six overstuffed plastic bags ripping around my wrists, I pointed at my bike as I approached, yelling, “I did this for you!” like I’d given up my dreams of living in Nice to send a kid to college. 

Back in the truck, recovering from my audition for Jingle All the Way and drinking my decaf coffee flavored tepid cider, I looked down to see my pants still unbuttoned. 

What was the point. 

But like setting the Christmas tree on fire and burning your eyebrows off on the 4th of July and getting so drunk the night before Thanksgiving that you spend most of the meal in your friends’ parents’ powder room puking your guts out (sorry Jonelle, I blench in shame ‘til the day I die), traditions are only made stronger by how badly we occasionally fuck them up. Next time, we’re gonna get it right… even if only so everyone stops talking about the last time. 

Traditions, after all, are nothing but yearly joy-injected routines, regardless of what Webster thinks. And routines are nothing more than the cornerstone of keeping our sanity. Routines help our brains relax, they eliminate decisions, they allow us to drive from the same ole Point A to the even samier-ole Point B without a single critical decision except whether to imagine you’re winning an Oscar or a Grammy. 

All I was trying to do with Date Yourself Day was establish a new tradition, a built-in yearly routine for when I was at my most burnt out and frustrated so I could buoy myself with bright lights and good cheese before the inevitable let-down of the happiest time of year came again when I dragged myself kicking and screaming back to a 3.5” by 2” fake wood desk where I stare at a screen all day trying to make other people have better mental health than I do. 

Like looking at old pictures from holidays years ago, Date Yourself Day is more of a success in the rear view. The house is, in fact, decorated. I restocked my forgotten indigestion darling: Alka Seltzer (a true savior the day after that shame-so-big-I-can’t-forget-it Thanksgiving.) I ordered my own tiny chain lube so my husband could be spared my misdirected wrath. I bought cider I could just make at home. I washed and donated those bibs. And here I am, a whopping 2200 words later listening to my favorite Christmas playlist, sitting in front of the fire while the snow falls gently outside, aglow by the lights I strung by myself atop a ladder while I gripped the top of a very narrow pine as neighbor after neighbor watched my sneer turn into a proud, accomplished, completely satiated grin.

That’s all I’m really looking for in a tradition: a little relief from the onslaught of news and struggle, some space and time reserved specifically for joy-making, and a moment in time I can count on where all the fatigue and frustration has thawed in the warmth of anticipation to reveal sheer and unburdened delight. 

---

I hope you have a good Thanksgiving coming up. Our usual Thanksgiving traditions are cancelled this year due to COVID. If yours are too, I hope you find a way to steep yourself in the best parts of tradition, which are not generational hand-me-downs, but rather the ways in which we remember what matters.

I’d love to hear in the comments what your favorite traditions are, or which traditions you’re trying to make stick.

And a special thanks to my paying subscribers this issue: the gratitude I feel for you enjoying this and supporting me isn’t a yearly thing, it’s an always.