The Traditions

I have decided to begin writing more posts about the little traditions that I grew up with. My friends all seem to enjoy the posts about our funny family folklore, or at least they humor me. I also plan to publish this blog in book form, probably in two year segments, for Colin to keep. I think it will be fun for him to have the stories of his family to look back on.

In order to understand why these traditions mean so much, it helps to know a little about my childhood. I grew up in a very close family of five, me with my twin sisters and my parents. My sisters are four years my junior. For numerous reasons that are long and notwithstanding, we were largely just the five of us all the time. We did not really have an extended family to speak of and lived far from our grandparents. The main mission in life for my parents was to give us the childhood that they never had and to experience the family that they always dreamed of. I think they went far beyond...my childhood was amazing. Since it was generally just the five of us, we created our own little traditions and we love nothing more than sticking to them. One of the first ones I remember is "Trawick Night at the Movies". The whole family would go down to Times Square Cinema (right down the street from our house) for the big occasion. We would always get so excited when when we saw a preview of a new movie that seemed to fit the bill. We always ordered popcorn and drinks, including my dad's famous "Coke Light", which is half Coke and half Diet Coke. We then pack into the theatre and fight over who is sitting by who. There was always a lot of shuffling over each other ("I am sitting by Daddy this time!") and once we got seated, my dad would always reach over everybody to poke us in our seats in the dark (Chalna, is that you?? Poke poke). We were so loud and silly and my dainty little mom would always just quietly munch her popcorn and shake her head at us. We made the biggest production out of these nights and they always brought us so much joy. Trawick Night at the Movies could also be held at home with a rented movie, which also happened literally every weekend. But the big fun was going to the theatre. We still do it and it is still called Trawick Night at the Movies, even if two more last names are involved now. Since Meredith and I had our boys, the whole group has not been together at the theatre, since they have been too little for movie night. But mark my words, when we get back, despite being grown women, we will still fight over who is sitting by which parent. :-)