Tradition

        It starts with Sara Lee Coffee Cake. Thanksgiving does. And most of the other holidays. We did not have Sara Lee Coffee Cake all the years when I was growing up – just the last few years of living at home. Stick it in the oven for breakfast, quick, easy, tasty – a delightful sweet treat that allowed us to all gather around together and then we were free to disperse and do the other tasks of the day – be it fixings for turkey dinner or getting ready to go out or prepping for guests to arrive.

        In the years since I left home, holiday breakfasts have not been that fast – we might have a whole meal on Christmas morning before opening presents; or we sometimes do a buffet if out-of-town family is staying with us for graduations or weddings or other festivities; or we might do something at brunch time. But Sara Lee is almost always there too – one of the offerings. I just have to have it.

        This morning it was just Mike and me. We ate the whole coffee cake by ourselves – pecan. It was wonderful.

        And we listened to Alice’s Restaurant. Usually Mike puts the vinyl album on the turntable for our Thanksgiving audio pleasure. But today he was checking the Internet for the history of Alice’s Restaurant, and we ended up listening to a YouTube version which was very satisfying. This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Thanksgiving dinner at the church where Alice lived. How about that?

        Of course, mention of Alice’s Restaurant always brings to mind Sarah and the story of memorization.

        When Sarah was in fifth grade, she was supposed to memorize her multiplication tables. And she refused. Sarah said memorization would break her spirit – make her different than who she was! I could not identify. Sarah took her lickings, grade-wise, for her times tables.

Then her piano teacher asked Sarah to memorize something. She didn’t do it. Imagine the teacher’s surprise at that! I told the teacher that I can’t make Sarah memorize – she had serious moral objections to it. (And it was after Amanda followed Sarah’s lead and told the piano teacher no when asked to memorize a piece that the teacher moved to Florida and we had to scramble for a new piano instructor – which actually turned out to be the best move for all involved!)

        Sarah’s aversion to memorizing continued for a few more years.

And then she heard Alice’s Restaurant.

        It took a while, but Sarah memorized Alice’s Restaurant!

        She was motivated.

        Getting a zero in math means nothing. But to be able to recite and sing Alice’s Restaurant? That does not break the spirit – it sets the soul to soaring!

        Memorizing other things that matter now comes so easily to Sarah – stories, guitar chords, and yes, even piano pieces. What a great thing to spend one’s gray cells that is the brain on one’s passions!

        And Amanda soon followed her passion. Thanks to some wonderful piano teachers, she soon got to memorizing those piano pieces – including the 45-minute or so classical works Amanda performed when earning her Masters in music pedagogy a few years later.

 Sets our souls to soaring!

        For the Thanksgivings past and present and traditions old and new, for family that is no longer with us and family that is hither and yon, I know we will all be together again someday – gathering at that Group W Bench in the sky!

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