Weekly Photo Challenge: Heritage…a cuppa

Another hot, humid summer-in-spring day on tap for the Chicago area.  This morning I found that the spammers had been out in force on WordPress, depositing 84 comments in my spam folder and 3 that slipped through.  That’s a record!  Spammers, get a life.  Go outside or write a book or something useful.

Today’s WordPress Photo Challenge theme is: “Heritage.”

When I backpacked around Europe for almost a year in the mid-seventies, I stayed in a number of B&B’s in Ireland, England, and Scotland, all with marvelous breakfasts, complete with wake-up cups of tea.  However, I was not at all used to tea and tea so strong it could probably have stood without a cup or pot.  Diluted half and half with milk, I could drink it, but by the time I returned to England prior to returning home, I was drinking it straight, just as I do today.  Having a cup (or pot) of tea on the patio in France on a cool morning is a tradition I’m looking forward to enjoying again soon, but a cuppa anytime, anywhere, unadulterated is an inherited heritage I treasure.

Continuity

We have a friend who knows a lot about electricity and it’s become a joke that everything is about “continuity.”  But although we live in a society often enamored of the “new”, “different” or “edgy”, continuity is a very important part of life.  Without it, we’re merely adrift, having to create everything new without the faintest clue how to do so.

Continuity is part of my daily life when I brew tea in a pot given to me by my great-aunt, from a set of English china dishes that she gifted me.  I warm my hands around the pot that she warmed her hands around for many years and cherished as I cherish it now.  I loved the dishes originally because the salad plates are square and I still get joy from using them.  The dishes aren’t used as much; the teapot, daily.

Friday Fictioneers–A Made Man

Friday Fictioneers–a group of talented writers coming together weekly to share 100-word stories based on a picture prompt.  Just read or be a part.  (Click on the little character to access all the stories.)  This week’s prompt is a holiday photo from Fictioneers hostess, Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.

A Made Man

Everything makes or mars us in some way. Which one depends on us.

They say after the first time, it’s easier; has less impact.  Not for me.  Family involved me and, even with family behind me, it was, and remains, difficult.

I’d noticed her before, around town.  When her family was chosen, I went reluctantly to their house that night.  Stomach churning, I rang the bell and stepped back to wait.

Her mother recounts yearly that the money meant a coat for her daughter, now my wife.  It became our family’s Christmas tradition.  The stories we hear bless us year-round.

The real story…One year early in our marriage, we decided there had to be more than just giving gifts to family and friends, so we asked our pastor who at church might need some help for Christmas.  We put the small amount of money we could afford in a Christmas card, drove to the house and, with trepidation, rang the bell.    The single mom told us every Christmas after that what it meant to her to be able to buy a winter coat for her son, a coat she wouldn’t have been able to afford.  It was a humbling yet wonderful experience that we continued yearly with different families.  May you bless and be so blessed this Christmas!

That takes the cake!

Cleaning the attic today, I came across a box of things from my past–journals, pictures, souvenirs. I immersed myself in history for a time, ending with the most recent event–our wedding. 

Building traditions (and the family)

In “Fiddler on the Roof”, Tevye sings about tradition and the movie is based on the idea of tradition and the consequences of breaking with tradition.  Family traditions are the stuff of which memories are made and holidays are the times when many of us stick with traditions, some started by our parents or even grandparents.  We have plenty of family Christmas traditions,  but we also had an enjoyable, inexpensive and unique New Years Eve tradition.