For instance, Halloween, Neil, since this is your first, goes something like this. You get to dress up in a costume, and you can be anything you want. Except this year, because you are a baby, you can't decide for yourself. So we've decided that you will be a chipmunk. Because that's what you look like. And don't worry, we will go to a pumpkin patch and get a nice big pumpkin...and carve a face on it...because that's what we do.
Next comes Thanksgiving. And that's when we all sit about and eat. We eat turkey and mashed potatoes and we get real full and talk. Maybe you can have some sweet potatoes for Thanksgiving this year. And of course grandma is going to want to watch the parade with you...it's a bunch of balloons going down the streets of NYC. It's the best city. Man. You have a lot to learn...but don't worry. You'll see, in your pj's. It's what we do.
And then after that is Christmas, and we'll dress warm and go get a tree. You see, we bring a tree inside and put lights on it and decorate it and we put lights on the house too. And it will snow, but me and Aunt Rebecca hope it snows in November. But not October. Too many leaves. And we will tell you that there is this fat man that comes down the chimney with toys for good boys and girls...and he flies through the air on the sleigh with the reindeer and.....we eat cheese out of a pot the night before. On Christmas Eve, this is what we do...
....
I started cracking up. I couldn't continue. Not because I was running a dialogue with a 3 month old, but because our traditions and stories are just so out of this world funny. I imagined Neil taking notes, uh huh, uh huh, what next? I imagined a seasoned child giving me a skeptical look. I thought of how ridiculous these stories, steeped in tradition, might seem to an outsider, a noob...and I giggled. To a child, a baby, shit's about to get real.
For the rest of us, it's just what we do.
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