When I was a kid, my father grilled hamburgers and hotdogs on his big charcoal grill every Saturday night. When we were very young, we would take our burgers and our potato chips wrapped in a paper napkin, along with our green bottles of Coke (only allowed once a week) and sit in the playroom to watch TV.
When I was a little older we turned it into a picnic outside, and we would watch fireflies and take out our star charts and telescopes and pick out constellations. I remember those days so fondly--before my siblings and I moved to the far corners of the country and the globe, before my parents sold the family home and retired to a lake house, before anyone died or divorced (at least that I recall).
So these days, whenever any pieces of my far-flung family manage to get together, we almost always have a hamburger cookout.
My niece and her boyfriend are visiting this week from Iowa. I've never gotten to see much of Pam--we've never lived in the same city. So of course, tonight we're having a cookout and I've gathered as many sisters as I can. I hope she associates happy memories with hamburger cookouts and continues the tradition when she gets married and has kids.
Traditions are so important! Whether they revolve around the holidays or family reunions or summer vacations it is so important to pass things on!
ReplyDeleteI love tradition. My family is all fairly close. We have a yearly family reunion, large holiday dinners and frequent cookouts.
ReplyDeleteWe keep trying to put together a family reunion. But nobody ever realy DOES it.
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