Every family has traditions, and as we reflect upon our lives we often easily recall moments centered around these traditions, whether they be holidays, summer events, school vacation weeks, weekends... anything that was routine that we could count on happening often enough for us to remember to do it, but not too often so that we get tired of it. For some, these are things like what to eat on birthdays, or watching a movie on Sundays, or having spaghetti on Wednesdays. For my family, traditions include turkey for breakfast on Thanksgiving (and for dinner) and turkey for breakfast on Christmas. We went to the fair every year but I don't know if that was tradition, habit, or just a way to spend our long weekend. Now, I'm not sure if this is how it happened, but forgive me. I think I was eleven or twelve at the time, so my pre-teen brain was a little funky. Sometime in my late years of elementary school (I think 6th? I think I was 12?) a little cafe opened up in our town. We got up ridiculously early and went before my sisters had to go to school. They were in the middle & high school so we probably left around 6:30. And then we did this, every single Friday. Friday became "Coffee Day." There were times I moaned and groaned about waking up to go sit in a cafe with my sisters, and there were times I couldn't get there fast enough to get a chocolate chip muffin and a chocolate milk. There were times I was just too damn tired to get out of bed that early. But honestly, I loved it. And even in my senior year, my mom and I would take two cars (I needed mine after school, she had to work and I had practice, a game, or work) and we would go get coffee or breakfast (by that time, our little cafe had closed and another reopened, and we usually just went to Dunkin Donuts or a little diner instead) and enjoyed our coffee together. Sometimes it was rushed, but we still made the effort, and I'll never forget those coffee days.
Every family has traditions. As I reflect upon my year, I don't have many memories centered around these types of moments. Right now, I find myself in a new family that was just built. It wasn't built on love and marriage and the joining of two families and a bunch of babies, we weren't friends who decided to move in together, and we didn't find each other on Craigslist. We were sort of thrown into a house together and told to get along and play nice; I was told to make sure everyone gets along and plays nice, and goes to work on time. We don't have traditions yet. It's hard to establish traditions, they're usually something you're born into, and it's especially difficult to establish traditions when you're just trying to establish common ground. But perhaps one can help the other. What do nine 18-25 year olds have in common? They all like coffee. They all hate Mondays. We all have to get up early. So I decided to make the best of it with coffee. We are now leaving our house 20 minutes early every Monday to stop at the Dunkin Donuts that we pass on the way to work for our own little Coffee Day, to help make everyone's week begin with a treat. Hopefully this little tradition will stick with us through the end of the program, and help be the creator of some fond memories for my teammates. It's not an original idea (Thanks, Mom!) but I'm hoping that it will have a positive outcome.
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