My grandmother on my mother’s side, the widowed commander of a brood of six children, was presented with the daily task of staying afloat on a very limited budget. She rose to the challenge admirably, stretching every morsel of food and inch of fabric to cover the demands of her family. Her resourcefulness truly had a chance to shine every December, when she created low-cost alternatives to the usual holiday fare.
As a tribute to my late grandmother, my Mama still prepares her “unbaked fruit cake”, a sticky-sweet mishmash of condensed milk, vanilla wafers, and candied fruit, formed into a loaf and left to harden on the counter for several weeks.
There are no words to sufficiently describe how horrible it is. It barely qualifies as food. The polite but unfortunate relations who have attempted ingesting this concoction have either lost teeth or experienced instantaneous insulin shock.
My sister Shannon and I have spent years reminding Mama that the only reason our grandmother prepared this monstrosity is because she was poor. Had the option of preparing actual fruitcake been financially viable, she would have gleefully done so. Perhaps a more fitting tribute to our grandmother would be baking the fancy fruitcake that eluded her all those years.
Mama remains unmoved by our entreaties, declaring unbaked fruitcake a sacred family tradition, whether any of us like it or not.
While I was in Mississippi avoiding the fruitcake last week, I was faced with a note in my own handwriting:
This will be the year I get in shape. I will find a boyfriend. I will stop wasting money. I will learn sign language.
This is not a list of my resolutions for 2007. It was my list for 2006. I wouldn’t have even remembered the damn thing if I hadn’t had the bright idea last December of placing it in an envelope and leaving it at my parents’ house. The version of me that found the wicked little document twelve months later is single, carrying fifteen extra pounds, broke, and decidedly not proficient in communicating with my hands.
I don’t know why I bother with resolutions at the beginning of every year. “Get in shape” has been on my to-do since Clinton was in the White House, but its inclusion appears to be insufficient motivation to actually do anything about it. “Find a boyfriend” is a pronouncement that fails to acknowledge I cannot bend attractive men to my will, despite my best efforts. “Stop wasting money” is violated every time I step into a bar, and that sign language thing was strictly because I had a crush on a hot deaf guy and thought it might improve my odds. Turns out he could read lips, and he still wasn’t interested.
And yet I make the damn list every year. I suppose it’s tradition.
Perhaps Mama and I would be well-advised to pause and consider what “tradition” really is. It’s intended to be an activity you actually enjoy repeating, like my buddy George and me watching “Brothers & Sisters” every week, or going to karaoke at Mary’s on Tuesday nights. Annually preparing a brick of cookie crumbs and neon green cherries, or making a list of your perceived faults, is not tradition. It’s just making the same mistake over and over and not learning anything.
There are plenty of lessons, in retrospect, I learned in 2006- the result of all the unexpected challenges and rewards that come up over the course of a year. But how the hell was I supposed to anticipate any of that on January first? For good or bad, the year was what it was. Sometimes the results were fantastic, and sometimes it was an unbaked fruitcake: The best mix of what I had to work with at the time, with the hope of something better later. I don’t expect 2007 will be any different in that regard.
So I’m gonna start the year with a new tradition: I will look forward to whatever mysteries the year has in store, and my only resolution is not to resolve anything at all.
As a tribute to my late grandmother, my Mama still prepares her “unbaked fruit cake”, a sticky-sweet mishmash of condensed milk, vanilla wafers, and candied fruit, formed into a loaf and left to harden on the counter for several weeks.
There are no words to sufficiently describe how horrible it is. It barely qualifies as food. The polite but unfortunate relations who have attempted ingesting this concoction have either lost teeth or experienced instantaneous insulin shock.
My sister Shannon and I have spent years reminding Mama that the only reason our grandmother prepared this monstrosity is because she was poor. Had the option of preparing actual fruitcake been financially viable, she would have gleefully done so. Perhaps a more fitting tribute to our grandmother would be baking the fancy fruitcake that eluded her all those years.
Mama remains unmoved by our entreaties, declaring unbaked fruitcake a sacred family tradition, whether any of us like it or not.
While I was in Mississippi avoiding the fruitcake last week, I was faced with a note in my own handwriting:
This will be the year I get in shape. I will find a boyfriend. I will stop wasting money. I will learn sign language.
This is not a list of my resolutions for 2007. It was my list for 2006. I wouldn’t have even remembered the damn thing if I hadn’t had the bright idea last December of placing it in an envelope and leaving it at my parents’ house. The version of me that found the wicked little document twelve months later is single, carrying fifteen extra pounds, broke, and decidedly not proficient in communicating with my hands.
I don’t know why I bother with resolutions at the beginning of every year. “Get in shape” has been on my to-do since Clinton was in the White House, but its inclusion appears to be insufficient motivation to actually do anything about it. “Find a boyfriend” is a pronouncement that fails to acknowledge I cannot bend attractive men to my will, despite my best efforts. “Stop wasting money” is violated every time I step into a bar, and that sign language thing was strictly because I had a crush on a hot deaf guy and thought it might improve my odds. Turns out he could read lips, and he still wasn’t interested.
And yet I make the damn list every year. I suppose it’s tradition.
Perhaps Mama and I would be well-advised to pause and consider what “tradition” really is. It’s intended to be an activity you actually enjoy repeating, like my buddy George and me watching “Brothers & Sisters” every week, or going to karaoke at Mary’s on Tuesday nights. Annually preparing a brick of cookie crumbs and neon green cherries, or making a list of your perceived faults, is not tradition. It’s just making the same mistake over and over and not learning anything.
There are plenty of lessons, in retrospect, I learned in 2006- the result of all the unexpected challenges and rewards that come up over the course of a year. But how the hell was I supposed to anticipate any of that on January first? For good or bad, the year was what it was. Sometimes the results were fantastic, and sometimes it was an unbaked fruitcake: The best mix of what I had to work with at the time, with the hope of something better later. I don’t expect 2007 will be any different in that regard.
So I’m gonna start the year with a new tradition: I will look forward to whatever mysteries the year has in store, and my only resolution is not to resolve anything at all.
