Club Membership

All children need a laptop. Not a computer, but a human laptop. Moms, dads, grannies and grandpas, aunts, uncles - someone to hold them, read to them, reach them. Loved ones who will embrace them and pass on the experience, rituals and knowledge of a hundred previous generations. Loved ones who will pass to the next generation their expectations of them, their hopes, and their dreams.

-General Colin Powell

There's a lot to be said for parents expressing their expectations to their children. It seems like there's too many parents now just willing to say "Well, do what you want as long as you're happy," to the detriment of society in general. What happened to doing your best, working hard, acting right, treating others right, and living up to what people expect of you?

This quote also got me thinking about rituals and traditions that are passed through generations. As my kids get older I think about what traditions we'll have, and I've realized that David and I are the ones that create traditions within our family. They don't just happen on their own, so what traditions are we going to start? And what traditions that we grew up with are we going to continue doing?

David's family has a tradition of birthday cake on Christmas, for Jesus' birthday. My family for a long time had the homemade Christmas tradition (or as we kids thought of it, a rule that we didn't like following). I'm not sure what Christmas traditions we'll pass along to our kids, but we already have a couple other things at other times of the year that we do together. I think these things make families stronger, they make us members of a small club that others can't join. Isn't this one of the greatest things about family? Exclusive membership, not to exclude others but to make our relationships with each other stronger.