What Traditions/Trends Will End With You?

[Kestra]

I was talking with someone about ancestry this morning, and I've been thinking about certain patterns and traditions and ways of life that tend to pass on from one generation to the next. I'm trying to leave this kind of open and I couldn't think of a better term for the title other than "traditions," but this could be anything.

Maybe most of your family lives in one area and you were the first to move. Or you celebrate certain holidays in a certain way, but you wouldn't continue that if it's up to you. Maybe there's a family business or occupation. Maybe it's something basic like getting married and having kids and you're not going along with the trend, or maybe you were the first one to go to college.

I don't want to make this just about kids since we already had a thread like that.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Hmm, I wonder where the idea for this thread came from.

Yeah, my family (as in parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.) all grew up and lived in the same part of Indiana for generations, since around 1850 or so. But the economic situation of the past ~10 years has caused virtually all of my cousins to relocate to other parts of the country. I've got some in DC, some in Georgia, some in Colorado, some in Michigan, etc. I don't see the family ever getting back together, honestly. We've all made our lives elsewhere and the whole fabric of the family has come apart.

 

[RoJoHen]

I am afraid that when my grandma dies that certain food items will no longer be available to me. She has certain recipes for things that haven't been passed down to anyone else!

As for me, I don't know. Between me, my brother, and my sister, none of us has ever really dated or has expressed much interest in starting our own families, so it's possible the family line will end with us. Of course, at 26, I'm the oldest, so it's way too early to make that judgment, I think.

I am the first in the family to move away from the Chicagoland area, and my parents seem to really like where I'm living, enough that they've discussed the idea of retiring here. So who knows? In 10-15 years time, my family may no longer be in Chicago at all.

 

[auntiehill]

In my case, alcoholism and smoking. I don't drink or smoke, and I never will. My dad's entire family are/were heavy smokers and/or drinkers. Dad spent most of his adult life unable to go a single day without a drink.

Hubby has the same story. His dad drank and smoked heavily. He even drank and smoked away the family grocery money on more than one occasion. Hubby does not drink and can't stand to even be NEAR cigarette smoke.

For good traditions, I'm afraid that hubby and I will never have kids, so all the great family traditions my Mom passed down will end with me.

 

[RoJoHen]

In my case, alcoholism and smoking. I don't drink or smoke, and I never will. My dad's entire family are/were heavy smokers and/or drinkers. Dad spent most of his adult life unable to go a single day without a drink.

Hubby has the same story. His dad drank and smoked heavily. He even drank and smoked away the family grocery money on more than one occasion. Hubby does not drink and can't stand to even be NEAR cigarette smoke.

I think I'm starting the opposite tradition. I'm the only person in my family that does drink!

 

[sojourner]

I am the only remaining male son of my generation of the family. Having no children of my own, the family name dies with me.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

For me it's less about traditions or trends and more about basic knowledge, the passing on of useful know-how. Due to my family's separation, I missed out on much of the knowledge my father learned from his parents - the useful competencies and procedures for everyday problems. My father learnt from his parents matters of gardening, food preparation, electronics, basic business, home repair, clothing repair, use of tools; in general, the basic cultural package of survival and low-key prosperity. Myself? I have none of that, because I was never taught it. Oh, I had an education from the schooling system, but I didn't have much of the home education, the practical rather than the academic matters. I'm not saying I can't take care of myself, but I am saying that it worrys me just how few skills I have. I feel like a big fat baby compared to my father and his parents, and it worries me how many people like myself there are now in my part of my country - people who just don't have the confidence and skills to live full lives because they were cut off from the source of domestic knowledge that took generations to build up.

And I fear for my own children, because I want to be able to teach them these things, be a fount of useful knowledge and practical skills for them. And I won't be. So much is lost, and I feel inadequate. I can only hope their mother is Ms. Fix It, because dad won't be able to build a treehouse for them or teach them to mend clothes or give them early business lessons.

 

[RoJoHen]

^Luckily we now have youtube videos to teach us all those things now!

Seriously, I've learned a lot of that stuff from the internet, from changing a tire to fixing a leaky faucet. My parents are more of the "let's just pay to have somebody else do it" types, so they never taught me a lot of that stuff either.

Things like cooking, though...just play around. I learned most of that stuff on my own.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

YouTube taught me how to be a baller.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

^Luckily we now have youtube videos to teach us all those things now!

Seriously, I've learned a lot of that stuff from the internet, from changing a tire to fixing a leaky faucet. My parents are more of the "let's just pay to have somebody else do it" types, so they never taught me a lot of that stuff either.

Things like cooking, though...just play around. I learned most of that stuff on my own.

Yeah, I'm probably overeacting. You're right that the practical matters are easy enough to research nowadays if you need them. Still, I wish I had more knowledge to pass on. It's funny sometimes - my uncle and his wife want their younger son to be more like me because I did very well at school and graduated from a good university while he's training to be a plumber and now wants to be a technician in the army. I'm thinking - he's the one with the right idea! He's going to be useful at any rate; I just sit here and waste oxygen!

"Say my good chap, do you know how to analyse the canonical works of Chaucer in their historical context?"

"No I don't. Shall I fix your pipes for you so you can actually cook dinner, bathe and not die of cold this winter?"

"....yes please".

 

[Thor Damar]

Ha! And I'll rise you the underlying causes and effects of the Russian revolutions of 1917 in terms of how not to be useful in a practical way.

Alas I never found a natural home in the ivory tower...

 

[doubleohfive]

When I left home five years ago, I made it a point to sit my dad down and teach me as much as he could about preparing traditional Lebanese cuisine whenever I would come home for the holidays or other sojourns east. Five years later, I've picked up quite a few yummy dishes along the way.

It's ironic. Being so far away now, I worry about his (and my mother's) health a lot more than I did when I lived ten minutes away from them. That, and I missed the home-cooked meals, I guess.

 

[mimic]

My family has a history of pyromania.

-My great-grandmother used fuse as clothesline and my grandfather used to blow up rocks and groundhogs on his farm with dynamite

-My Grandma nearly burned down their house when some burning papers from the fireplace landed on the roof - most of the older books at her house have water damage from the firefighters putting out the blaze

- My Dad accidentally burned down several acres of the back woods of his house at age 14

I'm hoping this family trend doesn't make it to me. So far, so good.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Ha! And I'll rise you the underlying causes and effects of the Russian revolutions of 1917 in terms of how not to be useful in a practical way.

Alas I never found a natural home in the ivory tower...

The problem for me, and I'm certainly not alone in this, is that I'm caught between two worlds. In my later education I was among the middle class and indeed the "upper class" (including people whose families have titles, the horror...), but my home and origin is among the working class, and I still have many of their sensibilities. My sister has the same problem. All her university friends are comfortably middle class and she's...not. I'd feel useless and guilty if I did what many of my graduating class did and just cheerily moved on up that ivory tower (to be fair, they can afford to do so easier than I could), but I feel under-ambitious and guilty if I don't act "upwardly mobile", like I'm wasting opportunities that I should be more grateful for.

Gods, I'm in a mopey mood tonight, aren't I?

 

[Deranged Nasat]

My family has a history of pyromania.

-My great-grandmother used fuse as clothesline and my grandfather used to blow up rocks and groundhogs on his farm with dynamite.

Were your family characters in the Looney Toons, by any chance?

 

[Tora Ziyal]

I am afraid that when my grandma dies that certain food items will no longer be available to me. She has certain recipes for things that haven't been passed down to anyone else!

Could you ask your grandma to teach you how to cook them yourself?

 

[Holdfast]

... it worrys me just how few skills I have...

As societies become more complex, increased specialisation is pretty much inevitable (it's the flip-side of the increased efficiency, highly-extended-logistics world we live in). I don't think it's any sort of real loss to not know how to do specific tasks, provided you have a comparative advantage in another field that allows you to fund the outsourcing of those other tasks while prioritising your time on things where you have advantage (or on things you want to spend your leisure time on). Don't forget this cuts both way; those expert at physical tasks are required to employ others to do intellectual/administrative tasks (plumbers need accountants, to oversimplify).

If society completely collapsed, sure, these things would matter. But realistically, if that happens, your quality of life is totally screwed anyway and it just becomes a matter of how quickly your miserable life is over. So it's not really worth worrying about that.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

If society completely collapsed, sure, these things would matter. But realistically, if that happens, your quality of life is totally screwed anyway and it just becomes a matter of how quickly your miserable life is over. So it's not really worth worrying about that.

Your unique ability to make people feel much better, much more miserable and greatly amused all in one is much appreciated, Holdfast.

Being serious, I hear what you're saying. I still wish I felt more competent though, particularly for the sake of any children. I can be rather old-fashioned when it comes to my little idyllic image of domestic life, and I'd like to have more to pass on than I do.

 

[doubleohfive]

My family has a history of pyromania.

-My great-grandmother used fuse as clothesline and my grandfather used to blow up rocks and groundhogs on his farm with dynamite

-My Grandma nearly burned down their house when some burning papers from the fireplace landed on the roof - most of the older books at her house have water damage from the firefighters putting out the blaze

- My Dad accidentally burned down several acres of the back woods of his house at age 14

I'm hoping this family trend doesn't make it to me. So far, so good.

My dad would, in the Virginia summers, excel at ways of getting rid of ants and wasps, bees, and other nuisance-y insects that would habitually find their way in to our house with things like hairspray, windex, bleach, etc... and finally took to roasting ants with a firestarter when the bugs would get into the kitchen.

"GODDAMN ANTS!" He'd proclaim... until he nearly set the kitchen on fire. That put an end to that rather quickly.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

My grandfather impressed me with his ability to hit groundhogs with a shotgun from 50 yards. I couldn't even see the bugger--until it flew up in the air after being struck by buckshot.