--"Rainbows in the Dark", Tilly & The Wall

I've always wanted a cast-iron skillet. Ever since I saw Lucy's mom doing a good portion of her Christmas cooking on one of those I've been forever intrigued its practicality. I mean--for chrissakes, it can go from the stovetop to the oven, and even back again. That's one handy convenience if you're into cooking.

For the longest time I put off buying one because I had plenty of frying pans and plenty of oven dishes to do all my cooking and baking in. I just couldn't bring myself around into putting out the extra expense. In fact, I didn't break down and finally purchase one until last week when I came across one at a decent price and a decent size while I was out grocery shopping. I didn't really want to buy it for myself because I always partially assumed somebody would be getting one for me since I practically tell everyone I know how much I love cast-iron skillet cooking. Also, another small reason was I'm just one of those people if I don't buy something within days of hearing about it, I just never end up buying it.

The main reason I didn't want to buy it for myself has to do with the fact that Breanne's cast-iron skillet has been in existence for four generations and it's still going great. Starting with her great-grandmother it has been passed down from mother to daughter as soon as the younger generation moves out to live on her own, much like their antique mirror. That's over ninety years her skillet has been providing sustenance to that family. I don't know--with something as sturdy as that, it really shouldn't start its legacy with me. That's the kind of heirloom should really have started before me and the kind of heirloom I should have expected to be coming my way very soon.

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I say this because tomorrow is the anniversary to when my grandma died. Aside from the crappy fact that St. Patrick's Day is pretty much ruined for the rest of my life due to the unfortunate timing, I always get a little melancholy due to the fact that our family doesn't hold very many traditions sacred. Sure, the bulk of my family buys into Catholicism and all its trappings, but as far as family traditions and heirlooms go, we don't possess many at all. There's nothing that really binds one generation to the next; there's no watch that my father got from his father that I'll be getting. There's no mirror for my girl cousins that they're anticipating. If and when I go to the service tomorrow, it will be just like any other family function. We'll gather, we'll pray (well, some of them will anyway), we'll eat, and then we'll go home. Compared to most families, we're not exactly tight with one another--at least from my perspective.

And I believe this has a lot to do with the fact that we've never really established these traditions.

We've never gone on the full-board family reunions. Yes, we've done family trips before, but they were sporadic and almost always devolved into either the Taroc clan going gambling, which doesn't exactly lend itself to much bonding at all. And, yes, mostly there isn't a sense of history passed along from one generation to the next. I barely know anything of the legacy of my family and, with that, I really don't possess an oral history to go along with my understanding of them. I'm not comfortable talking to many of the generation before me mostly because what went on before I was born really doesn't get disseminated all that often and definitely in public. Everything I've learned was through secondhand sources or accidental revelations. There's never been one time I can remember where we kids just sat around and were told stories of the old country or even what our parents were like growing up.

Maybe that's why my grandma's death really hasn't stuck with me or even affected me that much. While she was alive I never got a true sense of who she was. I only knew her as my dad's mom, who could barely speak English to me. Maybe I never saw her as a person. Certainly I never saw her as someone connected to me in any measurable way. Logically she was my grandmother, but emotionally she may as well have been the old lady down the street.

Would this have been solved if we had more of a dialogue going? Perhaps. Is this the kind of failure to communicate that could have been resolved with some kind of heirloom being passed down? Maybe. The part of me that has studied up on oral tradition and the power of symbolism believes that if there'd been an instant where I received such instruction or been shown something concrete of what our family was built upon, I might have taken my family's place in the world more seriously. As it is, I don't even know what I think of my family sometimes. It's like we're just a bunch of people (who aren't even really friends) who gather sometimes but only are really connected in name only. I don't feel the bond with most of my family and I don't see that situation getting any better.

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That's why I bought the cast-iron skillet because, unlike Breanne's family, I knew that if I didn't start something along the lines of that kind of tradition, then no one would. And, unlike my grandma, when I think about dying, I want to think about someone receiving something of mine that they can tell their kids that I owned once upon a time and so on, and so forth. I don't want to die thinking there's nothing physical out there connecting me to my progeny.

Besides, I'm pretty much counting on the fact that my heirs will still be making grilled swiss and cheddar sandwiches when they're up late at night writing their own blogs. LOL

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers