Day by Day...

When my parents first got married they lived in an Italian neighborhood. Italians weren't quite all the way to white yet at that time so their neighborhoods were still the most affordable. My parents were early gentrifiers. Or not. I mean, they didn't move there to kick out a family and build a coffee shop, they moved there because they could afford it. But anyway...for the first few years of their marriage they lived in an Italian neighborhood. And my mom said that they were sort of adopted into those families. Two kids on their own barely making ends meet, there was always an extra lasagna that needed a home. (My mom made a GREAT lasagna I have to think it's someone's recipe from that time)

We have an odd mix of traditions they got from living in that neighborhood at the start of their marriage and the things they brought from their parents (Scottish mostly from Mom's side, Irish and sure let's say it's a mix from my Dad's)

Like Christmas Eve we used to burn a Bayberry candle for luck in the coming year, the longer it burned the better, best if it burned all the way to the nub. It seems as though that was something that started in Colonial times. Which is sort of insane to me to think of. And I did it when Brent and I first got married until it became incredibly hard to find Bayberry candles in the store. Now with the internet I could order one from Massachusetts but leaving a candle burning with Tig in the house is not a recipe for good luck at all. But aside from the candle we also always had fish on Christmas Eve. Totally a Catholic thing. No Feast of the Seven Fishes, but usually oyster stew. I've swapped that out for just any fish will do, but still we have fish on Christmas Eve. The same way my folks did, I picked up a lot of my family's traditions and modified them in my own family.

Thinking about these things as I prepare for Día de los Muertos. I don't do a really traditional ofrenda, just move a few of my more decorative skulls to a new location with photos of our parents. We have a meal that is my real ofrenda. We eat and drink things that represent our parents to us. It's an odd mish mash, but it works. Pizza, Margaritas, chocolate covered peanuts and orange slices. Jack, Ann, Ruby, Marshall.

The year my mother died was the first year I did an ofrenda of any type. Before that we would "toast" our fathers on their birthdays but that was it. I can tell you it's because for me Jack would have thought any thing like that was silly and I didn't feel like my dad was really gone until my mother died. That year I made a much more traditional ofrenda. Made marigolds and butterflies out of the candies. I realized that I didn't have a drink or candy of choice for Jack and so we had pizza and brownies for dinner and thus the ofrenda dinner was started. By the next year when I would have added Ann to the altar space we had Tig and Tux and much like the no go on the candle, a traditional ofrenda has been off the list for awhile. Just my makeshift one and the dinner.

And I always do it on the 1st instead of the 2nd. And that's because of my mother as well.

See she always commemorated All Saints Day, which in Albuquerque rolled in with Día de los Muertos, but it wouldn't have when she started marking it, it was strictly a Catholic thing for her not a cultural one. That would have tied back to her Italian neighbors. I don't know how long they lived in that neighborhood, but I know it was at least through Marsha's birth. My guess is that one of her neighbors let her know that they would like a candle for her on All Saints Day and my mother was moved enough by that that she never forgot.

I've talked about picnicking with my siblings when we would go back to Iowa. She would pack a lunch and when we headed back out of town after visiting we stopped at the cemetery and had lunch at their gravesites. Honoring the dead, that's a thing my mom did. She would say that she knew they weren't there, not really, but it was the only place she could have all of us together, so we stopped. She would tidy the plots, we'd sit and have lunch. Then she and Dad would take a few moments together while we kids packed back into the car. That shifted to All Saints Day when I was a teenager and we didn't go back to Iowa anymore.

It was always small. A trip to Old Town to the confectioners. A few sugar skulls. And I mean, actual sugar skulls. There were tiny ones carved out of sugar cubes and then decorated with flowers painted on with tiny brushes and food coloring. There were also more elaborate ones piped and filigreed with frosting. My Aunt Carol made a few of those and they were gorgeous. And on November 1 she would sit quietly for a few moments with those candies and then put them outside to eventually melt away. I don't know how old I was when I realized what she was doing. Honestly. It just didn't trip to me.

We aren't Catholic, but she kept a pretty healthy respect for a lot of Catholic things. (Fun fact, I was born in the Catholic hospital in Albuquerque because my mother felt like the nuns would be more help than the doctors at that point since the doctors told her she or the baby were probably going to die, not sure if that's what pulled us through, but we both made it so...) And we weren't Mexican or Spanish or hispanic in any way shape or form, but I grew up with all of that around me so I just applied her things to those things and so the 1st was the day for me. And even though I know that the 1st is for children who have died (ah, now you see why she did it on the first) and the 2nd is for adults, I still choose to do it on the 1st. That's my family tradition. It feels more like I'm honoring my parents by doing it on the day my mother honored my siblings.

And like I said, Jack would have thought it was ridiculous and Ann probably would have thought I needed to talk to someone about unprocessed grief but secretly would have been pleased that she was part of the celebration.

I do keep the ofrenda set up on the 2nd but the meal to honor our parents is on the 1st. I should probably think about changing up the food choices, I mean, it's not exactly healthy, but it works for me. And Brent is a good sport.

This weekend the veil is thin. The dead come back to celebrate with the living. Put out some sweets and some booze and take a moment to remember them with a smile. It's not a sad holiday, it's a remembrance. It's joyous.

Happy Día de los Muertos!