It’s the End of an Era

It was only a matter of time, I guess.

My parents’ Whonnock farm where my littles spent much of their early childhood has been sold to make way for a large lot subdivision. I am sure those properties will be lovely.

My brother let us siblings know and so Ron and I had to go to the Lower Mainland to see for ourselves.

No, I am not crying, not me.

Coming up to the end of Easter weekend the neighbouring driveways back home are full of cars from visiting family and from the winding road we can see smoke spirals coming from backyard bonfires. That opens up a haybarn of memories.

Even in the early days the Whonnock property became a gathering place for work parties, Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas, large and small family reunions, pig roasts, Sunday pancake breakfasts and weddings.  A place of celebration and connection.  A place where traditions were formed. And cousins became close.

My talented cousin Lisa designed our T-shirts!

Easter was big as my siblings and I grew our young families together.  It was my brothers mostly, I remember, who went out to hide the sweet bounty in the forest.  A little too well. The kids’ chocolate egg basket yield was never more than 80%, I am guessing. If we came over for a weekend later in the year and needed a snack we could head into the back forty and root around a couple tree trunks.  There were still lots of foil wrapped treats there to tide us over until dinner.

Recently one of my uncles died.  Of my mother’s nine siblings, two uncles are still alive. I grew up with playful aunts and uncles who swung me around in the bottom of a sleeping bag. They joked and teased a lot and fed me white bread. One of my uncles set up my first computer. My Uncle L was a fine man.  A well-travelled engineer full of generosity and funny.  I will miss him.

So, this news was very sad.

It occurs to me that the sale of the old farm and the passing of the generation adjacent to me on the more “experienced” side of the timeline triggered an ending of an era awareness. Family traditions on the property ended years ago but the sale of that land brought a finality to that.

I wonder about families who pass down traditions hard and fast though the generations. Only a couple remnants have stuck with ours in varying degrees. Like, we love the idea of Oma’s olliebollen for New Year’s Eve but make ourselves content with the memory of it because I can’t be bothered with a deep fryer and am fast asleep by nine o’clock.

Growing up and into my adulthood, my mother was the glue of our family traditions.  For better or for worse I dropped that torch.   My oldest daughter told me a couple years ago over Christmas that she missed the traditions and all in family get togethers.  That was a direct and important note.  I intend to act on it.

But it does seem to me the correct generational flow that siblings grow up and start their own traditions with their own immediate families. What that looks like can be very different. I read this article in the Washington Post (Sorry it is behind a paywall ☹) by Whit Honea, titled The painful reality of family holiday traditions: Nothing stays the same

She writes, “At the intersection of holiday and family lies the cornerstone of tradition, where relatives and recipes rise to the annual occasion. It is the real time of memories in the making, the now that we will remember fondly. And yet, nothing ever stays the same. Life goes on as hindsight in a montage, taking family traditions with it and creating new versions in their stead. Tradition, it turns out, is a fluid thing. It only seems static from a distance.”

So, whilst I am melancholy to say goodbye to old family traditions and the land and generation that hosted them, I am heartened by the next generation that builds new ones.

Again, in the words of Whit, “Tradition, for the most part, is the promise of not forgetting.”