We had a very nice Thanksgiving with our friends last night. We go way back. We've been doing this since before the kids were born, and one of those babies is now closing in on her driver's permit.

We have our traditions. Within my relationship to these people, we've created many traditions. Some don't hold up over decades. Some give us a rhythm for maybe five years, maybe ten. We have built them for big antiques shows and what we'd do afterwards. (Some of these shows were many hours of driving away, and, if we worked really hard, might get the 120 acres covered in three days of major effort.) Others are slippery...and though we may think of them every year, the actual event may only happen every third year or so. You have only so many "third year or so's".

I stand back and I see children who've enlarged in all sorts of ways, adults who've earned more wrinkles, grayer and decreasing hair, who are wiser, funnier... MORE of whoever they were and now are ... and we try to find moments we can use as markers, like road mileage posts. "We've been this far now." What was that last mile like? Were you awake? Who drove? Any hitch hikers, breakdowns, flat tires, speeding tickets, rest stops?

Once the kids came along, some rituals were lost, and others were built in their place. Having never been a bio-dad, I haven't experienced that dramatic call-for-change, but have been on the other side of it, where it's clear those who must change are either trying - or not trying - to bring you along with the changes.

Traditions are lots of work. They AREN'T the acts of lazy, uncreative, brain dead dolts. They provide a small sense of "stability" in a world of constant flux... a world of Time bigger than most understand... Time most people fear.

So, we mark our calendars and set our alarms. We note ideas and events that somehow connect us well enough to do it repeatedly until it soothes and assures us we may have had a tumbleweed year yet somehow we're back again.

Next stops: Birthdays and Anniversaries, Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Year's.