discovering bonnie

For years, my family traditions felt tied to familiar rituals — holiday gatherings, family vacations, Sunday dinners, the predictable rhythm of raising children. I worked hard to create those moments, hoping they would become the kind of memories my children carried into adulthood.

When my marriage of 24 years fell apart and life went in a different direction – I feared what would happen to those family rituals I valued so much. What would they look like now? 

One of my sons recently shared a memory of our house always being the place friends gathered. He remembered the food, noise, the late nights, the constant revolving door of friends. I remembered preparing snack trays for sleepovers — turkey and ham rolls, fresh-cut vegetables, fruit, and cheese carefully arranged and ready when a half-dozen hungry boys came through the door. It was later shared by a friend that her son told her the snack trays at my house were like a five-star restaurant. The pile of shoes at the front door was evidence that everyone had somehow ended up at our house again. At the time, it simply felt like motherhood. 

The past three years have taught me that traditions aren’t fixed. I was holding onto the idea that they needed to look and feel the way they always had — familiar and unchanged. What I eventually realized is that traditions can evolve right alongside us.

Now I have the freedom and opportunity to create new traditions with family and friends. Not necessarily long-established customs, blindly brought forward from the past. Instead, I’m discovering what matters enough to carry forward and what can be left behind.

Today, those traditions look different. They look like annual ski trips with my youngest son, shooting excursions with my middle son, and visits with my oldest son’s family filled with horseback rides, walks with the dogs, and wild ping-pong games with my grandchildren.

Looking back now, I understand those ordinary moments were traditions too. The holidays, vacations, and family dinners mattered. But so did the food trays, the noise, and the pile of shoes at the front door.

Maybe traditions were never about preserving the past at all. Maybe they were always about creating connection, wherever life happens to find us.