Daily Writing Prompt: What traditions have you not kept that your parents had?
At first, I thought, none! I haven’t let go of any traditions. I’m a keeper of the old flame, aren’t I?
But the more I sat with it, the more that answer started to shift. Maybe it’s not about all traditions. Maybe it’s about which ones I quietly let fall away, and which ones I chose to carry in different form.
One word floated up as I pondered: respect.
Now, that’s a loaded word. My parents believed in a certain kind of respect, the type that never talks back, that keeps quiet even when your soul is screaming. It meant toeing the line, playing the part, keeping the peace, no matter the cost.
But I don’t think I held onto that kind. I couldn’t. It didn’t suit my bones.
Granny Frass had a different version. Respect the earth. Respect yourself. Respect the dead. Respect the fox that runs across the field like it owns the place, because it probably does.
In many ways, she was my first real parent. I lived with her. I learned from her. She didn’t teach from books. She taught by watching the sky, listening to the bees, and letting me sit beside her in quiet when my questions were too big for words.
And then there was Aunty Fan, her sister and soulmate in the ways of the wild. Between them, I was handed down a set of traditions most people wouldn’t even recognize as traditions. They looked more like teacups, herbs on windowsills, candle stubs, and muttered warnings. They looked like a knowing.
My parents were different. They were polished by the outside world. They believed success was found out there, in systems, in approval, in making sure the neighbors didn’t talk.
I straddled both worlds for a while. But eventually, the call of the soil and sky won out.
So maybe I didn’t keep all my parents’ traditions. But I don’t think I lost my way.
I just followed a different path back home.
Granny Frass says:
“Tradition’s no good if it can’t bend like a branch in a storm. Yours snapped off their own trees long ago, but you, child, you grafted your roots where they still grow wild.”
Mae 🧡
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