Family traditions are strange to behold. Each family has their own set of traditions, unique to themselves. Religious traditions, holiday traditions, birthday traditions, anniversaries, funerals, the list goes on and on...traditions built over years and years of practice that hold some sort of special significance to the participants.
My mother's family has a tradition I've never seen in any other family, a divorce tradition. The practice consists of brow beating the newly separated or divorced woman with biblical insults and reprisals. It is a vicious and cruel practice last can last for years.
As a child, I watched my mother be tortured by this practice for years. Everything from outright damnation of the woman (and her children) to snide remarks about her lack of husband, and lower financial stature because she insisted on a divorce. Pointed comments to ensure the woman on the receiving end of the barbed tongue would feel ashamed, and "less than," like a failure to not only her family, but to Almighty God.
My mother was a strong, fiercely independent woman who did not shy away from standing up for herself. She didn't like to let her children see her cry. But I can't even count how many times I saw her weeping over this. I never understood it, and I don't think she did either, always completely baffled by the hypocrisy of being judgmental and cruel in Jesus' name.
I'm convinced this practice is the reason she shied away from raising us in the church. God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit were welcome in our home, they were friends we could turn to whenever we needed, loving us no matter what. The few occasions in my life when my mother utilized this family practice of biblical shame torture toward me were the few occasions she actually apologized.
I was lucky enough to take after my mother in many ways, though it sometimes felt like a curse. As an adult she once told me that she wished I wasn't so much like her, if only to keep my heart from being so easily and so deeply hurt by people.
When I divorced I was blessed with my mother's understanding, and I think she tried very hard to keep her family's tradition from reaching me, but it did just the same. Sometimes it was just in my mother telling me of a recent argument with her sister over me, not to upset me, but to warn me that I may get a call and that she had stood up for me.
The strange and funny part is that this "family" has never been exceptionally close-knit in any way. For most of my life, the entirety of this "family" relationship consisted of seeing each other once a year, just before Christmas. An annual presentation of whose better than who, and how do you measure up to their standards.
The annual family gathering brings along with it a secondary tradition of anxiety and pit of your stomach dread. I can remember so many times, throughout the years, when my mother wanted to cancel. She never liked it. She'd be worked up for weeks in advance over every single aspect: "I already know someone is going to say something about_____, and I don't want to hear it." The trying on and disregarding of several outfits because the event was so much about appearances. There was at one time a small joke made about my mother's punctuality, and it wasn't funny because those few minutes were spent smoking one more cigarette, wishing she could have a glass of wine, and trying to work up the nerve to get through the next few hours. We, as children, never understood why we would actually go. Why our mother would subject herself to such emotional torture.
No matter how well it went, it never really went well. I've often wondered to myself: why do I as an adult, subject myself to this year after year? It's some disillusion sense of family obligation when the real obligations of a normal family are nonexistent. Family means loving each other, accepting everyone for who they are with compassion and understanding. Does it mean you have to agree with every action of another person? Of course not, but it doesn't give you licence to insult or berate them either.
As a single mother, I am reluctant to expose my child to these people. I do not want him growing up thinking these behavior models are acceptable or bear repeating. I do not want him to believe "love" is just a word thrown around between people who really can't stand each other.
I've reached a point in my life where my familial relationships are with people that my not share the same blood line, but do share a similar mindset. People that are caring and compassionate towards others. People who are always willing to help an individual in need if they are able to do so, and don't keep a running tally of who did what for whom. People who are honest true. These are the people i want my child to see as role models, these are the behaviors that do bear repeating.
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