Holiday?

            This is a holiday weekend.  I know this because they were talking about it on the news and offering suggestions for things to do.  It doesn’t “feel” like a holiday to me, but then the last few haven’t felt like they were holidays either.  Holidays should feel special, with different food, fun activities, and visiting with people we don’t see often.  Warm weather holidays generally lend themselves to larger pot luck gatherings with extended family. 

            When I was growing up, and even when my kids were small, the summer holidays were spent usually at my parents’ house with my siblings and their spouses (I was the first to have children), and usually at least one of my aunts.  Mom’s potato and macaroni salads were always on the menu, as well as ‘burgers and dogs’ on the grill, an assortment of vegetable sticks, cheese and crackers, potato chips, and watermelon.  Sometimes sweet corn and cookies or cake were served as well. She always made her own lemonade and iced tea served out of large thermos jugs, too. When we had the big picnic on Labor Day, there were one aunt’s ‘famous’ baked beans, another ones cucumber salad, still another ones fresh garden tomatoes (which she sliced in her hand while talking to her sisters, without ever once cutting her hand), and someone always brought deviled eggs.  They were special days filled with the conversations and laughs you hear whenever relatives who enjoy each other’s company gather after being separated for months. I love those memories, and the pictures we used to take to remember the day by.  Now we don’t have so many relatives, and usually it’s just the 4 of us hanging out, having a day off of work.  I try to make the food special, but the day just doesn’t hold much of anything different from any other weekend day.  It’s a little sad but we’re all so tired from the hectic pace of our weekdays that we just want to spend the day relaxing.  Sometimes we do get together with our siblings, but definitely not this year what with the pandemic and all the restrictions on group gatherings.  Maybe next year we can try to make things a little more special.

            I hope that for you, the holiday is as special as you want it to be.  If what you really want is just a day to relax, I hope you get that; if you want to do something special, I hope you get to do that, too.  As for me, I’ll be hanging out in the back yard, possibly playing “Yahtzee!” or “Scrabble”, eating snacks and feasting on burgers and dogs.  Maybe I’ll make some of that potato salad and macaroni salad too.