I scooped one nice ball of vanilla ice cream into each of their glasses and poured the soda over it.   The mixture bubbled up in a thick pink head of sweet creamy foam.  Armed with a long handled spoon they dug into their drinks.  “Oooo, Daddy,” they squealed, “IT’S AWESOME!”

It was Javier, however, who had the most to say about it.  His experience seemed to go beyond the visceral and deeper into the larger questions.  It was obvious he had been thinking about it all day.

“Daddy, this was a tradition with Grandma Weez, right?”

“Yes, Javier, I had ice cream floats as a kid.   We used to really enjoy them, and Grandma Weez loved them when she was a little girl.”

“Um, I don’t know how to say this, Daddy.  If you just say it, it’s a lie, right?”

“What do you mean, Javier?  I don’t understand what you are getting at.”  Javier, furrowed his brow and chewed his lip.  His thought, it seemed, was more sophisticated than his vocabulary.

“Um, I’m not saying it right.  If you just say it, it’s not a tradition, right?  You have to do it.”

“Oh, I see what you’re saying.  I hadn’t thought about that,” I said, pondering the depth of the inquiry.  It was a really profound question.  Are the traditions passed down from one generation to the next rendered null if they are no longer practiced?  If you just tell stories about them, they begin to die, or in Javier’s explanation, become lies.  “Well, Javier, there is something called oral tradition, that is, those things that are stories that are told from one generation to the next.  It’s a form of entertainment and cultural history that one generation passes to the next.  It’s kinda like TV or movies.  You see them, listen to them, and then you tell others about them.”

I continued, “But I do see your point, if the practice of telling a story or actually participating in a tradition, doing it, becomes something you just talk or reminisce about, something as a curious bit of nostalgia, then I guess you would say it’s not a tradition anymore.  You are one smart little cookie.  I hadn’t through about that before.”

I have been thinking about the question he raised since yesterday, and I believe I will continue to think about it, but it seems to me that nostalgia is not a substitution for tradition.   That little Javier is his mommy’s son, a little anthropologist in training.  Keep those questions coming, Javier.  Sometimes the most profound thoughts are actually simple questions.

“Again, Daddy!”  And swim he would, lap after lap after lap.  He was beaming.  Actually it looked just like this, his first day of school.

Such a big boy.  The sooner we drown proof him, the better.  Having a pool that little ones can fall into is nerve racking and I live in fear of somebody falling in and drowning.  My fear coupled with Asier’s big boy resolve and we have the makings of an O’Malley Gorbea Family swim record – 4 1/2 years old.  Yeay!  Asier.

In her back yard, she has this old lemon tree, not just any lemon tree, let me tell you.   This one was was loaded, and according to Grandma, it has had this tremendous abundance year after year.  We must have picked over a hundred and still its branches strained under what was left.  It looked barely touched.  And the lemons? They were huge.  In fact, here’s a grapefruit sized monstrosity.

The lemons were all healthy and enormous, and even though Southern California is a desert, the fruit was saturated with liquid. It was all I could do to keep it from dripping all over the counters. I juiced pitchers and pitchers of lemonade for all the grandkids and great grandkids.  We had a hoot messing up grandma’s kitchen, then making popcorn. Oh yes, it’s not an O’Malley party without popcorn!  Popcorn and lemonade.  Yum.

So I juiced all these lemons, had so much fun, and decided I wanted a souvenir.  I dried out about 40 seeds, took them back to Puerto Rico, and promptly planted them.

Look, a little lemon tree sprouting up through my compost. Now that I have at least one, I’m going to plant more and give them away, spreading those delicious fruits as far and wide as I can. All those little seeds came from somewhere, and it is splendid to seem them flourish.

They’re happy.  I’m happy.  WIN!

“Move to Jamaica?”

*ROFL*

See a resemblance?  I certainly feel like Lightening McQueen in my spiffy shoes.  KA-CHOW!

“Hey, Asier, are you a single lady?” I asked chuckling.

And as if sensing my humor and the incongruity of a three year-old boy being a “single lady,” he quickly responded, “No Daddy, I Batman.”

And he kept dancing.

“Why do you say that, Olaia?”

“Who lets their daughter go to China with a monkey?”

“Asier, you can’t go to a playdate with Javier and his friend until you go caca in the toilet.  You have to show us you are a big boy,” Laura informed him today.

Upon arrival home, he dutifully called out a caca alert and made it so.

“Ah, so he gets it,” I said, “He understands the process; he just needs the proper motivation.”