Traditions Are A Must

I talked with a friend last night about A&M and their school traditions. The Aggies claim the title of most tradition heavy school of any university in Texas and possibly the nation!! They have so many different ceremonies and customs that each and every one of their students feels compelled to participate in them for fear of being a "2 percenter". Some of the traditions are kind of dorky, but some are incredibly fun. This talk of traditions made me think about what particular family traditions I grew up enjoying, so I thought that I would talk about 3 of my favorites. Here they go:

1. Smashing a slice of birthday cake in the birthday boys face - This tradition was mostly only supported by my Dad. My Mom would always try to convince him to not do it, but she would be inevitably overruled by 4 other sons that were all lining up to be the person that got to commit the treacherous act. This is definitely a tradition that I will be putting to use with my future children. Lots of laughs were always had.

(Or sometimes the neighbor would step in to lend a hand!!)

2. Roasting a pig for big family occasions - This typically occurs on 3 different holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. As Cubans, my family loves pork. Depending on the size of the get together, we do anything from one sizable leg to a whole 200 lb entire pig. Either way, it always comes out delicious and makes me overeat way too much.

(Dad, brother, and cousin checking the goods)

3. Books to send each child to college with - This one has probably meant the most to me personally. Maybe it is because I wasn't expecting it; none of my brothers mentioned this tradition to me before I received it. To each of the five boys, my parents have given the same 4 books: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, The Wealthy Barber, a new Bible, and The Book of Virtues. I've only really taken advantage of 2 out of 4 of these books, but that's not too terribly. The part that really made this gift significant to me was the one on the right in the picture simply called On Life. It is a written account of my life according to my Dad which documents all of the significant events in my life from my birth to the end of my senior year of high school. It is all broken down by year. Each son got one of these. Obviously, there are key events missing that I would include in my own autobiography (first kiss, favorite soccer moment, etc), but there was so much detail and love given from my Dad's account of my life as well as my parents lives that I would never have known otherwise.

After his personal account of my life, he goes on to impart advice and knowledge about specifics subjects such as college, marriage, children, and money. This simple 28 page document means a lot more to me than most anything else in my apartment. I'm pretty sure that if there was a fire and I only had 30 seconds to grab whatever I needed. The only two items I would grab would be the hard drive out of my computer and this incredible little book.