New Year's Traditions

I had forgotten about the traditional New Year's dinner
until I saw the grocery ads at the end of December.

My folks never forgot. Every January first there were
bowls of turnip greens and black eyed peas and a
platter of hog jowl on the table.

The greens were supposed to represent bills, the peas
coins, and the meal an assurance of good luck all the
year, as one of the grandmothers would remind us.
If Grandma Brewer was there, she and Daddy kept
urging one another to another helping, joking about
how rich they would become if only they could eat
enough greens and peas. Grandma's chin would be
shiny with grease from the fat meat. Grandma Jones
would even laugh and comment on how much the
others were eating, and she would put a little more
on her own plate than usual.

Nobody paid any attention to me, they knew I would
be picking at the food. The greens weren't bad with a
dash of vinegar from the bottled hot pepper and there
was cornbread with a bit of margarine, but the peas
were cooked until the water they were cooked in was
thick as brown gravy. The little slab of fat meat- they
couldn't afford a large piece- had been cooked in the
peas so it was also as brown as the pea stock and it
quivered when anyone walked across the floor. Even
if I believed that it meant good luck, I couldn't bring
myself to touch it.

And I didn't believe. Every year the same ritual with
the peas, the greens, the jowl, and every year there
were months when the rent wasn't paid, the many
breakfasts that consisted only of biscuits and margarine,
the school lunch times when I would work at my desk
while the other children ate.

I don't think they really believed in the magic of peas
and jowl, either, but my grandmothers had always had
the special New Year's dinner and my parents carried
on the tradition. Traditions are comforting, and who
knows? maybe this year would be better. I think it was
a ritual not of belief, but of hope.