Day.
Today is P@ncak3 Day and I had forgotten until my son rang up from university to check the mixture ingredients as he was the main cook for a p@ncak3 evening. So now I feel really lonely.

I am never lonely .. so what is this? If I felt lonely I wouldn't be living here. I can go back to London whenever I want ... tomorrow morning in fact .. and my family regularly beg me to and 'can't understand' how I can live as I do and not go mad.

But I think this is because P@ncak3 Day has always been organised and cooked by me ... always. And if we weren't together on the right day then it would be ignored and we would have it the following weekend or whatever. It is not even a big thing ... just cooking and eating vast numbers of p@ncak3s ... that's it. Not with my husband because he was never around at teatime which is when we have it ... but the children and me. Starting when my first child was a baby. I can picture her still in her high-chair fiddling and mushing and throwing bits around. Right up until last year ... when it covered two days to include all three of them .. and the old familiar fighting over the 'unfairness' of the first person to the table getting the crappy stuck one from before the pan was 'proved'. And my middle daughter's vile new French habit .. picked up from her boyfriend's 'M@rdi Gras' .. of eating hers with chocolate spread.

That was probably the first sign of it all slipping away ... that jar of Nutt3ll@ placed on the table amongst the lemons and the sugar and the treacle. And now I am starting to think about it .. I have remembered that she will be abroad at Easter .. maybe they all will. Those carefully crafted family traditions that took so much creativity and thought and seemed quite draining and .. sometimes .. even as if they were going to be too much trouble this year. But I did them in the end anyway because .. they were family traditions for f.ck's sake.

And now they are replicating my traditions for themselves ... for their friends. My son is a brilliant p@ncake cook. When I reminded him of everything that he would need I said in a casual voice 'Maybe you'd better get some Nut3ll@'. He laughed scornfully 'I don't THINK so'. My boy.

There is no point feeling lonely now anyway. The moment has already passed .. it is 11.00 pm ... panc@k3 time has come and gone. Get over it. Think about something else .. and if I really, really mind then next year plan ahead and make sure that I'm not hanging around by myself on Shr0ve Tuesd@y .. moaning.
- posted by Iris @ 2/28/2006 10:46:00 PM comment