Things were easier when the boys were little and they did not, as my friend Lindsay says, have a personal “brand” to protect.  I could dress them in sissified white linen shirts and they could not object!  Because they couldn’t talk!  Or they didn’t know how to say “Cut it out, Mommy, you’re making me look like a girl!”

I knew these days were precious and few, and if I wanted to art direct everything myself, I had to work fast, before the boys had the power to object.

There’s a long tradition of the customized Christmas card in my clan.  The oldest one I can find was drawn by my grandmother on the occasion of her first Christmas as a married woman.  She drew a little picture of their homey “parlor” as they probably called it, in 1924. 

Every year thereafter, their Christmas cards included either one of her drawings or one of my grandfather’s photos. 

At right above is one of his self-timed shots from 1962 – if this were a larger image, you would see that we all look tired and put-upon, because Grandpa was a short-fused fussbudget who probably made us hold this pose while he shot over and over.  One of my aunts is pregnant and wearing a maternity tent, and we’re all suffering from the heat of an August afternoon in Kansas. 

However, my grandpa got the shot, and my grandma wrote the copy:  Merry Christmas from every twig on our family tree, 1962.  These cards were probably signed, sealed, stamped and in the mail on December 1, having been created months in advance.

My parents carried on the tradition with a personalized photo card or Christmas letter every single year, and my dad does this himself now.   My brother Jim does a hand crafted, clever piece of art for his card every single year.

So you see the imperative under which I’m operating.  I can’t let the family tradition lapse.   Must create that 2009 card, stat, before it’s 2010!

Suffice it to say that Dave chose the latter this year which was perfectly acceptable to me. The man, who in my humble opinion is one of the coolest Dads around, just finished teaching the last week of fourth grade in a 100 degree heat wave with no air conditioning. He could have asked for just about anything from me – and gotten it. (Probably a fact he wish he knew YESTERDAY).

So the boys and I spent the morning kayaking with my dad, a.k.a. Pop-Pop, his girlfriend Gail, my brother Justin, and his son, Niko. We go to a small, relatively unknown state park in Chester County called Marsh Creek. We have been going for years, usually 5 or 6 times each summer. It’s a total Pop-Pop thing. A tradition.

The key to effective tradition creation is repetitiveness. We do the same thing every time. It works. I pity anyone who innocently suggests any sort of deviation from the following plan:

• Arrive early to beat the crowd and secure key parking place.
• Gather together and discuss boat rental strategy (one man, two men, sit-on, sit-in, electric motor boat, etc). Pop-Pop announces he is treating for the boats. We protest. He prevails.
• Noah and Chase bicker about the boats. I threaten to leave them on shore. Fighting stops.
• Our floating caravan heads out to the dam where we can anchor and take a mini hike. We climb on the rock pile at the top of the dam. Throw stones. Pick flowers.
• We return to the kayaks to head back. Noah and Chase bicker about the boats. I threaten to leave them on dam. Fighting stops
• Return and eat beef barbeque sandwiches, nachos grande and water ice. Pop-Pop springs for lunch. We protest. He prevails.
• Kids wade in the lake and try to catch minnows with makeshift fishing equipment. Fail.
• We all go home with wet butts and warm memories.

Having the opportunity to observe your children bonding with your parents is a gift. My kids have four vibrant, engaging, loving grandparents – all which have their own set of unique traditions that the boys equate solely to them. When my boys are grown men, I think this is what they will remember most fondly about their Pop-Pop, my father.

Dave met up with us later for a family barbeque at Justin’s. The waves were small but he had fun. It was everything that Father’s Day was meant to be. For both of us.

The laughing child at left is my grandmother, Lorene. She’s with her brothers Paul and Ted. Holding baby Isabel Clare is their mama, as they called her, Mabel Kelsey Owen – just one of the many mothers of brothers in my family tree.

The Owen family moved, in 1905, from Minneapolis to Mexico City. They pulled up stakes as a multi-generational group, along with my grandmother’s grandparents and an assortment of aunts and uncles. Because my great-grandfather Clive Owen (just like the actor) went on ahead to set up a house and such, Mabel traveled by train with the children to meet him. Imagine the headaches involved in train travel in 1905, with a baby in diapers.

As ex-pat children, my grandma and her brothers rode horses to school, learned Spanish, and dropped in on various relatives for lemonade and cookies when they got tired and thirsty. Although they were driven out of Mexico by the 1912 revolution in what they called Mexodus, the entire family had vivid memories of their years south of the border for the rest of their lives.

I just love the fact that my great-grandparents were daring enough to undertake this adventure. And that an entire group of relatives set up new lives in a completely different place. Sort of like a Kennedy compound in Old Mexico, without the sailboats and football games.