Family Heirloom

Not too long ago, during a tender conversation of self-discovery, my teenage son asked if either me or my wife had any family heirlooms, some trinket he said or jewelry or anything tangible through which he could touch and feel and explore a sense of greater connection to his heritage.

Nothing.

The resulting silent stares between my wife and I gave way to a never-before-confessed realization that our household contained absolutely no such mementos  –quite frankly disappointing considering the proud fact that both her family and mine hailed from different Syrian cities, each with literally millenniums of rich heritage. Our current reality however is apparently the latest chapter of all too familiar stories of Syrian diaspora which for me and my wife and our families started well over 4 decades ago spanning life in seven different countries and four US states.

And so -- beating out the number of years that either of our parents spent living in one place, we recently passed the 25 year mark since the day my wife and I and our three boys took root here California –where in our home, there truly exists no heirloom to display over the fireplace or on a bookshelf or even locked off in a safe.    

The legitimately sincere disappointment on my teenage son’s face did not budge despite all the harrowing detailed explanations we shared about how all four of his grandparents’ sacrifices resulted in all the layers of blessings that he takes for granted. I could not truthfully disagree with his sentiment because there is nothing but honor to gain in caring about your heritage. Just the same, I knew that I cannot give him what I simply don’t have.

And so -- in compliance with the parenting manual chapter on how to weasel out of dead-end conversations with your kids, my wife and I declared bedtime, turned out the lights and marched upstairs.

A couple of weekends later when this teenager’s older brother was visiting from med school, the five of us were winding down the day like every God fearing American family – cozied up together with a Netflix movie AND a seriously large bowl of popcorn. That homemade stove-top popcorn was the perfect color with just enough grease and salt ideally distributed to each and every pristinely puffed, crunchy savory kernel – all whipped up by our visiting MD-to-be oldest son.

At the end of his visit as always, we all hugged and kissed and then waved as our book-anxious second year med student drove back to his apartment reloaded with clean laundry and a few home cooked meals packed into the back seat of his ‘88 Prelude whose hood stays attached by the grace of one blessed bungee cord and God’s endless love.  

That’s when it hit me.

Popcorn just so happens to be divinely positioned alongside peanut butter as my lifelong two most important foods in all of human existence. Weaved into my popcorn passion are all of those times when I was as a child that my father routinely made stove-top popcorn for us. He made it in an aluminum pot on the gas flame stove of every apartment or house I lived in as a child. As I got older, my father taught me step-by-step how much oil to pour in, just the right quantity of corn, then let it heat full-flame until the first pops fire off, then he explained exactly how and how long to shake the pan side-to-side and then up-and-down so that every single kernel popped to its fullest.

My childhood popcorn skill remained in high gear through high school, which along with crunchy peanut butter sandwiches fueled my mandated 2-3 hours of daily facetime with the OMG-everyone-is-talking-about-it newly-debuted MTV and HBO. As I grew older and busier and unglued from MTV, my popcorn making went from daily to weekly to monthly to a few times a year at best. When my first son --today’s med student-- was old enough for Saturday morning cartoons, the popcorn making geared up again. As he grew older, we embraced or maybe inducted his two younger brothers into our popcorn-and-TV club  -- eventually replaced of course with modern-day instantly-gratifying on-demand Netflix binge sessions.

As life evolved and grew naturally busier, our stove-top popcorn was shamefully replaced with its bastardized microwave cousin, the mandatory in-vogue air popper, and yes forgive me Lord, even with blasphemous store purchased pre-popped bagged popcorn. [cue scary devil music from the original Omen movie]

Somewhere during those blurry crazy years, my oldest son grew up and moved out. His younger two brothers morphed into their own wise-cracking, pimple-popping and slightly-more-independent young adulthood phase of life. This enabled the pace of my life to ease up for a much needed exhale.  Sure enough, with that first breath back in, I must have inhaled the right mix of nostalgia wrapped in searing guilt to put me onto the almost-lost path back to my treasured homemade stove-top popcorn. Yeah baby.

But gross. That path took wickedly unexpected nauseating twists and turns as each popcorn batch I concocted on our stove top was uniquely worse than the one before. The torment to my unwavering personal romance with popcorn flung every reality of my known universe into disarray – yikes, well clearly that would be every reality except my God-only-knows-how-many generations-old drama chromosome which irrepressibly survives in pristine, fully functional glory. Ya think?

Okay, okay, so the point here is that in full betrayal of my father’s popcorn tutelage, each of my burned or partially popped or oily or dry or salty or flavorless kernels un-grooved this former popcorn master. It also pushed the remaining residents of my household to the most extreme stress-testing of their love for me.

And then boys and girls, here's what happened next. It was just another balmy southern California weekend and I was simultaneously dreading and looking forward to another family Netflix session. My rock-bottom desperation for real popcorn pushed me to text my oldest son “I need your help doc” for a much needed consultation on how on God’s Earth he created that one amazing batch during his last visit. Quite unexpectedly, within seconds my busy med student called back with detailed step-by-step instructions — resulting once again in an awesomely perfect batch of weekend popcorn. [cue clouds parting into open blue sky synchronized to a crescendo of window-shattering tabernacle organ-blazing hallelujahs] The promised land is near. 

Side note reminder to submit to the parenting book editor my proudly patented chapter on “how to raise future doctors who prioritize popcorn over saving lives.”

Darn it. That’s when it hit me... again. [mute the choir, cue dark clouds with slow depressing music]

How is it that I remember with flawless clarity the stove-side popcorn instructional sessions with my father, yet the painful truth is that I actually cannot not remember ever passing on those teachings to my son or his two brothers. Yeah but folks, the proof’s-in-the-popcorn that I apparently did. Or perhaps I didn’t but my son learned to figure it out or seek it out somewhere else. In either case, he made the choice to bring it back home and I’m taking total dad-credit for at least that much. Yeah baby. 

So yes, get over it… by now you know that I’m going to say...that it hit me again.

And that’s when it really hit me again.

We can unintentionally pass on the most subtle or humble of family traditions or we can painstakingly memorialize them through well documented formal ceremonies. Either way, I guarantee you as true as God's boundless wisdom, that the endearing value and the unrelenting perpetuity of family traditions will always outrun any heirloom artifact because no grip of your hands around an artifact will ever be stronger than the thankfully unforgiving grip that family traditions lock onto your heart.

So if and when you decide to seek out the links to your family heritage, please be sure along that truly noble path, you stop and smell the popcorn.

And oh yeah, also --your darn chromosomes will haunt you forever so own up and get over it