For those of you who have forgotten — and that’s probably all of you — I once declared myself to be a surprisingly adaptable human being, given that I uprooted myself from my home in Oregon in the 1980s to move my family to Texas.
That was in 1984 and by and large we all learned how to change many of our thoughts about our new home and to adapt to many of the customs practiced here. It wasn’t until a young woman joined our family in March 2012 that I truly grasped what one of those customs means to the average Texas family.
Eating black-eyed peas to welcome the new year.
The newest family member married one of my sons. She is a Plano native and has lived in North Texas all her life. She prepares black-eyed peas each new year and persuaded us to join her in eating them to welcome good luck to our family. We have done so since. I am going to do so again this year. I likely will continue doing so for as long as I draw breath.
The good news is that I happen to like black-eyed peas. They make a wonderful soup dish. I suspect I’ll just heat ’em up and consume ’em right off the stove top. The good luck will be sure to follow, right?
This is a big deal for this transplanted Texan. We began our Texas journey in Beaumont, then moved way up yonder to Amarillo and finally settled in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. My family and I have called Texas home since the spring of 1984. That makes almost 42 years waking up under the Lone Star and beginning a new year.
The state has changed in many ways since we first arrived here. Politically? You bet! Texas used to be reliably Democratic. Now it’s reliably Republican. For that matter, Oregon — where I was born in 1949 — has gone from nominally Republican to hard-core Democratic in about the span of time as Texas’s re-generation. Who knew … ?
I did not grow up in a family that lived with tradition. We didn’t participate in activities based on family history, or state culture, or religion. I guess we lived more or less for the moment. Texas taught my family and me that some traditions are worth keeping alive.
Eating black-eyed peas to ring in the new year is one of them.
Happy New Year … and bon appetit.