As life trundles on, our family, like many others I’m sure, picks up little sayings, words misspoken and memories of silly things gone wrong. All these things become part of our lives. We all know the words to chant to finish a certain sentence, the story of how one of the kids said something totally outrageous, quite innocently, and will never be allowed to forget it. We rejoice in reminding each other of the silly things we’ve done or said, like setting fire to the microwave, or breaking the door off the garage. (You know who you are, youngest!) We can reminisce about holidays that went hideously wrong and laugh, because we lived through them together. It's this joint history that binds us.
Each bonfire night, we eat the same food, light the same cheap fireworks in the back garden and cheer and laugh and battle to pick the worst one – you know, the one that lights to produce a plume of coloured smoke, with nothing but a hiss and then with a phut 3 sparks fly out and it's all over. We collapse inside at the end of the evening, happy and secure that the life we know, that we understand and is understood by all those around us, is good.
I hope you have a great Bonfire Night, too.