Every New Years Day I always make Black-eyed peas and collards. I am the only person who likes them, but each year I always make them. I grew up with southern parents and this was tradition. To eat this dish meant that the year would be prosperous.

One year, I almost did not make them, that was the year of the Divorce. I had barely made it through Thanksgiving and Christmas as it was. I just didn’t feel like celebrating the New Year. I felt like I did not have a real family anymore and that no one liked them anyway, so why bother.

On that New Years Day, my oldest daughter asked me why I had not made our traditional New Years Day Feast. I looked at her like she was crazy and she said, “You know, black-eyed peas and collards!” I told her that I knew what she was talking about but I was confused since neither she, nor her sisters ever liked them. She was very upset with me about this and insisted that I must make them.

Luckily, I did have the supplies on hand. I had bought them out of habit during the holidays. As I made the beans and collards in two different pressure cookers, I was reminded of New Years days past. I felt my eyes stinging, but not from the onions that I chopped, but from the memories the smells brought. They were happy memories.

The smells went up to my daughters’ rooms and they came down. “You’re making cornbread too right?” one of them asked, excited. “Sure, of course.” I told her, still wondering about the girls who each cried in the past about the tradition, declaring it “stupid.”

As we sat at the table that night for dinner, the girls were full of energy and happiness. Each declaring that this year was going to be really wonderful and lucky because we didn’t forget to make our lucky New Year’s Day Feast! Every girl cleaned her plate that night and went to bed with smiles on their faces.

I have to admit that I too went to bed smiling. I realized that even though I was divorced, I still had a family. We were still a family. From that day forward I continued all our old traditions with a few twists and created brand new ones, like Friday Night Junk Night.

Keeping our traditions help children and adults cope better with the changes brought about by divorce.