Ask Someone Else's Mom

To all my readers and their loved ones, I send best wishes for happy holidays, and all good things in the New Year!

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: When my grandparents were still alive, we all got together to have a real New Year’s Day feast with black-eyed peas, cornbread, pork, and greens, like only my grandmother could make.

This year my cousin is hosting New Year’s Day at her house and she is going to have it catered from some Gucci catering place that does everything, including the setting up and clearing away. Those things used to be part of the fun, with everyone pitching in to make it all special.

I know my cousin works hard, and both she and her husband are well-off. But all that is nothing to me compared to having a true and traditional family celebration.

I am half of a mind not to go, but my husband says just let it be and be glad the family is still getting together like we did when everything happened at my grandparents’ house.

Is there anything wrong with wanting things done the way they always were, just one day out of the whole year? --- WANT MY TRADITIONS

DEAR WANT MY TRADITIONS: Closely observing some traditions can be useful in helping organize and direct hectic or even overwhelming days and events. There’s likewise an element of comfort in continuing certain practices at certain points of the year.

That said, I believe that traditions have to be at least a little flexible to survive the changes that naturally happen. In the case of your family’s upcoming holiday get-together, your cousin has chosen to do what works best for her.

Perhaps one way to preserve the traditions you love is by offering to host the family New Year’s Day gathering next time around. If you do have the opportunity to have the event at your home, you could divvy up the menu among the guests, thereby not only taking some of the burden off yourself and your husband, but also giving others a chance to keep treasured traditions alive for themselves and future generations.

DEAR SOMEONE ELSE’S MOM: I enjoy a good scary book or movie, but I never believed all that stuff was real until my family moved into our current house. It isn’t old and creepy in the least. It was built in the mid-1970s. It is a sunny split-level, and is in a nice, normal neighborhood.

Two weeks after we moved in, I started hearing noises. I am home alone with our toddler, and when she is napping, and the house is especially quiet, then I swear I hear someone walking around upstairs, when I know there is no one up there. There can’t be. My husband is at work, and my daughter sleeps in a portable crib on the main floor, near the dining room, where I do parttime legal research for a lawyer friend of mine.

I am not the only one who hears the footsteps. My mother heard them twice when she was babysitting, with, like me, the baby nearby and nobody else in the house. We don’t have any pets, and the first times I heard it, I went upstairs to make sure nothing was rattling around or had fallen down, and everything was in its right place.

It does creep me out a little, I can’t lie. But what gets me more upset is that my husband right out laughs at me when I tell him what I hear. He says it is all in my imagination, and that my mother is like me, very imaginative. When I told him I never said anything to my mother before she heard the sounds, he still does not believe, and sometimes we fight over this.

I do not know what the sound is, but I think it could be a ghost, which is very funny to my husband.

Am I nuts like my husband thinks I am? --- LIVING WITH A GHOST

DEAR LIVING WITH A GHOST: As the resident of a much older home than yours, I don’t think you’re nuts. Houses have their own histories and quirks; and since you’re in the house more than your husband, it’s likely you’re more in tune with your house’s unique personality.

If it would set your mind at ease, you could use your research skills to dig through available public records about the previous owners of your home and any significant events that may have occurred in it. Several years ago, without much effort, we were able to get a complete history of title holders for our home, going back to the woman who built it in the 19th century, and who now rests in the cemetery right down the street.