What traditions have you not kept that your parents had?

I do not make coleslaw for parties.

My mother did. Every family gathering, every one, my mother got out the Veg-a-matic and made my dad shred heads of cabbage for the salad. She would make either creamy coleslaw with Miracle Whip and lemon juice, or oil-and-vinegar coleslaw from the Betty Crocker Cookbook.

Years later, I found out that Mom didn’t like to make coleslaw. She tired of it quickly. But her sisters insisted she make the coleslaw because she was so good at it. (And likely because they didn’t want to have to shred pounds of cabbage.)

I do not make coleslaw for the gatherings I get invited to. Maybe I should?

‘Impossible’ gets my vote on an overused word in the sense of “It can’t happen here,” usually after it has, in fact, happened.

People build in 100-year flood plains assuming that repeated flooding in ten years is impossible. Nuclear power plants have been designed not foreseeing some possibilities for malfunctioning.

I know it’s said out of a sense of denial, a malabsorption of the facts. If something has happened, however, it is possible. Often there’s a sense of deniability in the word as well, as if saying “It’s impossible” absolves one of not foreseeing the possibility that it could happen.

If something is low probability, it’s not impossible.

Before I received treatment for my bipolar disorder, the predominant positive emotion I felt was elation. Elation is great until it edges upward into a state of jagged agitation and anxiety, and then crashes into despair. Elation also came with judgment lapses, and although my lapses weren’t severe, they’re things I don’t want to go through again.

Nowadays, my most common positive emotion is contentment. Contentment is a grounded state that is my default these days. It feels much more comfortable and sustainable. I feel more able to cope with the world.

Do I miss elation? Sometimes I do, because elation was a fleeting high, one which was very attractive. But then I remember the rest of the baggage that came with it, and I don’t want to go back there. I prefer contentment with its satisfying continuity.