I am 48.5 years old (tomorrow). And for whatever reason, this occurred to me this morning as I was waking up listening to NPR: I need rituals. The commentator was talking about how mental health professionals are working to help families connect meaningfully with their critically ill COVID-19 relatives. One health professional connected a nephew to his uncle and though the uncle was intubated, the nephew was able to tell him about how he was looking forward to how the family would get together at a beach house and enjoy time together and he was looking forward to having the uncle there again. Though the uncle could not speak, a tear of understanding and likely hope ran down his cheek.
I started thinking, what are my rituals? In some ways, I think I have avoided rituals because I fear that they make things stale and old for people. But I have rituals that are very important to me: when I go to the gym, I use the same locker when I can. That way I don’t have to think about where I’ve stored my clothes and it’s quick to gather them when I finish my workout. Within the locker is my gym bag. I put things in the same pockets each time. When I finish my shower and put on my clothes, I fold my towel and then wrap it around my flip-flops and bath scrubby, then put it in a bag so all the wet things don’t affect the dry things. And when I get home, I know the order I’ve placed things in the bag so I can first pull out dirty clothes to put them in the laundry, then pull out the wet stuff to hang up or set out to dry. This is a practical routine, but one that makes going to the gym predictable and manageable.
I think one of the reasons I fear and stress over regular holiday-like occasions: Mother’s Day, birthdays, Christmas, Easter, etc. is that I don’t have a ritual or routine set for each. So what if my ritual is to buy flowers each Mother’s Day? I feel like I need to invent something novel each holiday to make it special. I lucked out this year that I happened to be making COVID-19 facemasks for my parents that suddenly seemed to be good Mother’s Day gifts.
I was trying to think if we had many rituals growing up. I think holidays always really stressed my mom, too, which might be where my original stress comes from. I think she hated Christmas for all the work that it was. Maybe “hated” is too strong a word. Additionally, her brother, born on Christmas Eve and killed in a plane crash at Thanksgiving before he turned 21, is probably on her mind from November through December each year. I’d bet that has permeated that time of the year permanently, even if it’s in her subconscious. So I think I learned to be stressed over that time of year.
I wonder if I put “decorate the tree” and “put on Christmas music” on a list or calendar for each year, along with some other fun things–decorate cookies together, wrap gifts together (which Natalie has now made really fun for me since I’m not going it alone and she likes to wrap and have lots of gifts under the tree early).
