Comfort foods

Tonight a group of my high school friends will be coming over for appetizers and desserts, just as they did the Tuesday before Thanksgiving last year. Thursday, we’ll host Thanksgiving dinner for thirteen (a thought that would have horrified my maternal grandmother, who was superstitious and never seated thirteen at the table. But I’m hoping the fact that we’re actually dividing the group between two tables mitigates the potential for bad luck). In early December, it will be time for the annual cookie exchange, an evening of food, wine and conversation, at the end of which we all take home dozens of Christmas cookies made by each other. And once that party is over, we’ll start our yearly candy-making for Christmas gifts.

It feels good to be welcoming back these seasonal rituals. Their sameness is soothing. When I told Holly on Saturday that the annual gathering of high school friends was in just a few days, she responded, “Yay, chocolate chip cheesecake!” She remembers correctly. I’ll make chocolate chip cheesecake for that gathering, pumpkin pie and apple crisp for Thanksgiving, eggnog cheesecake and a peppermint chocolate layer cake for the cookie exchange.

All of these are foods we don’t eat the rest of the year, and there’s no particular reason that each recipe came to be assigned to one particular event. But I appreciate the sense of tradition behind it. There’s no reason to associate chocolate chip cheesecake with my high school friends and chocolate peppermint cake with the cookie exchange group. It just took hold that way.

Cooking traditions can be such a welcome ritual in uncertain times. We host Thanksgiving every year; most years I try to experiment with one or two new dishes, but I never worry about it, knowing the old favorites will always be, well, the favorites; and yet there’s always room for something different. The roasted squash salad tradition dates back to 2006, when my friend Nicole gave me the recipe, and everyone has come to expect it, but the idea of making turducken rather than traditional turkey is one Tim came up with just this year. We’ll find out if it sticks or not.

I’m finding it reassuring to pull out the annual recipes: the apple crisp recipe in my mother’s handwriting on a tattered recipe card; the recipe for chocolate mousse pie (which is always another choice for Thanksgiving dessert, alongside the apple crisp and pumpkin pie) printed out from an email address I haven’t had in seven years.

At every party and get-together, everyone is appreciative of the food no matter what I make; sometimes I worry that I wouldn’t even know if no one liked my cooking because they’re just glad I’m willing to host these events. And that could be true; they could be thinking “Oh please, not the roasted squash salad again!” But unless I ever hear that, I’ll turn back once again to the familiar favorites. It’s part of what makes this time of year feel so familiar, so ritualistic, and so dear.

 

Super Bowl sentimentality

I don’t normally look forward to the Super Bowl. It’s not that I lack affection for the Patriots; it’s the sport of football itself that leaves me indifferent.

But this year I found myself looking forward to the Big Sunday. Sometimes it takes a few years of repetition before I begin to recognize a ritual for what it is, but for the past five years or so, we’ve watched the game at the same house, attending a party that seems to double in size every year.

And although big parties aren’t always my favorite place to be, this one is special because the guest list is loosely centered around the families of Tim’s wide circle of casual friends: the boys with whom he’s played baseball, sat in class, played at recess, and attended birthday parties for the past seven years or so.

It’s a group of people – parents and kids alike – whom I generally really like. But more than that, this year for the first time I began to sense how transient this ritual might well turn out to be. Our boys have all hung out together or at least attended school and played on teams together over the past several years, but that probably won’t last too much longer. In another two years, they’ll start high school; those who go to the public high school will attend classes with three times as many kids from the neighboring town as from their own, and some will go to private schools nearby or even off to boarding school. They’ll still be happy to see each other and maybe they’ll become part of Carlisle’s traditional day-after-Thanksgiving soccer game, an event that typically draws together old friends after they’ve gone off to college. But this particular group of fifteen or twenty boys won’t make up Tim’s daily peer set anymore, and their parents won’t be such a regular part of my life either.

I find that hard to face, but in a way this sentiment is very much in keeping with how I’ve been feeling ever since the start of the school year: Everything is perfect so please stop the clock right now. Both of the kids are happy and well-adjusted, with a healthy mix of social, recreational and academic interests. Holly is finally past the mercurial stages that can make the early years of school difficult; Tim isn’t yet thinking about SAT scores or learning to drive. This, right now, fourth and seventh grade, this is perfect. This is where I would freeze us, if I could.

And so as I began coring peppers and mixing filling for the tray of chilis rellenos I was bringing to the Super Bowl party, I thought of the other parents whose presence in my life I had taken for granted for so long: from the sometimes-hilarious, sometimes-tedious days of toddler playgroups, to the continuous birthday party circuit of their early grade school years, to the spring and summer baseball games at which we spend so much time gabbing. Even as I recognized all the specific privileges that my parenting circumstances afforded me – a friendly and safe community full of like-minded families with similar priorities – I indulged once in a while in twinges of boredom, admitting to myself if no one else that I’d rather be reading a book or working on an article than attending another library sing-along.

And yet as with so many things, the awareness that it won’t in fact last forever is finally making me appreciate it. Tim will probably always have friends, but not these friends; I’ll always have other parents to share the parenting experience with, but not these same couples I’ve known for almost a decade. The boys will grow apart and so will we. Even now, the boys hang out after school at the library or the general store or the soccer field on their own, so we parents don’t spend as much time gathered together watching them play. Soon we’ll see even less of each other, and that realization makes me sorry.

So this year I headed off to the Super Bowl party with something I didn’t usually take along: a sense of anticipation. I was looking forward to seeing all those other adults whom I see less now than I used to. Tempis fugit, in this situation as in all others. I don’t know how many more years this particular party will happen for, or who will attend in future years. This time, I’m looking forward to all those familiar faces. We grow older as the boys grow up, and it’s good to be spending time together once again.

Feeding season again

It’s a mid-fall seasonal ritual: the resumption of livestock feeding.

From May through October, the cows graze. That makes life easier for the rest of us. I see them as I drive by or run alongside their pastures, but I don’t interact with them much. They graze and mingle in the fields; I focus on human pursuits.

But for the other six months of the year, I spend time with them daily. I head out to the barn in the morning and they follow me right up to the gate. I climb the ladder to the hayloft and they stand below, watching me. I shoulder my way among them to move a bale or cut the twine around the hay and they subtly shove back, reminding me that my shoving is no match for their shoving. Or even their gentlest nudging, for that matter.

I’ve been doing the cows’ daily feeding on my parents’ farm for the past three years, not out of obligation but because I was outdoors on the earlier side of the morning anyway, letting the dog run around and then going running myself, and it just made sense to take on this responsibility since I was right there already.

But for the past several months, I thought my job with the animals was over. The logistics of farm life have changed over the course of the year; now there is a significantly greater number of animals in the herd, and also more farmhands involved, so I was told there was no need for me to continue.

But rituals, like habits and water, have a way of carving their own paths. I had thought the herd had become too large in number for me to navigate my way around comfortably, but then for husbandry purposes they were separated into small groups in three different pastures. And it turned out I was still the first one out in the barnyard in the morning, letting the dog play and getting ready for my daily run. So once again, it just made sense for me to climb up to the hayloft and throw down some bales while I was out there anyway.

And even though it seemed like giving up this duty might not be such a bad change when I contemplated it a few months ago – surely that extra ten or fifteen minutes every morning that I’d save from not entering the barnyard would come in handy – now that I’m back into the feeding routine, I’m so glad I didn’t have to give it up after all.

I love the way the animals watch me walking toward the barn, the way they low in anticipation of their morning meal, the way they mill and shuffle and edge each other around as they wait for me to make my slow way to the hay supply. I like the way they lower their big faces into the bales once I finally deliver on my promise, and the way they ignore me as I make my way between them once they’re eating.

It’s not an affectionate personal relationship like the one I have with my dog…or my kids. I just like being around them. It’s been part of my day during the cold-weather seasons for the past three years. I know they don’t particularly care who shows up in the barnyard at eight o’clock each morning. My company doesn’t mean anything different to them than any other human’s. But their company means something to me. It’s a tradition, and I’m happy that once again this November, the bovines and I are spending time together.

A new culinary tradition for snow days

We’ve long had a tradition that when the kids have a snow day, I make bacon for them. It’s a cozy and pleasing habit: they love the taste and I like the way it makes the house smell for the rest of the day. I’m a fan of food-related traditions in general, so I’ve always found it satisfying to have one special food dedicated to snow days. And true, bacon is not good for them from a nutritional standpoint – “salted fat,” as a friend of mine referred to it recently – but surely for a special treat it’s okay. After all, if they have it only on snow days, how often are they really going to get to indulge?

Well, once or twice a week this winter, it turns out. And yesterday morning, as we embarked upon our fifth snow day in three weeks, I told them we’d have to skip the obligatory bacon. “It’s just getting to be too much,” I told them. “Thirty years from now, your doctors will ask you how you developed such a bad cholesterol problem and you’ll have to say, ‘Remember how much snow we had in the winter of 2011?’”

The kids took it pretty well. Either they’ve grown mature enough to accept the occasional disappointment, or they’ve grown old enough to appreciate a nutritional hazard when they see one, or else we’ve actually had so many snow days that they’ve reached the previously unimaginable point of being tired of bacon.

But we needed some kind of gustatory observance of the day, some ritual to mark the special ambience of a snow day even if snow days feel more like the rule than the exception this winter. “How about chocolate mousse?” Tim suggested.

That gave me an even better idea. “I’ll make something for you that I used to love when I was your age,” I told them, and pulled out my mom’s recipe for Pots de Crème. I instructed Holly to fetch from the china hutch the tiny covered porcelain pots that are specifically dedicated to this particular dessert. They are the same dishes we used for Pots de Crème when I was growing up, and because back then it was my favorite dessert, my mother gave me the set of dishes once I was an adult. Holly uses them occasionally for tea parties, but I couldn’t remember ever making Pots de Crème in them for my kids.

It’s an easy recipe, and as I whirred the chocolate in the blender and heated milk to a simmer, I reflected on how much delight I had gotten from this dish when I was little. Ineffably rich and concentrated in its dark chocolate taste, it’s one of the few desserts that works perfectly as single servings in these miniature white and purple-sprigged dishes; it’s so rich that no one asks for seconds. And there’s just something so special about a dessert served in its own dish, topped with a little lid as if what’s inside is a secret until you’re ready to taste it.

Like everything my mother made when I was growing up, I assumed this recipe was standard special-occasion fare in every household – until, when I was in second grade, my class put together a cookbook with each child’s favorite recipe. Within days after we all brought our photocopied (actually mimeographed) cookbooks home, other parents were stopping me on the school plaza to tell me how much they liked my contribution. It was the first time I’d discovered the social currency of a really great recipe.

We ate our Pots de Crème after dinner last night. When I was growing up, my mother even had tiny spoons to serve with it; I don’t, so we used regular teaspoons and savored every bite. My guess is we’ll make this specialty again on future snow days. It doesn’t fill the house with an aroma the way bacon does, but it definitely makes the day feel like a special occasion.

Candy time

Today is the kids’ last day of school before vacation, and last night I was engaged in a favorite ritual that I’ve been doing some variation of for almost as long as I can remember: preparing teacher gifts.

Actually, there’s been a lot of variation. When I was Tim’s age, my mother made gifts for my teachers, just as I do now for my kids. She made breads or coffee cakes wrapped in Saran wrap with brightly colored ribbons, and I felt a warm sense of pride as I deposited them carefully on my teacher’s desk that last morning before vacation. By high school, I was making my own baked goods for favorite teachers and academic advisors.

Once I finished college and started working, the tradition resumed with office mates. I hit on a holiday gift specialty when I was in my early twenties: truffles. Or what I – and the recipe in the circa 1950s cookbook I found it in – call truffles. My elder sister, a purist when it comes to any kind of culinary claim, would point out these really aren’t truffles for reasons I can’t define, but I’m sure she’s right, as they’re too easy to make to deserve that elegant a title. Nonetheless, recipients love the truffles.

After Rick and I were married, we conducted the gift-giving ritual together, and our guest list was growing. I remember one year when our entire dining room table was covered with little cardboard boxes shaped like Chinese takeout containers and decorated with holiday prints as Rick and I got organized to bring gifts to our office mates on that last work day before Christmas. I worked in a department of nine; Rick had even more co-workers than I did. We rolled truffles by the hundreds in those years.

And then Tim was born and along with gifts for the workplace we had gifts for daycare teachers to consider. I started expanding my repertoire. A mere dozen truffles were fine for our colleagues, who really didn’t expect a gift at all and didn’t necessarily give one back; but that didn’t seem sufficient for the daycare teachers who devoted hours every day to Tim. Thus began the basket tradition: I bought big festively decorated wicker baskets or bowls and filled them with a variety of goodies: the original truffles, but also maple scones, spiced nuts, Cheddar shortbreads, molasses cookies, peanut brittle, peppermint bark, banana breads, cranberry muffins.

And so it continued once Tim and then Holly started public school, though the contents varied from year to year, and so did the numbers we needed to produce. There have been some years when both of the kids had a teacher and a teacher’s aide, and last year Tim had two main classroom teachers plus a classroom aide. The kids can hardly carry the bounty.

But it’s so much fun, even as I acknowledge to myself that I probably enjoy the ritual of preparing the goodies and assembling the baskets more than the recipients could possibly enjoy the contents. Now the kids help by writing labels for each little bag or packet.

I have to admit too that I toned it down a notch this year. The array of sweets and savories, breads and muffins and nuts and cookies, was always impressive, but it started to seem a little overwhelming. So this year I focused just on candy-making, which is my favorite anyway: each teacher will get peppermint bark, peanut brittle, toffee, and of course the truffles. Since those early married days, we’ve never yet gone a year without making truffles.

Last night we set up the assembly line. Holly wrote out labels; I packaged the candies into decorative cellophane bags; Tim sorted them into boxes. The number of recipients is a little less staggering this year: one teacher per child, plus the bus driver; and Rick wanted to bring gifts to three administrative staffers at his workplace.

I’m self-employed now, which means I get to gift myself. My gift is all the broken or misshapen pieces of candy that didn’t make the final cut into the boxes. It’s a wonderful tradition, but after two weeks of nonstop candy making, I’m glad we’re done for the year. I hope the teachers know how much we appreciate them, far more than even my chocolate truffles can reflect. And I hope members of their families, if not they themselves, harbor a serious sweet tooth. I think they’ll need it.

It's tradition -- or not

Last week, Holly and I went to Staples in Bedford and plowed our way through both kids’ school-supply lists. (Tim wasn’t interested in coming with us.) This afternoon, on our way up to Maine for the weekend, we plan to make a quick stop at Old Navy to buy her a few new school outfits and try to pick out something for Tim as well. (He’ll be with us but says he plans to read in the car. A shopper he’s not.)

This is not how we usually buy our school supplies and fall clothes. Ever since they reached school age, I’ve taken the kids individually for a special late-summer evening excursion. I planned it all out the first time the week before Tim started kindergarten, and we’ve done it that way ever since: we pick a weeknight the week before Labor Day to leave in the early evening for the mall a half-hour a way, buy school supplies, go out for dinner together at Friendly’s, and then continue through the mall to buy some clothes.

It was a tradition. And those have always been sacred words for me.

But as the kids get older, and as I get older, I am beginning to concede that not every tradition has to be carved in stone. This is not an easy admission for me to make. I have often said that I am unusually attracted to traditions, rituals and routines; I like being able to rely on certain habits and events to recur year after year. I love the children’s book Over and Over, in which the little girl goes through a year’s worth of holidays and then at the end says to her mother, “What’s next now?” and her mother says “Now it all starts over again.” That book comforted me when I was a young child looking at the pictures; it comforted me all over again as a parent, when I would read that book to my children and feel reassured that I was creating certain traditions for them as well, including the one related to back-to-school-shopping.

It’s just that at a certain point, I had to admit that tradition wasn’t all that much fun. We always got too late a start at the end of the day and ended up still at the mall at 9 p.m., which I wasn’t happy about. And the mall itself was overwhelming to me. There were office supply stores just as close to home, so I wasn’t sure why it was so important that we go to one a half-hour away. And dinner always took too long compared to the errands we needed to accomplish. Plus, you know…Friendly’s?

So this year we decided to do it differently, breaking the shopping into two separate trips, staying closer to home, going in the afternoon instead of the evening, skipping the dinner part.

Maybe this tradition will turn out even better. There’s something rather romantic about stopping for back-to-school clothes on our way to the coast for Labor Day weekend, after all; much more so than just heading to the department store and then turning around and going home afterwards. And I certainly won’t miss the tuna melt and French fries at Friendly’s.

On the second day of our trip to Colorado last month, we bought tickets to the gondola that ascends Aspen Mountain, just as we do on our second day of our Colorado vacation every year, and once we’d reached the top, the kids stood in line for their turn at bungee jumping, just like they do every year. As always, I enjoyed watching them tumble against the bright blue sky, and they thanked us for the excursion, but none of us got much of a thrill out of it. It just felt like something they’d outgrown.

The next day, we went whitewater rafting. Rick and I had been before, but the kids never had, and initially the plan was for just Rick and Tim to go. We thought Holly was too young and would be scared in the raft. But she watched a video of rafting at the outfitters’ shop and assured us she wanted to do it, so we went. We had an amazing time. Before it was over, the kids announced they absolutely wanted to go rafting next time we’re in Colorado – and do a more challenging course next time.

“Sounds good,” Rick and I told them. “Next time, less gondola; more rafting.”

And I admitted to myself that I’d be fine with skipping the gondola next time. It was great for a few years; now it doesn’t matter to us so much anymore. And the same is true with the back-to-school tradition.

So this afternoon we’ll make a quick stop to pick out some school clothes and then we’ll head to the beach if the weather clears up. Maybe we’ll do that again next year at this time; maybe we’ll do something else. Traditions are wonderful, but so is being able to recognize when it’s time to end an old one and start a new one. Or even try something just once and try something else the next time. Judicious decision-making can be a tradition in its own right. It’s taken me a long time to be comfortable with that idea, but I think I finally get it.

School's out for the summer

Usually I need to have a really good reason to drive up to the kids’ school to pick them up at the end of the day rather than having them take the bus. This is both practical and ideological. From a practical perspective, my work day is 45 minutes longer when they take the bus, and it’s time I usually need. From an ideological perspective, it’s because leaving the job of driving our kids to school to the bus drivers is a way to cut down on automobile use and traffic. Besides, as taxpayers, we pay for the buses; we ought to use them, and they’re just going to start costing us more if we don’t.

On the last day of school, though, it doesn’t take much for Holly to convince me to pick her up. Unlike some schools where parents drive up to the curb to fetch their children, we’re required to park on the street and walk up to the school plaza. On the last day of school it’s always a madhouse, with parents picking kids up, teachers saying goodbye to students, preschool-aged siblings tearing around enjoying the mayhem. But I go anyway, in part because there is one moment every year that I love so much to witness: just before the buses pull away from the school lot, all the teachers stand in a row at the fence and wave goodbye. I love the part where they all line up together and wave, because it signifies so much for me about the year. Even if it’s hard to deny that they are probably waving with a huge sense of relief – after all, it’s their vacation that’s about to begin as well as the kids’ – there’s also something so affectionate in it. Yesterday was the last day of school: I went up to the plaza, and stood with my kids watching the teachers wave goodbye as I do every year.

Perhaps one reason it’s so meaningful to me is that the school year is a complete entity in a way that not many other things in our lives are. It has a beginning, a middle and an end in a way that not a lot does. And when I see the teachers lined up and waving goodbye, it always brings to mind for me how much mileage we all cover together in the course of a school year. On the first day of school in September, the teachers are just as cheerful, if not with the same look of relief they had yesterday: they make such an effort to welcome the kids into the new school year, introduce them to the benefits and the expectations of the grade they are entering.

And then one by one, the yearly rituals unfold. Back-to-school night. The first few homework assignments. Bigger projects. Occasional presentations for the parents: class plays or “authors’ teas” where the kids read their work to an audience of adults. Parent-teacher conferences. Holiday breaks. Report cards. More projects. Field trips. Classroom tests. Standardized tests. Assemblies. Student concerts. Every year, the same set of events unfolds.

But more than the simple ritual of it all, to my mind, is the sense of distance traveled. I’m amazed by how much progress the kids make every year. So much curriculum gets covered. So much information is incorporated. I’ve written before about marveling at how much Tim has learned about early American history this year, but Holly knows things about Alaska and the Iditarod that she didn’t have a clue about when the year started. Tim learned the basics of a lab experiment and started geometry. His Spanish vocabulary increased. Holly’s class discussed emancipation and the Underground Railroad.

Perhaps in some ways I’m envious. If I look back over the past nine months, I can name lots of events that happened in my life, but I can’t offer an itemized list of what I learned. I can name books I read, but I can’t give a straightforward account of what I know now that I didn’t know in September, the way my kids can. It’s all so quantifiable for them. They learned so much and they can tell you exactly what they learned. For me, the past nine months are a little harder to bullet-point.

In three months, we’ll be back on the school plaza. By the end of the first day of school, the kids will have some idea of the topics they’ll be covering over the following nine months. As always, I’ll listen rather abstractly when they tell me on that first day and then be amazed anew to realize at the end of the school year that they really did cover all that ground, they really did learn all that content.

It’s a remarkably successful system. I never fail to be impressed by it. And as I watched the teachers wave goodbye as the buses pulled away from the curb yesterday, I smiled, thinking about how much the teachers and the kids alike have to be proud of with another nine months of accomplishments under their belts as they say goodbye to another school year.

Why is bedtime still the most tiring part of the day?

My friend Anne told me an anecdote several years ago that I think back on often. Anne’s sons were about one and three at the time, and she recounted a scene that plays out every few months between her and her husband. Just as they are about to head upstairs to get the boys ready for bed, she or her spouse will say, “You know, it’s still early. Why don’t we plan to do something after the boys are in bed, like watch a movie or have friends over to visit?”

Half an hour later, one or both of them will stagger back down the stairs looking like a cartoon character that’s been in a fight: glasses askew, skin smudged, clothes torn. “Oh yeah, that’s why,” the one who earlier suggested a post-bedtime plan will say wearily.

My daughter is seven, but I still think back on Anne’s story a lot because in some ways it still feels that way to me. Putting Holly to bed isn’t like dealing with a difficult toddler’s bedtime. She doesn’t scream or struggle or run around the house. She just takes so long and wants so much interaction from me. She wants help putting on her pj’s. She wants me to read to her. She wants to talk about the dream she had the night before and what might happen at school tomorrow. There’s the obligatory glass of water, along with a discussion about the adrenal system and how much I think it’s okay for her to sip before bed without the risk of a bed-wetting incident. There are the traveling rounds throughout the house: goodnight to Daddy, goodnight to Tim, goodnight to the dog, goodnight again to Daddy. And then there are the few details on which I insist: brushing teeth, using the bathroom (sometimes both before and after aforementioned sips of water), and the laying-out of tomorrow’s clothes, which inevitably leads to a discussion on meteorological forecasting, because how can Holly be expected to decide what to wear tomorrow, she says, if we haven’t precisely pinpointed the probable high and low temperature for the day as well as the likelihood of every possible kind of precipitation?

Lights out at last. It’s only eight o’clock. Surely I could finish drafting an article or fold some laundry or –

No. Like Anne and her husband, I can’t imagine how I thought I would get anything productive done after Holly’s bedtime.

The thing with Holly’s rituals is that in general, they are all not only reasonable but fairly enjoyable. I still like reading to her just as much as she likes being read to. I like the orderly feeling of laying out tomorrow’s clothes. I like tucking her in. I just wish it didn’t all have to happen at 8 PM when I’m starting to have an energy crash of my own.

But at the same time, as with so many aspects of parenting, I appreciate on an intellectual level that this too shall pass, and someday I’ll miss all these bedtime rituals. My son, at the age of 11, has long since forsaken the wish to have me help him get ready for bed or read to him. Without discussion, he takes a shower, reads or plays a computer game for a little while, and calls for me to kiss him goodnight (though of course he’d never use those words). And in a way, that’s really nice. I like the fact that getting him to bed no longer takes thirty minutes or more out of my already overscheduled evening. It probably won’t be too much longer before Holly is at the same stage, bathing and changing on her own, maybe even not only content to read to herself but actually not wanting me to be too familiar with the content of what she’s reading.

So as I drag my tired self through another protracted bedtime routine, I remember all of this, and I think too of all the mothers who cannot tuck their children into bed at night: those moms who work the night shift, are inmates or hospital patients, serve an overseas deployment.

It’s a privilege to help Holly get ready for bed. It’s tiring, but it’s one of the best parts of daily life as a parent. And of course, a successful bedtime routine is almost always followed by that most unforgettable gift of all: getting to creep back into a dark bedroom to watch your child sleep, a sight that grows no less adorable from the first night after the baby’s birth until, I would imagine, the night before she leaves for college. And beyond.

So, like Anne and her husband, I’ll continue to have selective nightly amnesia, thinking at 7 PM that there’s no good reason why I can’t still have hours of productivity or at least fun left in my evening, only to be reminded by 8:30 of just why nothing ever happens at that time of night. Someday, my kids will no longer need bedtime rituals, and I’ll have all the time I want. For now, I’ll keep trying to savor the moment.

Rituals, holiday traditions, and the daily run

Yearly rituals are a favorite part of the holiday season for many people. Especially me. I have often said I’m an adult with an inordinate attraction to routine, which is one reason I have an 849-day-long running streak. I like the steady drumbeat of repeated actions: daily rituals, yearly rituals. To me they feel like a heartbeat.

But every now and then I have to call myself up short and ask: Is this a repeated ritual because I like doing it, or do I like doing it because it’s a repeated ritual? Sometimes I catch myself believing that things are important to me and claiming that’s why I do them every year – and then having to admit that the event itself is no longer that enjoyable but I just like the idea that it’s one of our many rituals.

Yesterday was a busy day; I didn’t have time for everything I wanted to fit in. So one ritual was maintained and the other temporarily abandoned. I’m hoping I made the right choice.

The ritual that was abandoned yesterday was the holiday concert at our church. The holiday concert has been one of my favorite traditions ever since we moved back to Carlisle eight years ago. There are so many reasons I love it. The music is wonderful, especially in terms of its variety: there are traditional singalong carols, instrumental performances by children, complicated choral arrangements sung by the choir, talented soloists, and a chance for children in the audience to shake bells and play other percussives while everyone sings “Jingle Bells.” The sanctuary of the church looks beautiful at night with the lights low. Friends, neighbors and church members fill up the pews. It’s a cost-free, gift-free, even Santa-free (most years; sometimes he shows up to hand out the Jingle Bells instruments) event, which is reason enough to make it one of my favorite yearly traditions.

But last night it just wasn’t in the cards for us. After church in the morning, at which Holly and I were the advent candle lighters, we headed out to attend two different parties an hour from home. On the way back, we were delayed due to arriving in Concord Center just as Main Street was closed down for their Santa parade. When we finally got home, I went for a very short run – one mile, the bare minimum required to maintain an official running streak – and then put together some leftovers for dinner. When dinner was over and it was time to decide whether we were going out again, I asked Holly how she felt about the concert, knowing she and I were the only ones likely to have any interest. She looked ambivalent, and I found something touchingly mature in her uncertain response of “Do you want to go?” No more childishly definitive yes’s and no’s for her; she’s apparently picked up the womanly art of gauging other people’s desires before making her own decisions. To say I find this development a mixed blessing is putting it mildly.

But since her response smacked of maturity as well as sincerity, I answered in a similar vein. “I sort of really want to, but I also sort of don’t feel like dressing up and going out again,” I said. “Me too,” she said. “Maybe we should just stay home and get more caught up here,” I said. We’d been out for most of the day; I needed to clean up the kitchen, make the kids’ school lunches, do a little bit of desk work, run some laundry, clean the guinea pig’s cage: the usual Sunday evening lineup. Holly, meanwhile, had inexplicably hit on the idea of converting her book case into a miniature shopping mall layout, and I knew she was itching to work on that.

In some respects, I felt sure we were making the right decision. I tend to overplan and overschedule anyway, and we do a lot of rushing around and arriving places flustered and late. In fact, most years that’s just how we arrive at the holiday concert, since it always falls at the end of a busy Sunday. And it was appealing to think that I’d be two hours ahead of where I’d otherwise be if we skipped the concert versus if we went. After all, the lunches, guinea pig and deskwork would all still require my attention when we got home at nine o’clock.

But in another respect, I’m never sure that letting opportunities slide is the right tack to take. It’s always easier to stay home than go out, always easier to let the kids keep themselves busy than to drag them to a cultural event. But cultural events are important, and so is community. And so are holiday rituals. So I could see both sides of it. I still can, even though I appreciated having a quiet, unrushed evening and feeling like I accomplished everything I needed to in that timeframe.

The ritual I did get to was the daily run. By the time we got home from the parties it was well after dark, and Rick was out doing something else, so I couldn’t justify taking more than the time required for a mile, nor did I especially want to, on a cold dark night with new snow on the ground when I had plenty to do around the house. But I fit in my mile nonetheless, just as I’ve done for the past 849 days.

And I really can’t justify the importance of that. Even other runners have said to me about streak running, “What’s the big deal? Being able to run every single day without ever taking a day off doesn’t make you a better athlete.” True, and ten or twelve minutes of exertion isn’t enough to have any impact as far as fat-burning or other aerobic benefits. The truth is, I don’t know why I do it. I can’t explain what the point is. For the first 732 days, when Tim ran with me, that was the point: us taking on a challenge together. But I can’t use that explanation any more, now that Tim has stopped his streak and I’m running by myself.

Moreover, why does it matter more than going to a concert? It wasn’t really one or the other: we could have done both, or neither. But still. I fit in the run; I skipped the concert. I can’t explain why the run matters. Except that it’s a ritual. I don’t feel like I need a compelling reason to do it as much as a compelling reason to stop.

So the concert was an unfortunate loss; we’ll try to resume that tradition next year. Meanwhile, there are other holiday traditions to observe: the annual town tree lighting later this week, plus Tim’s school band concert, and then another yearly party next weekend. I can’t give up on getting the kids out of the house to cultural events, but at the same time it’s reasonable to listen to them when they just feel like staying home. Just as it’s reasonable, I guess, to go running for no substantial reason. Every day.

Old traditions, new routines

On the one hand, we really like traditions and rituals at this time of year, at least I do. I bring each of the kids on a special shopping excursion for school supplies, new clothes, and dinner out during the last week of vacation. In years past, the whole family always walked to school together on the first day. And we always have chicken pot pie for dinner that same night.

On the other hand, back-to-school time is a good time to start new routines. As the kids advance through the grades, school is different every year, and therefore it makes sense to reevaluate established routines as the new year begins. This year for the first time, the kids are on different schedules; Tim starts school an hour earlier than Holly does, so we couldn't all walk to school together yesterday (in fact, I was pleasantly surprised that Holly even managed to be dressed and groomed in time for me to take the annual back-to-school photo). Instead, everyone (except for Rick) biked, but at different times: first I rode up with Tim on regular bikes, then I ferried Holly up on the tag-along bike. This morning, both kids took the bus, which they've never before done in the morning, but I've decided driving to school is wasteful and I certainly can't do it for two different shifts now that they're on separate schedules, so their new choice in the morning is bus or bike. Tim couldn't bike today because he had to bring his trumpet in; Holly just didn't want to. So they both took the bus for the first time.

The new school year has brought an unanticipated change in routine for me as well. Last year I worked from home but never thought about going running during the day because I wanted to wait for Tim. Now that he's no longer running with me, I realized yesterday I could go any time -- so I went in the middle of the day, right around the time the dog started acting restless. and I did the same thing today, which was Running Streak Day 754 for me.

This proved to have myriad advantages. First of all, it tires out the dog for several hours and then she's not fidgety while I'm trying to work. Second, as the weather turns colder, it will allow me to run during the warmest part of the day. Third, it eliminates a lot of end-of-day rush for us. When I used to wait for Tim to get home before going running, we were usually squishing it in before dinner, or right after dinner when he should have been doing homework. Running with him was wonderful, but having the freedom to go at any time of day is a great benefit to not running with him.

Also there's something really novel about exploring the town by foot at that hour. I know it so much better at other times of day; I usually don't go out in the late morning. Yesterday and today, I ran just before noon, and the town had a very different feel from what it has at rush hour or just before dusk. Rather than commuters passing through town, I see locals, and outdoor laborers, and preschoolers on their way home from morning sessions. I see seniors from the elderly housing complex out for a walk. There are toddlers using the playground, and babies being pushed along in carriages.

So traditions and rituals are good, but I think I've put too much importance in them in the past, believing that making something a tradition gave it intrinsic worth. Changes in routine can be positive as well. Right now, I feel like a new schedule has infused us with fresh energy for the new year that lies ahead, waiting to be experienced one unfolding day at a time.