Sunday, December 10, 2006

Shared ritual binds us

I dreamed of my mother last night and trying to feed her, nourish her. There was plenty of food,and somehow we ended up with two turkeys in the oven. She was very fragile, and didn't quite understand what I was trying to do. I'm not really sure, either, except that was going to be a lot of turkey.

I miss her.

I miss being in Springfield for Christmas, going shopping there for last minute gifts, waiting for everyone to get there, bringing my mother a Clementine and some Jule Kage that I'd brought from home.

I miss the rituals we'd established there, and those we'd carried over from another life.

We're creating new ones, I understand that, but creating anything is hard work, especially in the beginning. Last year, the first without Mother, was hard, but in some ways this one feels harder, a little sadder.

Author Robert Fulghum wrote about ritual, especially family rituals. As we acknowledge the events, the losses, the beginnings in our life through ritual, we also honor the spiritual in them and in ourselves.

When we have wild rice and bacon and Jule Kage for breakfast on Christmas morning, we are continuing a ritual from my childhood when we'd visit Duluth. Many of my cousins also fix wild rice. It connects us in honoring those traditions and our grandparents and parents.

There are cookies and candies that I always bake at Christmas, from recipes my mother printed by hand into a notebook of her favorites. She is there in the kitchen with me when I stir flour, butter, and pecans together for Daddy's (and Tony's) favorite, Pecan Shorts.

We all have rituals around family, especially at holidays -- things we always eat, stories we always tell, songs we always sing, fights we always have.... Ritual connects us, binds us together. It honors our dead and celebrates our living.

Our family won't be here this year -- but I know what my brother and my daughter will be eating for breakfast on Christmas. I know there will be certain cookies in their homes, and that they'll hang stockings knitted by my mother nearly 30 years ago. And in those shared rituals, we will be together.

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