Family rituals

[pegkerr]

Tell me about one family ritual that you do that means a lot to you. I'm asking about everyday rituals, not holiday or special occasion ones. It could be from the family you grew up with or the family you're in now--or even somebody else's family, if it is a ritual you like and admire. I'm looking for a list of the little things that families do that build together memories, cohesion, trust and love.

When Rob and the girls and I eat dinner together, we go around the table and each person says one good thing that happened that day.

Whenever I'm driving with the girls and we see crows, we recite the rhyme:

One crow sorrow
Two crows joy
Three crows a girl
Four crows a boy
Five crows silver
Six crows gold
Seven crows a secret never to be told

And you?

Comments

[callunav.livejournal.com]

One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for a girl, and
Four for a boy
Five for silver
Six for gold
Seven for a secret that's never been told
Eight for sunshine
Nine for rain
Ten to be lost and found again.
Eleven bring fortune to all that them see
Twelve for a journey down to the sea.

Originally, it was a magpie counting rhyme, from England. In the US, crows are far more common in most areas than magpies, and the rhyme is almost always about crows.

Another one starts

One for sorrow
Two for mirth
Three for a wedding, and
Four for a birth..."

I don't remember that one by heart. I'll look it up, sometime soon.

As for rituals, there's the going-to-bed hug in my current household, which is pretty much never missed. Another common one is for Julian and me to play cards - usually gin rummy - in restaurants. This is most often when we go out for breakfast, which we do often, and play while we eat, but we'll also do it in other restaurants when we're waiting for food. It amuses the wait staff, generally. And it amuses us a lot. We're incredibly rude to each other as part of the playing process - in complete fondness and having fun with our quite real competetive urges we curse each other out, lie, insult each other, propose all sorts of evil tactics we could employ, and all the while actually allow all sorts of do-overs and point out any time the other person discards a card they could make use of. We laugh our heads off.

I win most, of course.

:)

And we read aloud to each other. I, in particular, jealously guard books I love which she hasn't read yet and refuse to let her read them on her own because I have dibs on reading them to her. (She's far more generous.) She'll asks me about books and I'll grudgingly consider and tell her, "You can read any of the recent books by McKillip, the ones that were published in the small hard-backs. Not the early ones, though, except maybe Moonflash." Right now we're half-way through the Riddle-Master of Hed trilogy, and most of the way through Helene Hannf's Duchess of Bloomsbury Street. She's been reading me Roller Skates.

And sometimes we go for long drives and purposely get lost in some beautiful piece of countriside. Julian drives, invariably, when we do this, and sometimes she asks me, "Do you mind if I go south on XX this time?" and I give her this gently incredulous look and say, in answer, "I'm with you." I don't care where we go. It will be pretty, and we'll be together, and if it's dark by the time we're driving back, I'll have a book with me that I can haul out and read to her as we go.

As I demonstrate part of her point...

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

You do not win most. Hmph.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Oooh, it is so cool to get the addition to the rhyme after seven! Thank you!