Today’s post only obliquely relates to education. If I made a graphic organizer, I’d have to make something like the above. Oh, wait! I did make a graphic organizer. It occurs to me that some comforting home, school and other rituals would undoubtedly overlap alien abduction rituals if the abductee were conscious, but I’m sure readers are clear on the concept.

We have our rituals. Maybe the family goes to Superdawg on Friday. Maybe they stop at their favorite ice cream parlor after baseball games. Maybe they go to the local ice rink on Sunday afternoon. Rituals often involve family and friends. They frequently include food, usually not the healthiest food. The soccer team hardly ever goes out for tofu. The vegetables in that Thanksgiving dinner are  probably swimming in fried onions and mushroom soup, unless they are covered in butter, brown sugar and marshmallows. Our rituals are peculiar to our families, friend groups and classrooms.

I thought I’d write about rituals today because rituals are struggling to hold their place nowadays. We are too busy. Oops! We were going to go out for ice cream, but we had to wait on hold for two hours to talk to the IRS. Oops! We were going to go ice skating, but we had to go to Michaels to get science project materials instead. Oops! We were going to go to Superdawg, but mom has a late meeting at work, dad’s still in Chicago, and the babysitter can’t drive.

I thought I’d take a few minutes today to put rituals on the radar. My girls are grown now. They remember Homers Ice Cream after piano lessons. They remember almond steamers after trips to the bookstore. (Starbucks should bring back that almond syrup.) They remember lunch after Saturday Enrichment classes at Northwestern.

Our rituals are our own. But they form the backbone of later memories and the glue that holds family and friends together. I remember birthday dinners with fried prawns and fizzy Coca Colas. I remember trips to the swimming hole near my grandma’s house. Sometimes the asphalt on the road to that swimming hole was so hot we’d be hopping on the sunny patches of the road. I remember the three-scoop ice cream cones we always picked up on the way to grandma’s, a short stop to break up the long drive. Sometimes we ate them in the car, licking as fast as we could on summer days so the ice cream did not drip on the car. My parents were not exactly neat freaks.

I remember the weekly spelling test with my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Stocker. If you got all the answers right, he gave you an ice cream bar. I remember that former-military, nut case of a fourth grade teacher who whacked your chair with a pointer if you were not sitting up straight. I remember weekly math games in Mr. Marvin’s class.

I remember recess. Who doesn’t? Four-square and swings, climbing and playing baseball or hopscotch — recess was sometimes the best part of the day. Some kids may not remember recess in the future — not the way I do. I subbed for an all-day kindergarten class this week (Fingerprints finally came through!) and discovered the kids’ recess was attached to their lunch, part of the forty-five minute break in the middle of the day. Except for that break, we were working on some version of academics all day long. Oh, they got to color and make valentines for soldiers, but we were working on letters, days, seasons, weather and numbers throughout the day. We had a fun discussion about whether or not the mouse in Mercer Mayer books was a main character. He never speaks, but he is on every page. I’ll post a kindergarten curriculum in the next day or two. Those curricula are becoming formidable in my view.

But returning to my topic, readers, I want to suggest we all pay attention to our rituals. What are they? Let’s define those rituals. I’d ask my kids for their opinions. Which rituals are their favorites?

In home and in the classroom, we should try not to slight our rituals, try to avoid preempting or replacing them too often. Rituals provide security to kids. They provide a sense of order. They also build lifetime memories. Long after the exact details of trips to grandma’s house are gone, pictures of huckleberry ribbons in vanilla ice cream remain.