Rituals

They used to be my SSBs (Secret Single Behaviors)… the types of things I liked to do on my own at leisure. These included reading magazines on a weekend morning in a wooden chair with my feet propped up on a neighboring chair over a bottomless cup of coffee. I am sure you have your own SSBs and like me, you don’t like to share them with anyone.

Over the last five years, my SSBs slowly became OUR SSBs and thus family rituals and we’ve gladly welcomed little Sophia into our secret (not so anymore) life. The latest ritual is cartoon time on weekend mornings. Sophia takes a bottle at 5-6am and if we’re very lucky, snoozes for an hour or so. Since we have nowhere to run on the weekends, we let her snooze with us in bed and when she wakes up, we turn on the PBS and she watches it for 15-30 minutes. Precious time for hubby and I to catch up on the news (via phone, iPad, whatever) and ease into the weekend.

You are probably thinking that I must have given up all matter of me-time, but not so. My last hold-out SSB is to take one day a year for me. I usually make that in early April, on my birthday when the weather is still crisp but the air smells of the coming spring. I wake up early in the morning, get ready and head out as if I were heading to work. Instead of heading into the office, I head into the city, settle into a coffee shop in a tony part of town and linger over a coffee or two watching people run to and fro. A trip to a museum and perhaps a lunch complete the SSB. I return home, refreshed, rejuvenated and ready for a more social environment.

Now that we’ve established that everyone has SSBs, what are yours?