Rituals

I'm just back from family vacation, so I'm feeling all the things: gratitude, exhaustion, both increased adoration for and irritation with those I love the most, whiplash contemplating the passage of time.

It all began with a bang - my son accusing my husband of "putting cyanide" in his food. But it went uphill from there. Mostly.

Our summer ritual is a visit to Truro, Massachusetts. The landscape is always the same. Blue water, gray sky, green scrub pines. The roads are sandy, the driveways sea-shelled.

This sameness, this return, allows me to see things:

How my kids have grown. How the circumstances of our lives have shifted. What I wish for. What is.

Do you have a ritual? A place you go, a thing you do. A return that lets you see something about yourself or your kids or your life?