The word ritual may evoke images of religious ceremonies with waving incense, but right now for my family, it means turning on Disney+ on Saturday mornings.

“The Chez Shea Movie Shack is now open!” I yell to the kids as we turn on the TV downstairs, sometimes swearing when the internet doesn’t work. My husband pours popcorn into a giant metal bowl, which gets passed from person to person, back and forth. We settle into our giant beanbag chair/couch, the kids leaning into us and violating any sense of personal space. Because we’ve been watching Pixar movies, both my husband and I inevitably cry, allowing the strange emotions of the week be washed away in the intensity of how it plays our heartstrings. From Up to Onward, the Chez Shea Movie Shack has become a standard of our Saturdays.

And that’s not the only ritual we engage in. The Sunday afternoon household chores followed by tabletop roleplaying. Vacuuming and cleaning the bathroom to the tunes of Luigi’s Mansion 3, where the hero (Mario’s brother) sucks up ghosts with a vacuum cleaner. Rolling dice and listening to my husband spin tales of mysterious lands where we are the heroes, even as bunny and lizard people.

Unlike a schedule with its cold, objective placement of items, rituals provide an emotional touchpoint during these times. As the days blend into each other, it provides something new to look forward to, something that we can say we’re doing on weekends. It brings us together in activities we all enjoy, replacing our frequent weekend outings that we would be doing otherwise.

While not as rigid, we have other activities that give us the same sense of ritual. Planting the garden, with its shifting of the seasons combined with the mercurial nature of weather from day to day. Eating dinner together each night, gathering around after yelling at the kids (again) to go wash their hands before coming to the table. The rhythm of life played out in the every day, even when it’s hard to tell the days apart from each other.

I’m not going to say this is easy – none of this is easy for any of us. There are loads of people for whom this time is far more difficult than for me, far and away. But these little rituals have brought our family great comfort and certainty in this time of when everything feels uncertain.

(I originally published this on Facebook on April 26, 2020, but didn’t realize I didn’t post it to my blog page until August 2021!)