Ritual.
Each morning, our 9yo and I have the same little ritual. He gets up, I push his breakfast over to him, we eat together, and then we have reading time.
He tells Alexa to set a timer for 30 minutes and we each take our favorite spots in the living room.
He’s never been a voracious reader. In fact, he’d rather study all of his – and his brother’s – yearbooks. Yes, all of them. He can tell you which kids came from what schools and fed into this or that class. He’s a little freaky.
I, on the other hand, could read all day. Right now, I’m trying to figure out myself (and everyone else in my family…).
It’s going to be a very long journey, I’m afraid.
This morning though, as we sat in our comfortable quiet together, I was flooded with gratefulness.
I realized a little bit more about him. About how we can easily sit in quiet together and it’s never awkward. Our quiet never silently cries to be all filled up with extra noise.
Don’t get me wrong. He’s fidgety. And he has A LOT of words to share throughout the day. This guy is our meal traveler, know what I mean? We have to tell him to sit down multiple times while he’s eating or else he’d take nine hours to finish due to acting out every part of every word coming out of him. Some days, it’s exhausting.
But then we have this. It sets our day right.
Oh, who am I kidding? Maybe I’m being extra selfish, since I can’t make sense of much of anything before my first cup of coffee is down the hatch. This just gives me a hot minute before I have to start the day, too. But it feels good to have a favorite peanut there in that space and we can do it together.
So here’s to a little quiet in your day and a minute or two to simply breathe. Don’t forget the coffee.
