My daughter has invited the same friends to her birthday party ever since she started having birthday parties. Today was her sixth one of those.

The “invitees”, who usually show up early up for the preparations and stay late for the clean-up given that none of them consider themselves “guests” and all consider themselves “part of” (wonderful that!), are so used to the games that they know the order of them, they tell me what is next, they remember who went first last year. And I continue to wonder and be amazed and am learning to understand the importance of “ritual”.

My daughter’s best friend has been her best friend since the second day of “pre-school for 4-year olds”. And my daughter’s other friends have been her friends through the history of their time at elementary school. This latter group is the “daycare plus morals studies” group in her year, the “other” in this majority French Canadian/Quebecois, catholic environment. (There are about 20 children in moral studies across all grades of this school of about 300.) By virtue of the fact that “other” is easier to deal with (schedule, respond to) when grouped together, they have been in the same class since kindergarten. This plus their common daycare experience means that they have spent many hours of many days together, in study, at play and, yes, in each others’ homes and at each others’ birthday parties.

These children love to hate musical chairs. They bring extra t-shirts for the apple bobbing. They tell me of the dreams they had over the last week about grabbing “their” apple in record time. And my son and his friends always seem to show up (with extra t-shirts provided by my son) at just around this same game time.

Yes. Rituals are important and come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Ultimately they are pleasures and stresses that we know and can count on and can work to do better with. Markers of constance in a world of continual flux. Friendships.

With my adult and parental point of view into and around this, I will admit that these rituals and traditions and markers of time render me rather melancholic. I know just how much change is floating around “out there”. I know that some things that are assumed to continue and to remain “as is” won’t. And/but I am blown away by the growing maturity of this gang themselves, the ways of being I learn of and have the pleasure of being party to with them.

Alex, one of the group, is moving away from here this summer. We spent quite a time talking about how everyone felt about this as this thread of experience, of life, of conversation continued to weave its way through the afternoon. The degree of consciousness of the meaning of this, the richness of articulation of all of the paradoxical feelings and sentiments associated with this, the honesty and confidence in laying it all out there makes me again realize how amazing these children indeed are.

So/and/but… Alex left with the apple bobbing medal, Flo with the one for zapping the little plastic balls into the garbage can, Marie with one for something that was deemed worthy of honouring. And I’m not really sure who ended up winning the musical chair games given that by “the end” there are so many arguments going about whose rear was too poised to sit, who shoved, who didn’t walk, whose cheek really did land first that I have learned to simply pick a song I like, concentrate on listening to the bits of it that play and wait for this particular chaos to be over. The party “from 1 to 5” started at noon and my daughter ended up leaving with her best friend at about 6:30 to eat supper with her at her house. And eventually I ended up delivering pyjamas, toothbrush, pillow and sleeping bag to her so that she could sleep in her friend’s family’s tent trailer (parked in the driveway and open for airing) for the night.

Rituals while going with the flow. Rituals to let you go with the flow. Yes.