Building a Life Around Everyday Traditions

Like most families, we have traditions. Holiday rituals. Seasonal activities. Anniversaries we celebrate. Annual birthday meals (April, for example, finds us drooling over my husband’s perennial choice of birthday cake–dark chocolate with peanut butter frosting). These sporadic events are special in our home, and we cherish them. But as my oldest has grown from infant to preschooler, I’ve been learning more and more that everyday traditions can be just as special in their own way. They are the things that anchor us to home and to each other, that punctuate the day-in-and-day-out routine with little fireworks. They keep us looking forward in joy even at the end of a bad day.

I began to realize this early in 2015. We’d relocated from the D.C. area to Memphis just before Christmas, and spent the holidays without much of our usual fanfare, aside from a Christmas tree decorated with simple homemade ornaments I’d dug out of the craft bins at Michaels a couple of days before we left for Memphis.

During those initial days in the Mid-South, we did a lot of exploring. There wasn’t much else to do. It was the middle of the brown, chilly Tennessee winter–no good for playing outside. We trolled the mall and the local Barnes & Noble, but quickly tired of all the chain stores and restaurants. We wanted local. A week or so into December, we found a tiny donut shop just down the street from our neighborhood. It was humble but cute, its turquoise walls hung with cheerful paintings of brightly colored donuts. It was always a tad too warm inside from the ovens, and the coffee was weak, but the donuts were delicious and somehow comforting. We weren’t really donut people before then, but somehow, over the course of a few weekends, that’s what we became.

Eventually, I began taking my girl for a donut on Friday mornings before I dropped her off at preschool. Later, I began capturing these Friday expeditions on Instagram, collecting them all under the hashtag #donutday. Over time, Donut Day became our entry point into the weekend, something to get excited about as the work and school week progressed. On Thursday nights, I tuck her into bed and ask, “What’s tomorrow?” She inevitably pauses for a moment to think, and then bursts out, “It’s Friday! And Friday is Donut Day!”

Donut Day isn’t complicated, and it isn’t lengthy or expensive. It’s an easy interlude, a much-needed pause as we approach the closure of five busy days, a time for us to laugh and explore and enjoy some extra sugar. Donut Day has even developed its own traditions within, like the fact that we now get an apple fritter to share in addition to our own individual donuts, because who doesn’t love a good apple fritter? I order coffee, L chooses orange juice or chocolate milk. For a year or so, she stuck exclusively to sprinkle-laden yeast donuts, and I–creature of habit that I am–ordered a glazed old-fashioned. Lately, we’ve both branched out. She enjoys choosing something new almost every Friday now (perhaps the reliability of the apple fritter has helped her to be more comfortably adventurous), and her excitement over new tastes and textures has inspired me to do the same.

It’s become a precious tradition, our Donut Day. It’s added to our foundation as a family, as a mother-and-daughter pair. It’s an anchor of sorts, which binds us together in a simple joy. Now we schlep the baby along with us in her car seat, and L chitters away at her like an excited squirrel, scattering powdered sugar or sprinkles as she does, saying “Soon, you’ll be able to have donuts with me and Mom! I can’t wait until you’re big enough.” I’m certain that as long as there’s a donut shop nearby, Donut Day will continue to be a part of our family life.

We have other “everyday traditions” too, like dinner out on Friday nights–something we started in order to give me a break from cooking. We usually follow it up with a stop at Barnes & Noble, Target, or Costco, killing off a weekend errand to ease the volume of stuff that has to get done on Saturday, because such places are still great fun for L. We call this “Family Night,” and we usually stop for ice cream on the way home. As the girls get older, I envision Family Night turning into pizza-and-a-movie or takeout and board games.

We’re working on new everyday traditions as well, like a weekly Taco Night, and Saturday morning pancakes followed by a walk to the park. It probably sounds like all of these little traditions are built around food, and that’s somewhat true. It’s easy to build rhythms around meals (especially those everyone loves), which are natural pauses in the life of a family. But we’re also establishing everyday traditions that don’t center around meals, like reading aloud before bedtime and allowing everyone to snuggle in Mom and Dad’s bed early on Saturday mornings, before pancakes.

The key to establishing everyday traditions is simple: find little things you love, things that bring you collective joy, and repeat them daily, or weekly, or monthly–whatever makes sense. Be present in those things, and watch what blooms between you.