FAMILY MATTERS
Rituals can help deepen family bonds
By Michael DeMattos
Maintaining meaningful rituals is one of the most difficult tasks for the modern family.
My childhood was filled with holidays and holy days, celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years and marking births, graduations, marriages and deaths, to name but a few. These were times for family to gather and glasses to be raised, even during those times of greatest sorrow. Somehow, over the course of years, the gatherings grew less frequent and the celebrations less vibrant.
I suppose some of the loss can be attributed to my own maturity. Maybe the gatherings were not that much fun and did not occur so frequently after all. Maybe they were a product of a youthful imagination that filled in the familial blanks like a paint-by-numbers seascape. Maybe I just grew up, but I don't think so.
It is also possible that families change at the same speed of society. Perhaps rituals simply fell out of vogue. Perhaps each time we turned on the TV, we turned off our need to gather or at least our desire. It could have been stress. Rituals can be challenging.
Whatever the reason, I saw our family rituals go the way of the dodo. Now family gatherings were left to first birthdays, weddings and funerals. We had lost the more intimate rituals and in turn lost a part of ourselves. This was not just true for my family; it was also true for the families around me.
A few years into my profession as a social worker and therapist, I noticed that many of those with whom I worked also experienced the loss of forgotten rituals. It was not my imagination after all. Of course, families have changed over the years and despite what one thinks about this — good or bad — so must our rituals. It is a delicate balance struck between the roots of our past the sprouts of our future.
Like families, rituals should be living.
And so it was that August found my wife and I celebrating an anniversary. We lit some candles, and played some soft music. My wife reached for the top shelf and brought down the "anniversary bowl." It was filled with memories from each of the previous 13 years.
Each article in the bowl symbolized and commemorated the year that was. She slowly pulled out each article one by one. Some of the items conjured joyous memories, like the pregnancy-test tab with the little plus sign still showing in red. Others brought a sense of relief, like the photo of our new home sent to us by our agent. Still others stirred unspoken fears and unbridled hope, like the I.D. bracelet from an emergency hospital admission and a near death.
After a feeling-rich walk down memory lane, we dropped in the latest addition to the anniversary bowl and then shared our hopes and dreams for the year yet to be. Caught between what was and what will be, a part of each of us was recovered; a part lost to the day-to-day realities of living in a complex world brought back by a simple family ritual.
Michael C.Demattos has a master's degree in social work. He is a family therapist, educator, trainer, storyteller and angler, and lives in Kane'ohe with his wife and 5-year-old daughter. Write to him at : Family Matters, Island Life, The Advertiser, P.O. Box 3110, Honolulu, HI 96802; e-mail ohana@honoluluadvertiser.com or fax 525-8055.
