Every family has them. The small but special little exchanges. The inside jokes. The song-and-dance before bed. The impressions. The video they ask you to play for them fifty times in a row. The way you pretend they’re better than you at hide-and-seek, stronger than you at wrestling. The way you steal a little food off their plate…or help them steal cookies from the pantry.
These are the best. They get better as they go, too, as they evolve with the rhythm of life, worming their way into the nostalgia and tradition of family.
And yet, as long as some of them can last, they are also fleeting and ephemeral.
The last time we talked about these rituals, we talked about a reminiscence from Irene Vallejo in her amazing book Papyrus (which you can get from The Painted Porch here). Every night as a little girl, her mother, as she read to her, would suddenly stop right when the story was really picking up, pretending she couldn’t go on reading. “Then I had to beg in despair,” Vallejo recalls with affection, “No don’t stop here, keep going just a bit longer. I’m tired. Please, please. We would act out this little scene, and then she would continue.”
We all have these little exchanges with our kids, especially if we have little kids. Which is why the next part from Vallejo hits so hard. “Of course I knew she was tricking me,” she writes, “but I was always afraid. In the end, one of the interruptions would be real, and she would close the book, give me a kiss, leave me alone in the dark, and give herself over to that secret life lived by grown ups at night.”
In the end, one of those interruptions was not just real but the last time. There is a last time they will sneak into our bed. There is a last time they will let us paint their nails. There is a last time they will ask us to do that stupid voice. The last time they want to put on that costume. The last time they want to have a spontaneous dance party or toss the football around with us.
In the end, there is always an end. It will sneak up on us. It will be here too soon.
So let’s play as much as we can while we can. Let’s run the joke and the silliness into the ground…before someone does it for us.
P.S. We created our Tempus Fugit medallion (“time flies” in Latin) as a beautiful reminder to slow down and savor these seemingly mundane routines that will one day become our most treasured memories. Carry it around in your pocket or display it on your nightstand as a daily prompt to be present for all the bedtime rituals and silly games your children want to play.
