Tea and Kate

We were in Vermont over the holidays and Reid and Liam wanted to stay up late and celebrate. Liam especially was looking for intensity and ritual. It was earnest and sweet. They had never stayed up to celebrate the new year before. We’ve always gone to bed. But they stay up past midnight with friends multiple times a year. So I happily obliged.

The family went to sleep at 10. So we started with a free-for-all, everyone for themselves game of laser tag in the mists of the stream, which roamed through the glade, across the bridge, up the hill and back down. It was tense and excellent. We then decided to cross the stream on a fallen log. In the dark. With no flashlights. Liam suggested it was a rite of passage. I agree. It was.

We returned inside and played a good game of Cosmic Frog, and then got in the hot tub to spent the final few minutes of the year, and the start of the next. I brought some snacks and we counted down the last 20 seconds together. We then reflected on the year past, it’s ups and downs, and chose something to pursue ourselves this next year.

It was the most fund I’ve had with ritual in quite some time. Indeed the most ritual I have had in a while too. So it is a pure delight to be doing such things with my kids, because they asked!

May this next orbit around the sun be a good one, for you, for us, for our little planet and all the life that depends on it!