Michael: Rituals

The cows casually
Opened the gate and began
To walk down the road.


Thursday, May 28, 2015

Kimme and I have, half by accident, established two rituals here that I’m sure we’ll take with us wherever we end up.

One is going for a short walk together every morning. It started as just a way to orient ourselves to our new neighborhood. We stopped for a while in the hustle and bustle of trying to get other things done, like catching early buses to David or Cerro Punta, but we’ve decided it’s important to begin our day together with an activity that we enjoy and that allows us to take a few quite moments together before we rush off, or separate to embrace our differing passions.

We end our day together with an equally short activity; 15 minutes of chess while we have dessert after dinner. My mom found a derivation of chess at a garage sale called No Stress Chess that we brought with us. Now that Kimme is enjoying a short sabbatical from work, she has the time to pick up the game. She took to it quickly and the No Stress method of using cards to add an element of luck to the game was a great way to equal out our differing abilities. She’s even beat me a couple of times.

Without the cards we found our games were sometimes playing a little long, so we decided to end each night with just 15 minutes of play. 15 minutes being what my timer is set at to remind me to drink when I run or ride. Now we’ve come to associate that 15 minutes of chess with dessert. For me that’s half a Ritter bar, while Kimme’s been mixing it up; lately it’s been garbanzo beans.

We do have other games back in the states that I’m sure we’ll throw into the mix. But however we end up battling after dinner, chocolate and play are  pretty enjoyable ways to reinforce the habit of our spending at least 15 minutes sitting across from each other before our day ends.

Without formally setting out to establish these rituals before we came here, we both feel they’re important and intend to continue them wherever we go and for as long as we live.