A strange thing happened last week: we missed Mass on Sunday morning and suddenly the whole day just completely fell apart. Lunch time came around and I hadn’t prepared anything – no chicken, no roast potatoes, no nothing – and we ended up having a pizza out of the freezer. Then after lunch, when we would usually sit down to read our newspapers, there were none because I would normally buy them on my way home from Mass. The rest of the day passed in an unstructured blur, as the children squabbled and every fibre of my being went into not completely losing it with them.
The whole fiasco made me think about ritual and routine, and about my Dad who was the absolute master of both – which I think might have had something to do with why he lived as long as he did (he died just before his 94th birthday). In the last decade of his life his knees gave up on him so he didn’t get out very much, but somehow he was always quite happy pottering around the flat. My theory was that this was to do with the fact that he always had something that he relished to look forward to throughout the day.
He told me once that the last thing he thought about before going to sleep every night was his breakfast the following morning, and so he always fell asleep feeling happy and excited. He always rose early, put the kettle on and went to get his Telegraph from the post box, before sitting down to a bowl of porridge with salt (he was Scottish) and cup of Nescafe with milk and three sugars. Not the most exciting of breakfasts, but enough to keep him smiling as he fell asleep at night.
Mid-morning he would do his exercises before having what he called “real coffee”, which he would say with a strong emphasis on the “real”, which he would make on the hob with a percolator using coffee which he would grind himself once a week. He would then make soup from scratch – green pea, tom- atoes or mushroom – or have a kipper or two fried eggs, before going to bed for an hour. The afternoon would then be spent reading – the Bible, Lord of the Rings and anything by Dickens, Trollope and PG Wodehouse were favourites – before cooking supper for whomever was at home, be that just my mother and me or a party of eight guests.
The routine which used to amuse me the most was the whisky one. Unless it was a special occasion, he never had his first drink before 8.45pm – he said putting it off meant he never had more than two in an evening and so never had to worry about having a hang-over. It was so funny to watch him look at his watch every 10 minutes from about 8pm. He would then start stirring at about 8.30, before edging his way towards the kitchen where he would painstakingly prepare the whisky – his favourite was Glenlivet, always with ice and soda – before putting it on the side table next to his armchair. He would never take his first sip before 8.45. The pleasure he got from this particular event of the day was palpable.
At the age they are – three and four – I don’t know what my children can possibly enjoy about Mass since they don’t understand what is going on and have to sit quietly against their will, so the routine element of it must play a significant part in what they find comforting about it. That Sunday we missed it, I was violently admonished by both of them. “So does that mean we are not going to get to wear our church dresses this week, Mummy?” the four-year-old asked incredulously, her eyes boring into me. The three-year-old then burst into tears. “I wanna wear my church dress!! Naughty Mummy,” she said before storming off.
I have always prided myself on not being a creature of habit. I will happily eat something different for breakfast every morning, or indeed nothing at all, forgo a drink in the evening if there isn’t any wine in the house, and I’ll sit in any chair that’s free in the sitting room. Before having children, I was an even more inconsistent Mass-goer. I used to tease my Dad for his ritualistic ways, and indeed now I tease my husband for his (maybe it’s a male thing?) – how he always has to sit in the same armchair and goes a bit mad if he can’t have a cup of tea at 4 o’clock, or fried eggs, bacon and tomatoes for breakfast at the weekends – but there is really nothing silly about it.
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