“I love the ceremony of a sandwich”

…is a quote from my best friend. I love her and it so gull danged much, I made a graphic in Canva and had two t-shirts printed, one for each of us. 

Embedded is a message of ritual. It’s carving out a slice of your thought pie just to focus on this one moment or series of moments. To feel the squish of the bread when you grab the bag, the precision of each slice of tomato and the mental math of calculating how much to space the knife. It’s the smearing and smudging around of the condiments. The stacking of the ingredients and the cutting (diagonal or straight across) of the final product. It’s the plate you choose and the way you arrange the sandwich parts, whether you add a pickle or what you lay beside it. And maybe the tiny cloth napkin or folded paper towel you tuck beside the plate, before you sit and enjoy your creation, bite after bite, your teeth marks left in the bread. You are in that moment, fully immersed, that sandwich and you.

I love ceremony. I love ritual.

I didn’t know at the time, in the way fish don’t recognize water, how much ritual surrounded me growing up. Of the rich, nourishing variety. I didn’t know at the time that while I was being raised by devout Catholic grandmas and a gaggle of aunts that a lot of the movements, motions, customs we danced through were more rooted in folk Catholicism and Italian and French folk magic than anything being sanctioned by the Vatican (albeit wholly co-opted and repackaged by them).

It was animism (Any bowls of water left out should be used to bless oneself before dumping down the sink), and ancestral worship (Keep the funeral remembrance cards of your loved ones in your wallet so you carry protection with you), and healing (Drink apple cider vinegar for heartburn and break-ups). I just knew it as the ways we existed.

In the weeks after my maternal grandma died, the one who raised me, I started writing down as many of these rituals or superstitions or customs that I could remember. I added things from my aunts and other grandma as time went on. And when both my grandmas and that gaggle of aunts all died, this bulleted list became a sacred text and reminder of the rich culture I was afforded, especially for growing up white. 

Rituals are roots. They are a network connecting us to our physicality, to each other, back to ourselves. Rituals teach us, heal us, stabilize us. When I was sick a few years back, I swam every day around 2pm or so. Every day I knew if I did nothing else, I would peel myself out of bed, grab my gym bag, drive down to the YWCA, and swim ten laps before soaking in the hot tub, even with anxiety vibrating through my body, my appetite gone, and my heart racing. But everyday I did it because the ritual pulled me along. And bit-by-bit, I found my way back to myself. Rituals are roots, rituals are vessels. 

I gathered folks a few weeks ago to make zines (ritual!) and put some of the wisdom from my grandmas and the gaggle into a tiny paper artifact. I know my existence is bound up in cultivating these practices now more than ever. I know I need roots to anchor me and interconnect, and I need vessels to nourish me. I know we all do. The book is a reminder of what gets passed down, what helps us survive. A reminder to sit around a table and work with our hands together, grab the images and words that speak to you, and feel the energy of each other’s voices. A reminder to carve out more slices of thought pie for these life-saving ceremonies.