Atomic Rituals

Or, How to Feel More Human

April 2020 in New York City was one of the bleakest months I’ve experienced. The city, at the epicenter of the pandemic, had a constant soundtrack of sirens, there were refrigerated trucks stationed outside over-burdened hospitals, and somehow everyday the sky was a flat grey.

In March I’d closed Stories, the children’s bookshop I created with my husband, and with soon-to-be former staff was trying to throw up an e-commerce website so we could sell through our inventory while shuttered. A few days a week I drove through desolate streets from our home in Clinton Hill to Bergen Street to pick up books to ship out to families outside the city.

Stories became a webshop in the early days of the pandemic

A foreboding sense of you’re-on-your-own gave life a surreal feel—that of living inside an aquarium. The outside world was watching, while we were trapped inside our own infected ecosystem. But we had watched and been moved by Italians and their daily serenades from balconies and patios as Covid tore through their cities first. We cried at the videos, and were buoyed by them. We’re still here, the videos sang out. We’re not just alive, but living.

So in April 2020 in Brooklyn, our own ritual began to emerge. Every evening at 7pm, people inside their homes clattered pots and pans and rang out whatever noisemakers they had on hand, a jolly ruckus of a tribute of thanks to our essential workers caring for the ailing.

This ritual lasted months—maybe even a full year? Because it was Brooklyn, we lived close enough to hear our neighbors’ noise and feel reassured: They’re ok. The noise was the ritual, the thanks was the ritual, and the check-in was the ritual—we’re still here. We’re living.

We’d usually be at the dinner table when the noise rang out —Oh, it’s 7pm, grab a pot! Our kids were 6 and 10 at the time, 1st and 4th grades and riding the bike to school and trips to the playground and play dates and soccer practice and all the details of normal life had just come to a staggering halt, their sedentary days indoors now sprinkled with haphazard zooms and desperately zany assignments. To be asked to bang and carry on was a nightly release for all of us. Some nights, we jammed.

Around this time, we began lighting the candles at dinner every night, and announcing, “We’re having a dinner party!” In the past, candles were lit for special occasions—guests over for a meal or a birthday to celebrate. But now was clearly the moment to find ways to turn ordinary events into special occasions, and rituals are one of the most powerful ways to do this.