I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

One of the ways we care for ourselves and for others is through rituals.

Every weekday morning, I stand at the kitchen counter and pack my son's lunch while also making

myself a pour over coffee. In those few minutes, first thing, I'm doing

something to care for him and something to care for myself. It's nearly second nature at this

point. I think I could do it half asleep, and I probably have.

No matter how groggy I am, no matter how much sleep I did or didn't get, my hands find

the lunchbox, the reusable sandwich bags, the little ice pack.

My hands find the coffee beans and the filters and the mug.

Today's poem reminded me of one of my father's rituals when I was young, one of his ways of

taking care of himself. He'd go to the driving range at the local golf center, some evenings after dinner, to, in his words, hit a bucket of balls.

When we return to our rituals, we bring whoever we are, that unique day, and we link it with whoever we've been before.

In our rituals, we can find our own wholeness in a fractured world.

After Dinner by James Chiano.

Earlier at dinner, our voices were missing,

and only the sound of the knife could be heard scraping against the plate

after cutting through the chop.

And that sound made the sweat from my brother's forehead drip to his plate.

The bucket we brought after dinner to the middle school full of golf balls

was once a bucket full of paint,

and so some of the balls were flecked with red dots like drops of blood.

We lined up, the four of us, my brothers, my father, and I,

...