Get up, shower, work, eat dinner, sleep.

Okay, take a break.

This week on Selected Shorts, daily rituals and how these habits make us who we are.

Join three writers, three actors and me, Meg Wallitzer, as we explore rituals that define us.

I'm your host, Meg Wallitzer, and you're listening to Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time.

Shorts has a long history, and I'm so happy that as host I get to be a part of it in a new way.

This show has been my companion for years, and I'm so glad to be with you every week.

We often do things out of habit. Sometimes it can help us organize our time, or even make us feel in control.

But ongoing repetitive behaviors can also spiral into something more than just a habit. They can actually take over our lives.

On this Selected Shorts, three provocative works are on repeat.

In one, a grooming ritual consumes a woman's life, in the second time collapses, and in the third, a mother and son rehearse old patterns and find new ones.

Our first story is a favorite from our archives. Oh, she got a head full hair by Enzozaki Shange.

The late playwright, poet and novelist is best known for her iconic work for colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enough.

She was a founding poet of the New Yorkin Poets Cafe, and active in the Black Arts movement.

In this short, dreamy piece, a woman's grooming ritual becomes a compulsion, and by the end of the story, she has both lost and found herself.

Reading, oh, she got a head full of hair, is Tamara Tune, an actor known for roles on such television shows as Law and Order SVU and Bluebloods, and films including Wall Street and the Caveman's Valentine.

She's also a Tony Award-winning producer.

Oh, she got a head full of hair.

For months, Allegra simply brushed her hair.

She had a dream that she had such a head full of hair that she couldn't lift her head off the pillows.

Yeah, she had light, blue, satin pillows, like the sky in Manhattan for the four days a year that the wind blows.

Blue, like the horizon in Curacao, so it's hard to tell the bottom of the sea from the blue reaching to the sun.

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