Tending my garden is a ritual of connecting to the earth. Saying thanks before eating is a ritual of gratitude and honoring nature and my good fortune. My partner and I listen silently listen to each other speak, honoring each other's feelings. Lisa Weiner is a graduate student in nursing, a writer, and a waitress. Approaching sleep or entering wakefulness, the unwavering ritual with my partner is delicious touch, through snuggling, caressing, light pulling of the hair, and falling asleep entwined.
Indian girls are accustomed to close contact, from their mother, relatives, and same-sex friends.
There has been no problem adapting the old ritual with my husband and investing it with sensual adult play, invoking the sense of smell and taste and touch that weren't as heightened, shall we say, in childhood. The ritual is a very grounding event, rejuvenating and loving. The goal is to open the channel of self-knowledge as the key to understanding the world. This grounds me in my role as writer, activist, educator, and sets me in the mood to write. I experience this ritual as an adaptation of an Indian mode of partial merger with the people in one's life, with whom one can play and delight in full-spirited exchange.