Today is . . .

The lovely Madelyn Simone, our one and only granddaughter, is quite the singer these days. She likes to sing in the car, while jumping on the bed (with the three little monkeys), and at random times during the day and night. Current favorites are Ring Around the Rosie, The Ants Go Marching One by One, and Old McDonald.

Children’s songs, shared from generation to generation, are excellent tools to teach rhyming, rhythm, and remembering. Particularly challenging are songs like Old McDonald that add a phrase each time you sing them. I like “There's a fleck on the speck on the tail on the frog on the bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea.” That’s quite the mouthful, and I struggle to remember all of them by the end.  Another pattern song favorite is Today is Monday. In that song, on Monday we eat string beans, Tuesday, spaghetti, Wednesday, soup, Thursday, roast beef, Friday, fish, Saturday, chicken, and Sunday, ice cream.

My family didn’t eat according to that pattern except for the fish – even though we weren’t Catholic, if fish was on the supper menu, we knew it was Friday. And the ice cream? It was generally reserved as a treat when we were children, but as my parents grew older, this became a staple for them at the end of the day, a dish of ice cream as they watched the 11 o’clock news together.  

Even though we didn’t follow the pattern of food choices that the song suggested, its sing-song verse served as a reminder of the rhythm to life that I learned early on, the rhythm of the day and of the week that provided a structure, with some modification, that has served me well over the course of my lifetime.  

It is a rhythm we’re now teaching Madelyn.  We teach her to wash her hands, to brush her teeth, and to say please and thank you. As a child, it was a bath before bed (but not every night) that in adolescence changed into a shower at the beginning of the day. My shower routine goes one step further these days - I wash my hair before I wash my body. If I don’t do that, I end up washing my hair twice because I can’t remember if I already did it.  

What else becomes part of the pattern of our day? My friend Marilyn took on a daily challenge as a young college student: no Bible, no breakfast. For many people of faith, a daily rhythm includes a period of devotional reading and prayer, whether before or after breakfast, or at the end of the day.

Even as a child, my daily routine wasn’t complete without reading the newspaper. One family legend tells of my second grade teacher’s concern/amusement regarding my newspaper reading – apparently I shared my fondness for Ann Landers with some of my classmates, uncensored? While the Buffalo Evening News didn’t come until afternoon, the morning paper has been my companion for more than thirty years, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Canton Repository, and now the Ashland Times-Gazette.

Even in our newspaper reading, we have our routines. Some start with the comics, while others peruse the sports pages before turning to the opinions on the editorial pages. I have one elderly friend who checks the obituary page first, wanting to be sure his name isn’t there yet.

In these post-Thanksgiving, post-Sandy days, I’m especially thankful for the simple routines of life that many of our brothers and sisters on the East coast and around the world do not have. I’m grateful for the hot water for my shower. I’m grateful for the saints who preserved the pages of Scripture so I can turn to their words before or after breakfast, and for the light that illuminates that reading. I’m grateful that the pages of the Times-Gazette arrive on my doorstep each morning, keeping me connected with my community and the world. And I’m grateful for songs, for a singing granddaughter, and for ice cream – any day of the week!