"Last night I almost forgot the lions´s socks D, reminded of them when we went to kiss the children before going to bed ourselves. That´s the first time this has happened to me.
It made me think of the importance of traditions, of habits, of rituals. We live in a period when nomadism reigns anew. In Russia, entire populations are dumped to Siberia. In the United States, factories, offices, and all who work in them are shipped from New England to the South. In France, heads of businesses that leave the Paris area for the provinces are given a bonus. Few people still know where they will be in ten, even five years. Families separate.
(It is curious to note that it is just at this moment when furniture and objects of daily use are intercheangable, mass produced, that the purchase of an apartment is indirectly imposed, of a cell in a huge co-operative where the man who occupies it it has nothing to say, where he will have nothing to say, where he will not really be the owner. To my mind, it´s a cynical swindle)
I have always thought that the human being needs the landmarks which traditions are. As a child, I was impatient to leave my family. I pretended to be a rebel. Our way of life was a burden to me.
But I am still grateful to my mother for having, for example, taken me to the market with her from the time I was three years old. I´ve kept a taste for markets, for baskets filled with fruit and vegetables, for odors. Later I took each of my own children to market in turn. One or another of them will probably continue this custom.
These habits are a need so natural to children, even very young ones, demand them, each according to his temperament. Perhaps to reassure themselves? Probably, for the first ones have to do with bedtime, always an anguish for them.
One evening when Marc was two years old I told him a story of a little Chinese named Li. For years after, each evening I had to invent new adventures for Li. When I met D. I asked her for a story too, so that for a long time one or the other of us gave him a daily installment every evening.
For Johnny, the ceremony was just as complicated, but different. He was the most watchful, the most jealous of these little traditions, and he is very unhappy if one is forgotten. I understand him all the better since I am rather like him.
Putting him to bed one evening, I put the socks he had just taken off on the ears of his plush lion. This amused him. That was at least three years ago. He is eleven. Every evening I have to cover the lion´s ears the same way.
And I must leave his door open just enough so that the nurse can come in without touching it if he needs her, for he likes to think I am the last to touch that door before he goes to sleep.
When I was old - Georges Simenon
It made me think of the importance of traditions, of habits, of rituals. We live in a period when nomadism reigns anew. In Russia, entire populations are dumped to Siberia. In the United States, factories, offices, and all who work in them are shipped from New England to the South. In France, heads of businesses that leave the Paris area for the provinces are given a bonus. Few people still know where they will be in ten, even five years. Families separate.
(It is curious to note that it is just at this moment when furniture and objects of daily use are intercheangable, mass produced, that the purchase of an apartment is indirectly imposed, of a cell in a huge co-operative where the man who occupies it it has nothing to say, where he will have nothing to say, where he will not really be the owner. To my mind, it´s a cynical swindle)
I have always thought that the human being needs the landmarks which traditions are. As a child, I was impatient to leave my family. I pretended to be a rebel. Our way of life was a burden to me.
But I am still grateful to my mother for having, for example, taken me to the market with her from the time I was three years old. I´ve kept a taste for markets, for baskets filled with fruit and vegetables, for odors. Later I took each of my own children to market in turn. One or another of them will probably continue this custom.
These habits are a need so natural to children, even very young ones, demand them, each according to his temperament. Perhaps to reassure themselves? Probably, for the first ones have to do with bedtime, always an anguish for them.
One evening when Marc was two years old I told him a story of a little Chinese named Li. For years after, each evening I had to invent new adventures for Li. When I met D. I asked her for a story too, so that for a long time one or the other of us gave him a daily installment every evening.
For Johnny, the ceremony was just as complicated, but different. He was the most watchful, the most jealous of these little traditions, and he is very unhappy if one is forgotten. I understand him all the better since I am rather like him.
Putting him to bed one evening, I put the socks he had just taken off on the ears of his plush lion. This amused him. That was at least three years ago. He is eleven. Every evening I have to cover the lion´s ears the same way.
And I must leave his door open just enough so that the nurse can come in without touching it if he needs her, for he likes to think I am the last to touch that door before he goes to sleep.
When I was old - Georges Simenon
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