All Who Are Hungry, Come and Eat

All Who Are Hungry, Come and Eat

My wife and I may be the only family to have designed a home around two consecutive nights each year. We have always taken seriously the declaration of the Passover seder – all who are hungry, come and eat; all who need to do so, come and partake of the Passover...
Pandemic Has Changed Grieving Rituals

Pandemic Has Changed Grieving Rituals

Grief has not changed during COVID-19, but the rituals of grieving have. The long-term effects of those changes will be more evident in the months and years ahead. How we grieve as we lose a family member to a terminal illness like cancer can help us contrast the...
How Flexible Are Your Family’s Rituals?

How Flexible Are Your Family’s Rituals?

I was reading an article about how turkeys became the traditional main dish for Thanksgiving. It turns out that food historians (it’s actually a thing) believe that some kind of waterfowl or pigeons was part of the original Thanksgiving meal. Turkeys were introduced...
Smells Like Better Times

Smells Like Better Times

The sense of smell is often relegated to secondary status among the others. But it has two characteristics that set it apart from sight, hearing, taste and touch. First, smells tend to linger even after the stimulus has been removed. Second, smell can trigger memories...