This weekend marked an occasion that brought me almost to tears. Tears of joy for certain, but tears all the same. My daughter stood on the cusp of beginning first grade. Truly a new world, a new journey, her own life opening before her. And yet it almost passed by unnoticed. You see, because we homeschool we didn’t have a need to participate in any of the few remaining rituals of this milestone. In this day, somehow shopping and buying have become substitutes for true cultural ritual. She needed no new special clothes requiring a trip to the mall, no supplies that could be bought anywhere locally, she didn’t need a fancy backpack or the latest Trapper Keeper (oops, I am quite sure that dated me terribly!). She isn’t even going to ride the bus or need to be walked to school. So what is a mother to do? I simply could not let the day go by unmarked.
So I sat and pondered exactly what it was that my daughter was about to do. Was it about her age? No, not really. She could just as easily have been unready for this for another year or so. Was it a new skill she needed to acquire? No, she may go all this year just singing, dancing and feeling her whole self come into being. But there it was… she was taking a journey. Her own journey, on a path that would lead her to a place that I could not predict, and could not follow. To a place that only she will choose. She stood on the edge of a bridge to her own path.
A plan began to form. As the weekend went on, the plan came into full flower. I offer it to you here as an example of one family’s creation of a ritual that filled a beautiful space in our lives.

A neighbor has a 50 foot long suspension bridge in his backyard crossing the river we live on. I gathered all of our playsilks in a myriad of colors, our family blessing candle, matches, a long rainbow colored silk, the rose her father bought her and the words to a song I wrote to the tune of All Through the Night. I left the house a few minutes before my husband and prepared the bridge. When our daughter arrived with her father and siblings a few minutes later the bridge had been transformed into a Rainbow Bridge.
Right away Sage asked what it was, and I told her that it was a rainbow bridge, her rainbow bridge into first grade. She asked what to do and I said that she could cross the bridge alone and go under the silk rainbow draped over the end. She had crossed the bridge before, but never alone and her face lit up at the idea. She bravely stepped firmly and quickly across the bridge with no sign of trepidation. Under the rainbow silk she called out to us, “Look, I did it myself!”
The rest of the family walked across to join her and I gently wrapped the long rainbow silk around her like a cloak, knelt down and lit a candle. Then we sang this to the tune of All Through the Night:
Rainbow Bridge from babyhood to a world unknown.
Rainbow Bridge, a path your own journey will unfold.
To a land of new and old secrets all revealed and told.
Journey now the path your own adventure will unfold.
We both told her how much we loved her and what a special day this was. She blew out the candle and took off the silk. Her dad gave her the rose and I gave her a scroll, simply made with crayons and colored pencil that said that she had now crossed the Rainbow Bridge into first grade and has begun to walk on her own path.
Then we went out for ice cream- before dinner! That of course is probably half the memory!
The whole car ride to ice cream and for the next whole day, she said thank you to us several times. She felt honored; you could see it in her eyes. Something as simple as a few minutes (the whole thing took maybe five minutes) and a tiny bit a preparation created a memory that will last her lifetime. She knows now that she is in a new adventure, and she walks a little taller for it.
On our way home from ice cream our three year old son said, “When will it be my journey?” And she quickly replied, “When you start first grade, you’ll have a big journey to start too.” He too understood that something special was happening.
I am so glad to have the chance to share this tiny bit of our life as a family with the world; it is still giving me goose bumps to think about it two days later. In your preparations for your children’s milestones- homeschool or public, coming of age or going off to preschool there are chances everywhere to create these family rituals and in turn feed the soul of our families.
 

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