The Book of New Family Traditions (26 page)

• giving a performance of some kind

• doing your first hunt

• writing an article for the local paper

• climbing a mountain, rafting, or kayaking (all which you’ve prepared for)

• creating some artistic piece (painting, sculpture, poetry, a play)

School of Lost Borders: Serious Rites of Passage for Teens

If you have the kind of kid who really wants to test himself or herself, the School of Lost Borders has been running serious wilderness vision quests for more than thirty years. Co-founders Steven Foster and Meredith Little lead a well-trained team that also does wilderness spiritual quests for groups of adults.

Young people between sixteen and twenty-two spend ten days on a vision quest that includes three days and nights in the California desert without food or shelter. A great deal of preparation is done before the kids trek off, and there are reintegration ceremonies after the ordeal.

Find out more at
SchoolofLostBorders.org
, where you can see videos of teens talking about what the quest was like for them.

Steven Foster has written multiple books, including
The Book of the Vision Quest: Personal Transformation in the Wilderness.

Plate-Breaking Ritual for Turning Eighteen

You may have been to a Greek or other ethnic wedding where part of the ritual was the breaking of a plate or plates. In many cultures this is done to symbolize the break in the dependent relationship of child to parents: Mom and Pop are no longer going to be the meal ticket.

The Englebert family of Joplin, Missouri, does something like this when their kids turn eighteen. “Our family chooses to celebrate that transition (from childhood to adulthood) with a plate-breaking ceremony to symbolically represent our child leaving their childhood behind and venturing into the unknown adult world, where they will be responsible for themselves,” father Steve Englebert says. “When we do the ceremony, we always say: ‘From this point forward, everything we do for you is because we love you, not because we have to.’”

A special ceremonial plate is prepared with sayings painted on it such as “Childhood ... when you know where your next meal is coming from” and “No Free Food.” After a fine meal, jokingly called “The Last Meal,” the family troops outside. Part of the tradition is that the coming-of-age child comically refuses to let go of the plate, and there is a crazy tug of war with a parent, until the plate gets smashed on the ground (with a bedsheet underneath so shards don’t fly). The celebration continues with cake, ice cream, and gifts for the eighteen-year-old. One ritual gift is a note-card binder given to each child called “Book of Wisdom”: Any family member over eighteen is allowed to share his or her wisdom in the book. Each kid saves a chunk of broken plate as a memento.

Steve says he and his wife, Virginia, have always tried to create lots of fun rituals to build bonds in their blended family: The six children include two each from a previous marriage, and two they had together. Five of the Englebert kids have experienced the plate-breaking tradition now—just one more to go.

Bead Ritual

Linda in Tucson, Arizona, wanted to do something special when her daughter turned eighteen. She didn’t want to call it a ritual, because her daughter and friends might think that un-cool, so she just called it a party. Beforehand, she cleared all the usual furniture from her family room, scrubbed the floor, put a low round table in the middle, and spread pillows all around it. “Then I filled the room with so many candles that it glowed. We did not use one artificial light. I had asked each of her friends and family members to bring one bead and say something they loved about her or wished for when they gave it to her. Then we strung a bracelet right there at the table (which meant going to a bead store and getting wire and clasps and having a small pair of pliers handy). She told me a few days later it was the best part of her eighteenth birthday, way better than the facial someone treated her to, or being allowed to stay out all night.”

Bead Basics

Beads have been used in rituals for thousands of years, including religious rituals, so they evoke a sense of history and layers of meaning. This same principle of having many people come with a special bead is extremely versatile for family milestone celebrations. I know a woman who was about to undergo chemotherapy for breast cancer, and she had a ceremony in which each of her friends brought a bead and said a prayer over it. She wanted to take this string of brightly colored beads with her, to be cheered by their colors and have something concrete to hold during her treatments. And I know women who followed a similar template for their baby shower.

There’s a great website,
FireMountainGems.com
, that has been selling beads in its store and online for many years. The website is packed with how-to videos and advice for getting started and doing simple beading. You can buy beads and all the attendant supplies, such as wire and the metal fixtures to create a bracelet or necklace. Or, you can check out your local bead store.

A special source for beautiful beads is Beads of Courage, a nonprofit begun by a pediatric oncology nurse to celebrate and encourage kids with cancer. There is a codified system practiced in eighty hospitals in which kids who sign up for the program get specific beads for particular treatments: white for chemo, brown for losing your hair, a glow-in-the-dark bead for radiation. To raise money, the charity sells exquisite artist-made beads on its website:
BeadsOfCourage.org
.

How to Make a Ribbons-of-Love Curtain

When someone we love reaches a significant milestone, we are sometimes at a loss how to celebrate. Just getting a fancier gift than usual seems insufficient. This is a ritual gift that also provides a ritual activity and is best done when you want the celebrated person to feel embraced by a whole community of family and friends. It would be a great activity to cap a coming-of-age ritual.

Materials

Extra-wide ribbon in bright colors (from a craft or sewing store), cut in four-foot lengths

Glue

Pens or markers

A wooden dowel rod, one-half to one inch in diameter and from three to six feet long, depending on how many people will participate

Instructions

When you are finished, the dowel rod will be covered by a row of bright ribbons, hanging down like a beaded curtain. Unlike a maypole, where all the ribbons are attached to the top of a vertical pole, these ribbons will dangle down all along a horizontal pole. The ribbons will have writing on them: Every family member and friend will take one ribbon and be given instructions on what to write, such as “something you wish for (the celebrated person) in the future” or “a quality you love about (the person).” For many milestone celebrations in our lives, there are friends and family who simply cannot come, so you’ll want to send ribbons by mail ahead of time, for those who can’t make it but want to express their love. (And you can always add some ribbons after the event, if they don’t arrive till after the party.)

You may choose to attach the ribbons ahead of time and present the finished ribbon curtain to the honoree, or you could opt to make the finishing of the curtain part of your celebration. Perhaps each celebrant could come forward with his or her ribbon, reading out the sentiments written there. In any case, you will wrap the ribbon around the rod and attach it using craft or fabric glue: Make sure the ribbon reaches over the top and covers part of the back of the wooden rod.

When completed, this ribbon curtain will be a gorgeous keepsake that can be hung in the child’s room on two hooks or nails.

More Coming-of-Age

Sparklers in the Sand

The day my niece Jenny turned thirteen, her mother and I were sharing a condo on the beach in North Carolina, so I created a ceremony there. We asked Jenny to write down things and feelings from her childhood she was ready to leave behind, and she took these private papers and threw them in the ocean. After dark, I drew a circle in the sand, marking it with shells, candles, and sparklers, and we stood in the middle, facing each other. I brought a bottle of red (for blood) wine, and poured us each a little. As the sparklers burned, I toasted Jenny and spoke about the awesome woman I knew she would become. We sat on the beach for a long time afterward, talking. Later, I gave Jenny thirteen symbolic gifts, including a tiny globe, in the hope she will travel a lot, a red rose for her beauty, and so on.

Scarf Ceremony

This would work well for a group of girlfriends and family, as part of a celebration. Instruct each invitee to bring a beautiful scarf for the girl, something light in weight like chiffon or silk. Tie all the scarves together, making one long, colorful “rope.” As the girl stands still, have her hold one end of the scarf rope, while the girls and women wrap it around and around her, covering her. Tell her that as she moves forward through life, into independence, she will always be embraced by this community of loving women. Then, help her unwrap the scarves, and run forward, trailing them like a banner.

Circle of Love

I love the smooth solidity of river rocks. If you don’t live near a river, you can buy them by the pound from a plant nursery or landscaper. Buy enough for each person attending your ceremony, and let everybody paint one word on a rock with permanent paint. The word could be something you hope for that girl. Have the participants place the stones in a circle around the honored girl, one rock at a time. Standing in a bigger circle, the girls and women can give toasts or words of love. Later, the girl can display the rocks in a bowl or plant them in a garden.

Gift of lnspiration for Teenagers Who Only Want Money

When my nieces and nephews hit the teen years, I no longer had the magic touch when it came to picking out gifts. I didn’t know their taste in music or clothes and they wanted to have the pleasure of shopping for the exact
right thing.

Thus began a period where I usually sent them a check or a prepaid credit card when a gift was called for. But on milestone birthdays like eighteen and twenty-one, I still wanted to give them something memorable, something that would last longer than the cute boots or the latest video game.

I created “Money-Plus,” a tradition of writing down things on narrow slips of pretty paper, then folding those papers into little scrolls with money rolled inside. For significant birthdays, I would use $5 bills (getting new crisp ones from the bank), and there would be one money-plus-message scroll for each year. The comments written on the papers were all of a kind: Either they were all things I wished for that child, or aspects of his or her character and personality that I wanted to applaud. In other words, “things I love about you” or “things I hope for you.” Each scroll was tied with a ribbon, and then I would put all of the scrolls inside a small, pretty box, maybe a wooden one from the Ten Thousand Villages store. I have no clue whether this went according to my wishes, but my hope was that my dear niece and nephew would save all the messages in the pretty box and reread them in the future.