Private Ceremonies
March 4, 2004

I was thinking about butter papers.

All of my married life, dating back to the Pleistocene Age, I've kept a plastic bag in the freezer full of butter papers, those little square wrappers from individual sticks of butter. (Originally, it was full of foil margarine papers, in those pre-trans-fat days when margarine was my faux fat of choice.) The reason for this aberrant (if not downright fetishistic) habit is logical to me: I like to bake, and it's handy to be able to reach for a square of paper already coated with a lard-like substance for greasing muffin tins and banana bread pans.

But for years, Art Boy complained about them as he groped around in the freezer to make more room for manly items like tri-tip and bacon. "What are these things?" he was wont to cry. "Can we get rid of them?" (I should point out this is a familiar refrain in our house, although most often applied to pairs of shoes unworn since the Reagan administration occupying shelf space in the closet, back issues of film magazines piled up everywhere, or rows of lidded glass jars cluttering up the garage that I can't bear to recycle because I'm sure I can think of a reason to use them some day.) It wasn't until about a year ago, when Art Boy bought a pizza screen for baking homemade pizza in the oven, that he finally got it about the butter papers.

Keeping butter papers has acquired a status beyond mere pack-ratism: it's a ritual. I do it because my mother did it, and no doubt her mother did it too, and so on back to the time when butter came out of a churn and not in convenient paper-wrapped sticks. More than a habit, it's an innate, almost instinctive tradition from the collective memory that connects me to the eternal sisterhood of home bakers. And as such, it's one of those personal rituals and private ceremonies we perform every day—maybe without even realizing it—to keep our karmic lives in order.

While we're still in the kitchen, consider pie tins. I always have an old foil pie tin on hand for the purpose of mixing dry ingredients in baking. Over time, the foil cracks and flour cakes in the corrugated rim, but I persist in using the same tin until it all but disintigrates. Sure, I could buy a more substantial aluminum pie plate, but it just wouldn't have the same juju.

In our household, Monday nights are traditionally given over to eating pizza and watching Jeopardy on TV. This dates back to the early days of this newspaper. In that pre-fax era, part of my job was to call up area movie theaters on Monday afternoon (after they'd had time to compile their weekend grosses) to find out what movies they would be playing in the coming week. I would spend a couple of hours on the phone, and more time typing (yes, typing) the new schedule for my Tuesday morning deadline. By the time I was finished, I was in no mood to plan a meal, so we'd heap some fresh toppings on a pizza (frozen in those days) and eat it while watching Jeopardy—which Art Boy thoughtfully taped off-air for whatever time I was finally done with work.

Through the miracle of modern technology, I'm not required to make those calls anymore, but pizza and Jeopardy on Monday is still our ritual for celebrating the successful conclusion of another work week. It has to be Jeopardy (and not—God forbid!—Wheel Of Fortune). On nights the show is pre-empted by Monday Night Football, my psychological feng shui is out of whack for a week.

At least I get to work at home. But for many, the stress-loaded workplace is where ritual can be most rewarding—and necessary. Years ago, I was talking movies with a former editor at this paper as production people and ad reps were closing in with urgent problems to be solved. Without warning, he suddenly stood up, extracted two lemons and an orange from his desk drawer, and began to juggle them serenely. After about two minutes, he popped them back in the drawer, finished what he'd been saying to me, and turned to the next supplicant. My current editor keeps a brass gong in his office. When the daily frenzy of deadlines and unexpected crises reaches critical mass, the mellow, shimmering peal of the gong wafts out to drive away the craziness for a few more minutes.

Art Boy has an elaborate and enduring ritual. Every New Year's Eve at midnight, he burns one of his paintings. It's not some lurid Farenheit 451 censorship deal. It's more like a sacrifice to the art gods for continued inspiration. Sometimes it's an old piece out of the archives, but often it's a piece of more recent vintage that he feels hasn't succeeded. Deconstructed as a painting on the ritual fire, its essence—paint, wood, heart, soul—returns to the universe to make a fresh start. His thanks and hopes go with it. May the Force be with us for another year.