Morning Rituals

Today is the first day of my new morning ritual, not that I chose it or anything. It was forced on me by a change at the newspaper office. First, they converted to only three days a week, which was disappointing enough. But their latest decision is a whole different ballgame. No more delivery boy. From now on, our newspaper will arrive by the US Postal Service. Starting today. It's morning, and I have no newspaper waiting for me to wade through as I eat breakfast. Drats. What now?

We've received the morning paper ever since we moved into this house. It has been a part of my daily ritual. When I heard the unmuffled sound of the car bringing the paper in the wee hours, it gave me a certain comfort. All was well with the world; the paper had arrived. My routine could start. Even during my career/motherhood busy years, I always found time to read the paper before I left home for the day. Finding the rolled-up paper on the driveway in the freshness of the morning was my husband's chore, and he did it with such efficiency. Sometimes it was in the wet grass, tossed there by a substitute delivery boy who didn't realize the irritation of reading soggy newsprint. On rare occasions, a neighborhood dog took a little chew of it as he went about his rounds, and we read the paper shred by shred. Eventually we purchased a delivery box and aligned it with the mailbox at the corner of our lot.

I guess now the paper box can go the way of other obsolete artifacts that have come and gone in the history of our married life. However, this is different. It marks the end of an era. More than that, it marks a change in the way I approach the day. I'm not so sure I'm happy about it.

I remember when the change came to my parents. It was as unsettling to them back then as it is to me now. We lived near Winston-Salem, North Carolina, which had two newspapers at the time. The Journal and The Sentinel. One was morning and one was evening. We subscribed to the evening paper and hearing the paper's thud on the drive was key to my family's clockwork. My brother and I competed as to who could get to the paper first. He usually won. Reading the paper was my father's way of decompressing from his workday. It was my mother's afternoon joy before starting supper chores. We bonded over the comic section that my father read aloud to us.

And then the two papers merged. No more evening paper. No more family rituals because our mornings were hectic enough without bonding over Little Orphan Annie. That era ended and life went on.

Now it's my turn to change. So many of our friends dropped the paper years ago and relied on television or word of mouth to garner the latest news. Not us. We wanted it in our hands to point things out to each other, to clip pertinent articles to pass along to those very friends who had dropped the paper. Most satisfying of all, I worked the crossword puzzle and my husband worked the Suduko puzzle. Daily. Faithfully. It set the day off for us both, and now what? That routine is over. 

I'll have to rely on Facebook for interesting tidbits to share with friends as we walk laps. In fact, my entire morning ritual, sans crossword puzzles, will have to rely on my smartphone. Working a crossword puzzle on a screen is not my way of gearing up for the day. So I will adapt to getting the paper when the mail arrives after lunch and working it then. It will just take some time to reconfigure my brain. I will not follow suit with others and drop the paper. Small-town local papers are essential to democracy and I will do my part to support that institution. Just like my parents, I will adapt.

It's the early morning crossword puzzle that I grieve the most. Sipping Earl Grey tea while wordling just isn't the same.

Catch of the day,

Gretchen