The harvest supermoon and the rituals that repeat.

The harvest supermoon was on September 28th — the biggest and brightest full moon of 2023. We saw it from the garden at half past nine. My daughter had reminded me it was happening. She had looked it up.

This is the second year in a row she has looked up the date of the harvest supermoon. This is now a ritual. We did not decide to make it a ritual. It became one because we did it once, and then again, and the second time was different because of the first time.

The first time we watched the harvest supermoon was last year — 2022 — and it happened by accident. We were sitting in the garden after dinner and the moon was enormous on the horizon and my daughter said: 'Is that normal?' I said: no, that's the harvest moon. It only looks like that a few times a year.

She wanted to know why. We talked about perigee and the atmosphere bending light near the horizon and why it appears orange. She was nine then. She asked about twelve questions. I answered maybe six of them correctly.

This year, at ten, she remembered. She looked up the date. She told me a week in advance. She reminded me on the night.

This is how rituals form in families: not from planning but from repetition. The first time is accidental or circumstantial. The second time is something beginning. The third time is already a tradition.

This is how rituals form in families: not by planning but by repetition. The first time is accidental. The second time is something beginning. The third time is already a tradition.

My daughter remembered the moon. She looked up the date herself.

The third time is already a tradition.

I've been thinking about this all week — about the relationship between rituals and time, and what rituals do to time.

One thing they do: they create periodicity. The harvest supermoon divides the year. September 28th now has a quality that other dates don't. Not because of the moon — the moon is the same moon it always is — but because of what we've agreed to do on this date. The date becomes a marker. The markers make the year legible.

Children need this more than adults, I think. Adults carry their own markers — anniversaries, career events, the births and deaths that punctuate a life. Children are newer to time. They are still learning that years repeat, that seasons come back, that things which felt very specific and once will happen again. Rituals teach this. They say: here is a structure. Here is something that will return.

This is the thirtieth edition of WiseTip. We've been going since March — seven months, across all four seasons. I started writing it because my daughter showed me a pattern in my own behaviour that I hadn't noticed. I kept writing it because the noticing — mine, and yours — seemed to produce something worth continuing.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for the replies that tell me what you're thinking about, and what you're trying, and what isn't working, and what worked in a way you didn't expect. The newsletter is made better by the fact that you're on the other side of it.

My daughter and I watched the supermoon. She said: 'Next year too?'

Yes. Next year too.

Yes. Next year too.

The ritual is not the moon. The relationship that made the moon possible is the ritual. We are building it, week by week, without always knowing that's what we're doing.

What ritual has formed in your family that you didn't plan — one that began by accident and became something that repeats?

What does that ritual mark? What would be lost if it stopped?

And: is there something you've done once with your children that you could make into a ritual simply by doing it again next year on the same date?

This week: decide to repeat something you did this autumn, at the same time next autumn. Write it in your calendar now — not as a reminder, as an intention. The intention is the beginning of the ritual. The ritual begins before the repetition.

This is edition thirty. A long way from where we started. A short way from where we're going. See you next week — Phase B continues. More activities, more voices, same conversation.

Names of people and brands in these editions are changed. Whoever was there and reads this knows what we are talking about.