Death on a Sunday afternoon.

You remember how Laura got in trouble for blurting out "I hate Sundays!" right? If I remember right, that was the time that Pa whipped her for it. Or maybe I am thinking of the time she slapped Mary?

 

Anyway, I sometimes think about that Little House episode, because every time Sunday afternoon rolls around, I want to blurt out "I hate Sundays!" too.

 

I have trouble articulating the reason; it is more like a jumble of associations. Some of it is undoubtedly that feeling of the weekend being almost over, and wanting to push it back just a little bit farther. Why can't it be a three-day weekend? It is not that I don't want to work on Monday, but that I don't want to return while it is still Sunday to the getting-ready-for-tomorrow part. I wish I could just rest all afternoon, go to bed on Sunday night, and begin the work in the morning, when I am fresh.

 

I think it's hard for me to be part of a family on Sundays. I don't get my way. I am not supposed to get up and be productive; nobody is; so the house gets messier and messier all day long, the dishes pile up in the sink, and at the end of the day after dinner (when we have decreed the restful part of Sunday is over) there is so much that we can't clean it up before bed. I can't lounge around and relax in the presence of such chaos. I get tense and irritable. I want to clean everything up and then relax in a clean house. I imagine myself sitting peacefully on the couch with a book, the living room uncluttered and serene, like a magazine spread. My imagination even helpfully inserts a verdant houseplant in the foreground, tastefully blurred. I don't have any houseplants.

 

(After I finished cleaning and making the lovely space in which to relax, I wouldn't, because I would just keep cleaning, and then I would do school planning because how can I relax knowing that the work still remains to be done?)

 

If I had my way I wouldn't be like we are, wouldn't sleep in on Sunday and go to the eleven o'clock Mass. I would get up at six or seven and go to an eight or nine o'clock Mass, and then have so much more day stretched out before me, and some morning left before lunch. It's all these non-morning people I live with, my husband who gets up and goes to work early five days a week, takes a child to the ten a.m. swim lesson on Saturdays, and then, inexplicably, wants to sleep as long as possible on Sunday mornings. Not only that but he actually does it! Stays asleep! The sun comes in and he rolls over and continues, undisturbed. How does that work, I murmur to myself as I clomp down the stairs in my shoes, fully dressed, to make my own coffee (my OWN coffee!) which he makes for me six days out of seven? How can he stay blissfully snoozing? Why can I only do that when I have the flu?

 

Practically speaking, I flee from Sunday afternoons. Everything around me on the first floor is nothing but a box to check on a to-do list that never ends. The kitchen's dishes piling high as people don't clean but mysteriously continue to eat. The living room floor becoming more and more obscured by toys and snow boots. The computer, accusing me from the corner, concealing fossilized patterns of tiny electric charges that I was supposed to reply to yesterday. The schoolroom.

 

I go upstairs and burrow under the blankets and try to nap. I can't see it from my bedroom. That works pretty well if I have a white-noise app, or else I give up on sleep and maybe I can read a good book.

 

Today the ennui got to me after a while and I pulled on my boots, threw the iPad into my bag, and announced that I was leaving the house. Nobody seemed to want me for anything: the kids are playing Minecraft and climbing on the wall in the basement; the baby is napping; it is Phase II. Dinner was still a couple of hours away. I jammed a hat on my head and walked out into an impossibly gray and dreary afternoon, half a mile to a cheerful neighborhood coffee shop.

 

Here I sit. I have bought a four-ounce cup of premium ice cream but it turned out I only wanted half of it, so it is melting at my elbow. The coffee is good (maybe a bit too high-acid) but I had better not drink any more lest I be kept up tonight.

 

The act of walking in the cold, slightly underdressed for it, helped a little bit. I should have gone for a run, maybe. Maybe I am just seeking stimulation. Well, I have a stimulant, anyway.

 

I am a terror, I think, forever insisting that the people around me help me fix my environment so that my nerves stop jangling. Stop making that noise before I lose my mind. Clean up the living room so I don't trip on this stuff. Clear your desk top so I don't have to look at a pile of books and papers. Handwash the dishes so there's no pile in the sink.

 

If I allowed the kids to get away with it, let the dishes sit where I can see, let them chew gum where I could hear it, even only some of the time, I would die a thousand deaths, a thousand tiny, imperceptible deaths, every day.

 

Sunday is the day when I don't get my way, because my way is not to take a day of rest, nor to let anybody else have one either.

 

+ + +

 

I have heard people say that every Friday is a little Lent and every Sunday a little Easter. Or to turn it around, while Easter is all Sunday feasting, Lent is all Friday, all sorrowful mysteries, every day a penance.

 

As for me, backward anti-social Christian that I am, I think that a real penance for me would be a Lent full of Sundays, surveying the feasts and the revelry and the easygoing laughter and thinking This is all very well while it lasts, but when it's over somebody is going to have to clean this mess up.

+ + +

I don't have any profound ending for the post here. I need to close it and put on my coat and go home, because it is getting dark and my family will want to eat dinner, and after dinner we will all stop resting and get to work, getting ready for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. That's when the kids will grumble but I will cheer up, because for some reason I like the doing of things. I like when there is nothing to do, too; the hard part for me is when there is something to do but it isn't time yet.

 

This year I must learn to suffer this a little more than I do, instead of laying the burden of my constantly-jangled nerves on the people around me. I am not sure what kind of Lent that could mean, but letting Sunday be Sunday, and finding times of rest and retreat (when I want to attack) the rest of the week, might be part of it for me this year.

 

 

 

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Comments

[Kate]

I find disorder unnerving, though I'm not high-energy and organized enough to produce much order and my children are still chaos-makers. But I can relate to feeling stressed out by others leaving mess in their wakes and the ennui of idleness.

I'm not as strict about keeping Sunday as you sound like you are--I do dishes (which I find relaxing, especially with a good podcast playing), I fold laundry, I pick up things if they are egregiously irritating me. But what really makes the difference to me in making my "day of rest" actually restful is focusing on recreation that energizes me. It's leisure in the Pieper sense of the word.

I even have a reminder on my phone that beeps at me at 1pm on Sundays and reminds me "Recreational creativity!" And then...I make something. I mold things out of clay. I color with the kids. I paint. (The kids like that too). I might write something. I might just doodle while I watch a movie.

The other thing I really love to do on Sundays is either visit family or take my family outdoors. We had a birthday party today, but if we hadn't I think it would have been a great day for a hike. And...my kids are happier for *doing* something together too. Otherwise their Sunday afternoon quickly devolves into computer games, movies, and more screen time, and they become irritable (and messy...they are never so messy as when fidgeting while distracted by some screen). Getting out of the house has the side benefit of saving the house from some of the mess and letting the keeper of the house breathe. :-D

[Christine in Houston, TX]

This is why I love your writing. You don't have to have the conclusion before you share your struggle. You speak with candor and humility and insightfulness on the complexity and meaningfulness of everyday things. Real life shared. Thank you.

[bearing]

Update:

When I got home from the coffee shop, even though it wasn't dinner yet, Mark and the kids had already cleaned up the kitchen.

And:

After dinner I did ALL MY LAUNDRY (I even washed my gym bag) and I felt ***SO MUCH BETTER.*** Even though laundry is my least favorite.

[mandamum]

Pa whipped her for the slap I think - he told her a story of Grandpa and the Pig for the Sunday bit.

I really appreciated your thoughts on Sunday Dinner from a while back. I often find myself with Kate in her comment here - my family does better with some sort of re-create-ional activity(s) that we enjoy, rather than unfettered free time. Otherwise, I'm happy to let the house run down around me, but I don't actually rest while I'm sleepily doing the crossword at a cluttered table, eating a doughnut that's putting me in a sugar coma, and lolling my way toward sloth. Yesterday, we had a birthday party, with much cleaning and prep beforehand, and then (hooray!) without any suggestion from me, the 13, 10 and 7yos cleaned up the party areas until they were almost as nice as before people arrived!! What a treat for today (for them too). But somehow it wasn't daily work, because the party made it extra-ordinary.

Fr. John Riccardo has some interesting thoughts on Sunday - you can hear his podcasts "Christ is the Answer" from Ave Maria Radio. He mentioned that the phrase "may he rest in peace" always seemed to grate on him, until one vacation when he was doing only what he chose to do, but still very active (golfing, cooking...) and realized how good it was. Peaceful rest.

[Jenny]

I am married to one of those people who cannot sleep if the sun is up. We live in continual amazement of each other. I cannot believe he is awake and he cannot believe I am still asleep.

I have a very hard time relaxing. That's not to say I don't ever do things I like, which could be considered recreation, but it's usually done with an overhanging sense of dread that I really ought to be doing something else. I cling to the idea that I shouldn't relax until All The Things are finished, but The Things will never be finished so I snatch unsatisfying and guilt-inducing pieces of time instead actually scheduling recreation. I share your vision of happily relaxing in an orderly and clean home, and I know it probably wouldn't be good enough.

I think it is of a piece with the American vacation problem. Many workers leave vacation on the books, unused, because taking the vacation creates more problems at work than just chugging along in semi-burnout.

Speaking of jangled nerves, I have discovered I have a very developed startle reflex. Every time some clangs a dish or drops something heavy, I jump and yelp like I've been shot. Given how many times a day a child clangs a dish around here, this is a frustrating state of affairs.

[Jenny]

It posted! Hurray!

[Erin]

Sundays are my catch up days. Church and a good meal are the only thing that distinguish them from Saturday. If I need to clean or do laundry or do meal prep for the week then I do. I just can't envision it a day of rest. In order to reduce the time our son is in daycare my husband works either Saturday or Sunday every week so that means I'm either solo parenting or it's the one day we can get any joint errands done.
Yesterday is a good example. I spent the entire day "working" and when my husband got home we watched the last half of the football game and relaxed. I considered a couple hours of downtime a huge success. I know part of it is my personality, I have a hard time resting and there is always a to-do list. Your post was very thought provoking, but I'm not sure what to do with it!

[Kortney]

One thing that has helped...besides your snacky celebration dinner plans...is starting our Sabbath on Saturday night.

Winding things up in the afternoon, quieting, sleeping fully at rest. Then waking (early!) and going for a walk or writing or making breakfast while the rest of the house wakes.

Then to church and home again for a nappy afternoon. Then a slow getting ready for dinner and beginning to get ready for the new week.

I so appreciate your Sabbath thoughts as we still try to figure this out!

Peace keep you.