Is Sunday your quiet day? Your catch-up day? Your day for domestic duties or family gatherings? Is it a day for rest?
Not around here.
Sunday comes and I step over teenage bodies – boy bodies – and the count seems to be the same as it was last evening. An excellent sign.
All those who smiled upon entering, exited excitedly on their way to a concert, returned late, huddled around the fire pit, ignored the repeated text messages to be quieter (my son will catch the grief for that one), and – naturally – laughed into the night, and eventually, slept.
There was the kid on the couch. The Latvian Suite was utilized. Bedrolls on the floor.
Those lanky bodies with the faces I once recognized so well as little boys, and a few I’ve only gotten to know in the past year or two. When they’re 16 and 17 and 18 and 19 – you’re happy when you can say that you know where they are. That they’re safe and sound, even if they kept you up all night, even if they wake you repeatedly with their comings-and-goings to the fridge, even if you tiptoe around them to make your morning brew, taking a deep breath, preparing yourself for another Sunday.
This is a tiny home, a single parent home, a messy home, a grounded home. An unusual home.
It is the best home I could make with what I have – my wits and my heart, my understanding of what it is to want to fly, my knowledge of the essential need to know you will be welcome, your friends will be welcome, and the mother doesn’t really mind stepping over the sleeping kids. It is a safe haven.
But Sunday, waking tired, is nonetheless the day that I wonder why I say yes as often as I do – why saying no is the exception. Yet I realize that our weeks are rugged and my son is growing and growing away from me so quickly, as well he should.
Yesterday, he tidied and scrubbed, he raked and weeded, he drove me on errands. He wants and needs relief from responsibilities (and he has plenty), relief from stress (he has too much), relief from the pieces of the adult world that weigh on him.
On Sunday?
I wish I could say that I never work, that my son doesn’t buckle down to papers and projects, that a family dinner is prepared and we eat around the kitchen table, talking and savoring. Occasionally, we do. But Sunday – other than counting his sleeping friends on occasion – is like any other day around here, or close.
And maybe that isn’t so bad.
© D A Wolf
Saturday night is the break in routine, the relief from responsibilities, the day for him to be a kid again. Sunday is the day to girder the forces and prepare for the weekdays. Refreshed, at least mentally, having had Saturday day for chores other than school related and Saturday night for play. All is good.
It may be a little tough on my sleep at times, but I agree, Carol. It’s important for kids to get that down time. They really need it. All good, yes.
Oh wow, you just gave me the most vivid image of my future. I cannot imagine myself the parent of teenage boys. It kind of scares me. But I hope that my house is filled with boys, that ours will be a refuge for them to come to and feel comfortable. We’ll see.
Sunday here is quiet. I try really, really hard to protect Sundays. I can’t cope with my week if I don’t have this day to gather my wits and my laundry. When I don’t, it sets off the whole week, and spirals. It’s a major trigger.
Fortunately, they aren’t adolescents over night! You sort of grow into it, with them.
Oh, BLW, we have this at my house too. It is great to be the house of gathering, really, as you know. BUT, can be hard.
And, next year, no gathering of boy feet and large shoes and Doritios and selzer water and jam sessions: whatever will I do with my neat and quiet house?
Sundays ebb and flow, but wherever this moment finds you I send Best Wishes from a moment of quiet on this particular Sunday.
We are not at the stage where buddies crash where they find space. Sundays are usually catch-up days and the best meal of the week since I’m not cooking while minding 18 other tasks. We usually do some type of family exercise (when weather is nice) or take long naps (when weather keeps us indoors). The only thing I dislike about Sundays is that Mondays are next!
This too shall pass so much faster than what we are prepared for. Although when I’m in the thick of it, I think not fast enough. I was also one of those moms who counted bodies every Sunday. Yes, I was exhausted. Yes, I thought and wanted my own time, a quiet Sunday filled with a good book and a Diet Coke. The girls are grown and Molly is out of the house and Kelly lives here but wants to be out, too, so she is. I’ve gotten through wanting all my kids to live with me forever…almost…and I try like heck to savor the moments I have with my kids and without them. What else can you do?
I remember Sundays being a day for sleeping in, watching football, and waiting for the last possible moment to begin my homework. I wonder what they’ll be like for my own children. I imagine I will find myself tiptoeing carefully over sleeping teenagers and gently reminding them to get to that history paper. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be the one who gets to nap!
We only have 936 weekends with our kids before they turn 18 and fly away, so make every Sunday count. 🙂
I try really hard to make Sundays our home days. It didn’t happen this weekend, or last, and it won’t happen next, either. At least this week, we had a Monday off!