Sundays we steal lipsticks from the drugstore, sometimes earrings, a popsicle from the freezer. At the ski shop, we try on parkas, laugh too loud and get asked to leave. Inside Durbin’s we take armloads of bathing suits into the dressing room, put on the lipsticks, compare boobs. There is only one thing I want in life and that is to live in your house with you and your sister and your mom who is on her way to pick us up. Your house with its wood-paneled basement, its deep couches, the smell of laundry, the Kotex boxes in the bathroom where anyone can see them, the table in the dining room, covered with books and papers. Your mom, asking me questions. What do I like to do? You girls should write some stories. Dinners are stews and whole chickens which we eat in the living room. On this Sunday, you put a bikini inside your bag. At the bottom of the escalator the security guard is waiting. You transfer to the private academy for smart kids. On Sundays, my dad opens cans of chili and boils hot dogs. My mother's back on the 7th floor, making decoupage. What I like to do is anybody's guess. Last I heard, you were living, I think, in Ithaca.
Loved this one Mary. Your writing feels raw and true and is quite a gift. Pure memories served up in these evocative, crisp bits that cut through all the crap. I feel like you can write 10 sentences that do the work of 50. It really affects me. Thank you for sharing these. It feels like some of them must hurt and yet be palliative to write. They are so perceptive and beautiful.
I remember thinking wood paneling was super luxe. The end all be all— wood paneling. I love the way you write! Love the shoplifting part- such a glimpse into her life.
yes, well, children and trauma often lead to some strange behavior. I knew I shouldn't take the pastries and I'd be in lots of trouble if caught, but still I persisted. Along with some other behaviors, thankfully given up.
This is so well written! I love "What I like to do is anybody's guess." And so much more of it. The details are wonderful, all that abundance the speaker never had.
I've read this three times already, and slowly. What poetry, Mary! I'm wanting more!! Every detail, so rich. Love the title, first sentence, the lipstick, the comparing boobs... What a joy to read you, always.
A cacophony of sound and aroma bombarded her senses.
Clank! Hissing, then an ear-splitting shrill whistling. If her head hadn’t already ached, this would have set it off. Two women burst into laughter as they queued, then relaxed into indecision.
She felt her insides churning with impatience. Come on, already. Decide. Coffee aroma, strong and thick. Thrum of banter between drive up customers and overly cheerful staff at the window. “Have a nice day!” punctuated each encounter. She shifted her weight, rolled her shoulders, and sighed. The day was already warm and this place felt sauna like. One woman turned and glanced at her.
“Oh, sorry. We’re slow, today.”
Sunday nodded at her, hoping her mouth was smiling, not grimacing in impatience. BANG! Knocking out the grounds, she registered. Clank! Hiss. Shrill Whistle. Bang! Rinse and Repeat.
The two women shuffled to one side.
“Good morning and welcome to…” Sunday cut him off, smile/grimace in place. “Twelve ounce latte. Hot, please.”
“No flavor?”
“No, thank you.”
“Regular milk?”
“Please.”
“And you said ‘hot?’”
“Yes.”
“Your name?”
“Sunday.” He scribbled on her cup.
“And what are you up to, today?”
Oh God. It’s the Spanish Inquisition. I just want a latte.
Clank! Hissss…and whistle…! And more laughter as one woman picked up a garish looking mug.
“Just on my way to work.” She couldn’t suppress the gleam of fire from her green eyes piercing the hapless barista. Must we engage in this inane guise of conversation?
She paid and dutifully stepped aside, slinking as far away from the early morning sun’s assault on the windows. She focused on her phone, then looked up, catching herself in the robotic gesture. As she pocketed it, she became aware of someone standing next to her–also putting his phone away. Clearly impatient with himself. Tall and slim, his dark hair just long enough to curl around his collar. He chuckled as he caught her gaze with his own deep brown eyes.
“Can’t wait to see how they spelled my name, today,” he offered.
She laughed in response. “Same here. But my name is a bit unusual…”
“How unusual? I bet mine is worse.”
“You’re on,” she said, holding out her hand to shake his.”
“You first,” he said.
“Sunday.”
He laughed a low melodic sound. “Friday.”
They were interrupted by the barista calling. “A latte for Sunny, and a mocha for Freddie.”
I can see the cover: a portrait of a man and a woman. He's "Tall and slim, his dark hair just long enough to curl around his collar." He's chuckling as he catches "her gaze with his own deep brown eyes."
oh what a sweet and funny story! A little rom-com on a Monday. Love it. I was wondering if anyone would choose the "name your character Sunday" option so I'm glad to see you went for it!
Love the depiction of the coffee shop via all of its sounds. And the mistaken sound at the end with Friday becoming Freddie - we hear our own expectations instead of listening to/recognizing each other. Well done.
When we were kids you were the pious one, Ellen, I the skeptic.
“If God is all about love, as you like to say, how do so many of us end up burning in hellfire?”
“It’s not His fault,” you’d say. “The Devil invented the bad place.”
“Oh, really? You might want to connect the dots on that one. Did God create everything that exists, or not?”
“Does all this questioning actually make you happy, Aaron?”
“No. I’m miserable. But I can’t help it.”
“You make everything more complicated than it needs to be.”
“It’s how I roll.”
We debated from our respective positions incessantly, until that one Sunday when I was seventeen, and you were fifteen, and I went to church with you. Afterward we went to see some flick, and walking home we noticed Pastor Frederick’s car in Mrs. Hansen’s driveway. You paused, wondering whether you should knock on her door and say hello, when we heard the unmistakable sounds of a passion play emanating from her bedroom window. My God, the look on your face! I was more or less amused, but you were stricken, mortified. I didn’t understand at the time the breadth and depth of your unraveling. I remember saying something like, it just goes to show that nobody’s perfect, we can talk the talk but not always walk the walk, but you looked right through me and took off for home, where you cloistered yourself in your room and sobbed for hours. When you emerged around supper time, you were not the same person. You repudiated your faith with the same fervor with which you had once embraced it, casting yourself to the winds of doing whatever you felt like with whomever would have you. It seems like we rarely spoke after that, you didn’t want to give me the satisfaction. You proclaimed yourself an atheist, while I dabbled in Eastern religions. You always reveled in being extreme.
We grew up, and grew apart. I became the more conventional sibling, the one with a lucrative if lifeless career, a wife and a house full of cacophonous children, while you roamed the Earth, dating rock stars, first male ones, but evolving toward the female ones, always restless, jumping ship the moment it became apparent that someone actually loved you. You would not be pinned down. You began with the hiking and backpacking and mountain climbing, proving yourself to yourself. I worried about you, but I got it. Somehow we’d traded places, that spring Sunday afternoon, and taken over each other’s life.
Then came that day, a year ago, if I’m not mistaken, another Sunday afternoon, when I received the news you’d gone missing, while mountaineering in Alaska, not far from Denali. No remains were ever found. I wasn’t entirely surprised, the world as it actually is was never quite enough for you. I try to imagine, on good days, that you’d located the stairway to heaven, and taken it home. Maybe, for you, it really was something like that. On bad days I just see you in over your head, running out of warmth, going cold with your last breath in a brightness of snow and ice, alone. And I remember us, quite young, at seven and nine, not quite old enough to know any better, when our parents finally went to sleep, and one of us would always sneak into bed with the other, it was easier to fall asleep warm, and not alone, and I send you some of that warmth and camaraderie, or try to, across the space that separates us, and of course I can’t tell if you feel it, wherever you are now, but I feel a bit better on the off-chance that you do, or even if you can only hear the echo of the words I never dared to say while you were alive, because they seemed manipulative somehow, loaded with demands and expectations, but I’ve been able to let go of all that now, Ellen, so I can finally speak straight from the heart, and tell you that I love you, and always have, and always will, no matter what, sister.
Very powerful David. This one really got to me., especially the bit about 'the echo of the words I never dared say while you were alive.' That floored me. Such powerful longing and love in this.
Wow, man alive. I adore this piece of writing, David! This is a keeper. It really took me on a nice ride. When I was in high school, a pastor in our town who'd kicked his son out for being gay and spent his days casting stones...well...it turns out he spent his days cheating on his wife with several church ladies. It was a small town, but still, he kept his position and his opinions of gay people. I thought about him while reading this, and about the extremes, as you wrote about. Thanks for the kick ass read.
Centurion Sheila: This meeting of the Day of the Week Task Force is called to order. Hail Caeser!
All: Hail Caesar!
Centurion Sheila: Before we start, I have a couple of admin items. First, HQ says we will continue to hold all meetings on ZEUM until the current pox wave subsides, and it may be a while due to a shortage of medical-grade leeches. Second, I just got another nasty scroll from Accounting about the cost of replacement abacuses. People, please, these are precision instruments and not toys, you need to activate Find My Abacus and help us reduce costs. Got that?
Scribe Bob, please read the minutes from the last meeting.
Scribe Bob: Hail Caesar! At the last meeting we settled on “Saturday” for our sixth named day. The Saturnian representatives thanked everyone for their hard work. We reviewed complaints about Monday and Wednesday, and tabled discussion about naming the seventh day to today’s meeting.
Centurion Sheila: Thanks, Bob. Plebe Paul, what can you tell us about the Swedish Uprising?
Plebe Paul: Hail Caesar! The Swedes are reported to be heavily in favor of the name “Thursday,” but our spies report they have almost finished their longboat building program and plan to invade our northern provinces at the next new moon.
Centurion Sheila: Thanks, Bob. Plebe Peter, have we heard back from Astrology about how to frame this seventh day matter?
Plebe Peter. Hail Caesar! Centurion, I’m saddened to report that Astrology has not reached agreement on whether this shall be the first or last day of the week. There is growing sentiment for making it the last day of the week, but our spies tell us that is due to the growing popularity of the sonnet “Living for the Weekend” which glorifies joyous fun over the serious work of citizenship. There is a vocal minority still advocating for making this the first day of the week, based on interpretation of entrails of the last several sacrifices. Looks like they may not
[clicking sound]
Centurion Sheila: Hey, we’re cut off! What happened?
Recorded voice: Your meeting has been terminated because you reached the meeting word limit for ZEUM-Basic. Would you like to have unlimited meetings? For three coppers a month you can upgrade to ZEUM-Plus and receive no word caps, plus the ability to collect points for exciting premiums, like admission to future executions and gladiatorial games. Hail Caesar!
Humour's a really interesting thing to think about, I find. You've done it really well here.
I never think, oh I'm going to try to be funny today. But sometimes an idea arrives that makes me start to try to pick up on something that tickles me in it. I never know when it's coming, when I try to write. Often, in fact, rather than feeling amused, I find myself being a little precious or worthy, I guess trying to be deep or fraught with meaning. As if humour can't contain or express truths!
That was a whirlwind of a life story right there. Heartbreak and resilience of a "mixed bag life." And that 'hey all cheerful, one day at a time, right?' killed. The last line is the one I'll hold onto until it's not true any longer. Loved this one, Tod.
Sunday. Wake early. Shower and primp hair. Scrutinize every inch for wrinkles. Tie an apron over the dress while frying the bacon. Rouse the kids and ignore their complaints about itchy clothes and missed games. Pile them into the car and say prayer it makes it to church without sputtering to a stop. Regret stuffing your toes into those shiny new heels. Grin through the bunion pain. Find a shady spot and praise yourself for getting here early enough to succeed. Herd the kids into the church and resist the urge to curse the committee that turned down the air conditioning project again this year. Smile sweetly at the little old widows giving you the once over. Try to maintain Christian thoughts when acknowledging your husband volunteered for the Sunday shift at work again. The organ pumps and wheezes and the loud chatter fades as the choir lines up in back. Church begins.
But that was last week. I lay in bed eyeing the alarm on my phone preset to 7 am every Sunday. I hit the stop, not snooze, and roll over. My husband mutters and resumes his snores. I slide out from under the covers and slip my feet into my favorite worn mules. My big toe finds comfort in the familiar worn spot. I tiptoe down the hall. Let the kids sleep. I cringe as the front door creaks and softly close it as I feel the sun warming my face. I stand at the railing and breathe the warm moist air. Another hot one was brewing. My face reddens but not from the heat. I can’t push away the memory of last Sunday.
The minister strutted back and forth like a tom turkey. His saggy throat waggling like one too. Praise Jesus and Amens echoed in the pews. He was fired up about the local election. Pleading with us to go to the polls and vote out the hellions who were approving of the smut in our schools. He rattled off a list of books who had been my best friends and mentors in my youth. My daughter’s eyes flashed anger. My son kicked the pew. My stomach clenched and I felt a fire in my gullet. I looked around. Didn’t anyone else hear him? Feel the hate? Come on kids. We’re out of here. Let’s go get ice cream. Don’t look at anyone. Heads high.
I love how this turns from the expected Sunday-ness into a response to what happened in church. I'm grappling with all of this hate in the guise of Christianity. Your piece expresses my own frustration so well.
My mother walks us to school on a Sunday. She says, here it is the first day of the week. “Yom rishon,” she repeats proudly, in her new, invented language. She had never walked us to school before, so I suppose I should be grateful, but deep down I hate her. I’m sweating like a monkey in this country. My skin is burnt from the harsh sun, and those palm trees… they were never worth the trouble. I wish I had said no to her proposal. Then, maybe, I wouldn’t be here, melting in the sun, walking to school, on a Sunday. My little brother is silent, like me. At the door we part ways. My mother wishes us a good day, and walks away. But where do we go from here? We don’t speak the language. We look at each other, suppressing our tears. Until a tanned lady gets hold of my hand, and smiles. She says some things in a foreign language and is pulling me along. My brother follows me, clutching my hand. At the entrance to a classroom, we are separated. The tanned lady pushes me in and smiles to the teacher. The door is closed behind me, where I hear my little brother wailing. The teacher is inviting me to sit by the vacant desk. But first, I need to walk across the classroom, with everyone staring. I hate to be the centre of attention. I bow my head down and open my new notebook. On the blackboard strange looking letters are arranged from right to left, making no sense at all. What do I do now? I feel the tears building up at the corner of my eyes, and I do my best to hold them in. But there is no use, because the teacher is walking towards me and is drawing something in my notebook. “Babaait. Babaait. Babaait,” she repeats, and the more she repeats it, the harder I cry. I want out of this classroom and out of this country. This is the worst Sunday. And I miss my daddy.
Oh, this makes me so sad for the little girl you once were, thrown into a circumstance you never asked for in a strange land where you were a stranger. I so look forward to reading your life story one of these days. (I often say shalom ba-bayit to my husband. Let me have my way and there will be peace in the house!)
I’m beginning to think that Anne Lamott had a point when she said that if you survive your childhood, you have enough material for a life time. I don’t know what it is about your prompts that bring this out in me, but I try not to overthink it. And as with everything, this strange childhood came with many gifts. The Hebrew language is one of them :) xox
Until I wrote this, I wasn't aware that I thought much about Saturdays or Sundays. I'm not religious so Sunday had no connotation with church or god. When I went into recovery, Saturday became a day of recovery starting with a meeting in the morning, errands after lunch, and movie and/or dinner with a friend in the evening.
Sunday night has always been a school night. I'm 76 years old and it is still a school night. When I went to Graduate School where I had to talk and listen a lot and then when I launched my career where particularly listening was a non-negotiable requirement, I wanted to protect my Sundays--no talking on the phone, only being with close friends or alone. No work, not even professional reading. It was to be a day of rest for my mind. I don't remember how long it lasted. I wasn't consistent and have no memory of what tempted me away from such exquisite self-care.
Eventually, as I took on more service in my 12 step program, Sunday became a day of meetings--the opposite of what I had longed for and actually had created. I accepted it because the doing of service, of giving back what had been so freely given to me was paramount. I tried to find another day of the week to hold closely to my heart. But it just wasn't Sunday.
Cuz on Sunday, one can sleep in with no guilt. It isn't the same on another day. It's a delicious luxury.
One can sit around for hours with cups of coffee and the New York Times (I'm extraordinarily mad at the NYTimes these days so if I lived in the US, it would be the Washington Post).
One can do three loads of laundry and love it because there is nowhere to go and nowhere to be.
One can look forward to a lazy dinner and watching Masterpiece Theatre with a neighbor.
Sundays have always been sweet days though over the years, they haven't often resembled each other.
I'm so angry at the NY Times. And I'm with you--Sunday night is forever a school night (and the year starts in September and ends in June, with a break for summer).
I have to say that I, too, am angry at the New York Times. And also David Remnick of the New Yorker. Love your description of what Sundays should be...
Flying from Seattle to Los Angeles in February feels like going from a vampire movie to a RomCom. Morning sun on the face causes her brain to adjust from grim existence to wild exuberance — Sun, and freedom from the oppression of children. Banked self kindles into a solar flare of charisma — sparking laughter, intelligence, seduction. To feel intensely alive after months of drizzling grey is a magnetic storm. To reclaim body and mind after weeks of domestic enslavement is cosmic radiation coursing through the veins. By the end of that sunny day, in spite of the banality of meetings and corporate speak, she was burning, a comet of intensity that knew it had to plummet back into the atmosphere of her stifling life. Of course, he fell in love with her on that one sunny day in LA. She radiated the energy of a dying star.
Oh, yes, I know Quilcene. But my former life is Bainbridge, and we often think of going there for a couple of months in the summer when it's too hot here. And from there, it's easy enough to get to Seattle to see relatives (I still have many relatives there, since I grew up in North Seattle), including PKT's mom who, thank God, is still with us. And I can see you too!
I feel like Seattle is two different cities — the perfect PMW city of crisp blue sky days with everything green and brilliant, and the grim February dingy 60s era town of mid-February
Around April Fool's Day I'm ready to curl up and sleep until summer starts in July. Let's get a bunch of people together to get out of here in the winter and rent a big house in Los Angeles. We can call it a writer's retreat! We can all do Mary's prompts together.
The pigeons took their places without, apparently, any prior coordination. The coffee orders were a lot of variations on a narrow theme: coffee from the roaring machine and milk tipped fast out of stainless steel carafes, in greater proportion or lesser, poured deadly hot or at room temperature. In every case, it would be milk with an undertone of UHT flavor, undiscernable to those who have all their lives sipped these same coffees. There were advantages to being from a place.
Also, Sundays. If you had any family or friends, Sunday was a time to see them and do nothing together. You could lean into the doing nothing, even flirt with the idea of doing nothing by yourself, arriving showily late for lunch or first for a glass of vermouth in the sun.
Or, if you went it alone, a flock of people would be sat there nursing their drinks, roosted all around you like the grey, pecking pigeons. Each one left in Sunday peace to let their minds drift to itching, private thoughts, while they waited for the rest of their parties to arrive. And all the variously floating minds would stare in more or less the same direction, vaguely towards the center of the plaza, at the bright world that started just beyond the edge of the awning.
“I know that book.”
But that Sunday, a voice came from two tables away, and in English. It wasn’t a known voice. It couldn’t have been a known voice -- who knew you in that town that would speak to you in English? In one second you would glance up from the book, and in that one small timeless sweep of saccades, switching from text to human face, there may as well have passed through your mind everything that would follow after, the whole lifelong history of how one thing inevitably unravels into the next. But if it did happen, it was so fast that there would be no recalling it. As those who live through a car accident strive to express how something could be just so sudden, all your powers of observation and recall fell short at last that day, and the wide open loneliness of your Sundays was no more.
On this gloomy Sunday morning, with its grey sky spitting rain that the wind blows against the window, Sam comes to a decision. Perhaps not so much a decision as a realization. Perhaps not so much a realization as an acceptance. Sam stops.
Sam realizes that she is like the rain against the window come into existence just because such things have to happen in this universe and blown about because that’s the way it is and will always be, until she isn’t the rain anymore. Maybe then she will be mud, or a puddle, or a river, or a glass of water, or just vapor. Sam stops hoping for an escape because there is no escape. Sam stops trying because trying never works. Sam lets go.
Sam rests quietly basking in the letting go. A peace unlike any she’d ever known fills her. She sits at her table, sipping her tea, watching the rain and just being. The better part of this gloomy Sunday flows by. And, of course, Sam begins doing again. She makes a sandwich. She wipes down a counter. She considers the week ahead. She even puts on a jacket and takes herself out for a walk.
On Monday, the sun returns. Sam dresses and goes to her job at the insurance company. Nothing about this Monday will be any different than the ones that have preceded it and the ones that will follow. Only Sam is different although it’s anyone’s guess as to how long that can possibly last. But, just for this Monday, so far, Sam is a tiny bit comfortable in the afterglow of her gloomy Sunday.
Thank you so much! As I just told Mary, this was inspired by Wallace Stevens' Sunday Morning, a poem I was assigned to read in college, but it turns out speaks to me more clearly these decades later.
Just looked at the Emily Dickenson. I hadn't made that connection in my aware mind, but that is the feeling I was thinking of. Must have been bubbling down below.
Sunday in Madrid, and the terrace cafes host throngs of ‘Domingueros’, the Sunday People. Saturday night is for ‘La Marcha’, as the Spanish call it. This is the nightlife of the young and old, but only the most robust party-makers will last til the end, and in the wee hours, have their churros y chocolate.
Then you go home and sleep for a few hours and are back in the street in the late morning for the weekly jaunt in El Rastro. It’s one of the oldest districts, where the buildings are from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The names of the streets tell tales, like la Calle del Desengaño, which you could translate as the street of the rude awakening.
On Sunday, every shop and bar is open, and the streets are closed to traffic. There is music in the streets, food, and waves of people. Talk is loud and the vermouth and beer are cheap. Everyone is hanging out and life is good, even when it’s anything but.
It’s where you go to hear a concert in a bar so small, the patrons and dancers spill out into the street, where you stroll arm in arm with your lover from the night before in your last night’s clothes. It’s where the half mad poet who threw away their lithium is raving on the corner, and where an old woman dressed in the costume of two centuries ago is cranking a painted barrel organ. She smiles as you pass by, and an old key maker pushes his wooden canopied cart festooned with every species and size of keys imaginable, including some enormous skeleton keys.
Sunday is the result of the entire week’s progress. It’s the promise of a new dress or an ‘occación’ (unexpected special offer), like a mint condition 45 rpm of Mavis Staples’ “I’ll Take You There”. You wonder how the hell it made the long voyage to this vintage record seller’s stock. There are hundreds of stalls selling a dizzying plethora of new and used stuff. You want a piano? A drill? A leather jacket? Baby clothes? Hiking boots? There are even streets where you’ll find crazy stuff no one would ever want, and a lot that’s probably stolen.
At three o’clock, the sound of the galvanized metal poles falling onto the pavement echoes in the Plaza de Cascorro as the vendors break down their stalls. It’s time to go have lunch, either at grandma’s house (La abuela) or your favorite restaurant.
The defining authorities of Spain's collective past—the Church and the military—don't have the same psychological power over people as they once did, and so this kind of Sunday event is emphatically secular, but its observance is a ritual bordering on the religious.
I feel as though I am there. Thank you for taking me along! And i absolutely love Street of the Rude Awakening, which I think will be the title of my next short fiction!
The name refers to an incident in 1843, when an attempt was made on the life of Ramón María Narváez y Campos, the Duke of València and a military figure turned politician. He was attacked in his carriage on that spot. It's a very short street.
I loved El Rastro when I was there a couple of years ago; spent hours wandering. And Saturday night is just as you describe it, everyone out, walking. Toss in the beginning of Semana Santa and some small processions in the street on Palm Sunday...Madrid is maravilloso.
Er, no. No I don’t think anyone can, I was here on my own all day.
Well. Nothing really. Just Sunday things.
Washing, ironing. You know.
Watched some television. Not much at all.
Nothing I can think of, sorry, why are you asking me this?
And you think I did it?
So, am I in trouble or something?
Well. There’s not much more I can tell you.
Pretty early. I’m a lark. Susannah was always the night owl before she… .
My wife.
No.
No, she isn’t.
No.
Two years ago.
An accident.
We didn’t own a car. She fell.
The stairs. Look, I don’t see how this bears any relation to
No of course she hadn’t. It was 9 o clock in the morning. Look
It’s not that early.
Not even for a night owl, no.
No, we never argued. Unless you’re going anywhere with this, I really think I don’t want to
I’m not obstructing anyone. I just don’t see how
Of course I do.
I’m sorry I just don’t remember much about Sunday.
They just all bleed into each other, when
What’s an interesting word?
I just meant they’re all the same.
I haven’t been able to since, for the last year.
I have my pension, and…
Yes there was some insurance.
Enough.
If you call this living. These days bleeding into, blurring into each other. Every day may as well be Sunday. Nothing changes, turn on the tv, watch the same shows, wash a dish, no need to fill the dishwasher, no need to cook a meal even, just live off a few crackers and what not, if you call this living.
That’s it.
Ok.
Ok, thanks.
Glad to be of help.
I’ll see you out. Look, sorry if I was…
No, I know, but still, there’s no need for me to be rude.
You’re only trying to do your job after all?
And, how is the job going? You enjoy it?
I dare say. Listen, would you like a..
Oh it sticks sometimes. I could put on the…
It’s the heat. This dreadful heat. It’s been dreadfully hot hasn’t it.
Humid. That’s the word, you’re right.
Oh, you’ve managed it.
No, don’t go.
Don’t go.
If you have any more questions, you know where to...
Brian completed his calculations. He took down the calendar and circled 30th October.
So, it would happen on a Sunday. How apt.
He had a little over six months to wait, and in that time he got through many pencils checking and re-checking his calculations.
‘What are you writing?’ asked his son, picking up the loose papers and turning them about, frowning earnestly. His son fetched some paper and set himself up across the table copying out the symbols with his crayon.
‘What are you writing?’ asked his wife, resting her chin on his shoulder, peering at the calculations. Her breath was warm on his cheek.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked himself when, with just a month to go, his calculations converged yet again on that Sunday.
His grandmother had taught him the art of calculation, but it was not mathematics, or rather, not only mathematics. You could say it was a blend of poetry, of logic and of prognostication. Or, you could say it was nothing more than marks on a page, one after the other, a boy’s scribbles in crayon. He picked up one of his son’s sheets. There they were, the symbols, the words, chains of them, made mechanically and with care but without the intuition or sense needed to give them heft. And here, look here, a mistake had crept into the workings, and the sense faltered and the conclusion could bear no weight.
No matter.
Come October the 29th, he was satisfied they’d made the most of that month together. At the beginning of October, he’d put away his papers, shuffled them into a pile along with his son’s scribblings, and weighted them under the carriage clock on the dresser, where it had told the time without a single winding for the twenty years since his grandmother's death.
On that Saturday, they walked through piles of fallen leaves. They swung their son between them and he laughed as he kicked up the soft yellow leaves and the sun sank between the bare branches along the lane.
Brian woke before his wife and their son and sat quietly at the kitchen table. He resisted the urge to look one last time at the calculations. He did not, therefore, notice that his grandmother’s clock had stopped on Saturday evening.
His calculations had been consistent. The sun, they said, would not rise on this day.
a kind of horror story, playing out slowly. Have you seen the movie Melancholia? i would not recommend it, it ruined me for several years. But this reminded me of that--the world coming to an end.
"Sure. Same kinda' stuff I've been doing, Sundays, all my life."
"Same?"
"Sure. Sunday's stuff'll be pretty much what I did last Sunday, 'n pretty much what'll be doing next Sunday."
"What kinda' stuff do you do Sundays?"
"You know, Sunday stuff."
"Such as?"
"Serving altar, first mass, seven thirty. Sitting down to fried breakfast, tea, toast, marmalade. Books, pens, paper, studying some, on the dining table; or football, kicking about some. Serving beers, behind the after last mass pre-lunch time bar in the catholic club. Sitting down to roast Sunday lunch, spuds, veg, Yorkshires and gravy. Basketball, late afternoon training; or park walking, talking some. Serving time, passing from boy's league Bishop to men's league Cardinal, treated to a burger and fries in the Wimpy, by my older peers with deeper pockets. Sitting down in the Golden Cross, serving the guys with the round of beers I've just stood, five lagers and two packets of peanuts for under a quid. Back on the last Sunday bus, homework imperative for first thing Monday, English Lit teacher's a tyro, not excuses tolerated, he being the coach of the Bishops and player coach of the Cardinals."
"Sheesh. All that stuff on a Sunday?"
"Sure. That's typical enough, albeit that Sunday sample is a blast from Sundays' past. Still the same, Sundays, ever one full of today's Sunday stuff, just another variation on the never ending story of the day of rest. So, anyway, what are you doing Sunday?"
"Oh just, you know, Sunday stuff."
"I get you. Right on. I surely do. Can't stop now, gotta' go get my stuff ready for sofa surfing the sports channels on Sunday. Have a good. See you Monday? Share a cart? We can compare notes between holes as we trundle around the course?"
Really stirred the mud swamp of memory for me Mary.
Found myself realising that on reaching three score years and ten a body passes the milestone having headed into and out of 3640 Sundays, give or take. Seemingly set, staid, same old-same old... except no two Sundays, and the stuff we do in them are actually ever quite the same... there's constant, slow, so slow change as we move along the arc of our life story...
Fine prism for prising moments from memory as formable fragments for memoir. On a grander scale, just think, stuff that's happened on Sundays is a whole seventh of the stuff that we call History... at least since bright minds started seeing cycles and building the timescales that we, in our time and culture, call calendar seven days weeks and reasoned that one should be different by being the day of rest from the toil and grind of labouring through the previous six days.
That's a lot of Sundays, Rob. And yes, no two alike. It's amazing how change occurs whether we are paying attention or not. As far as a "day of rest," now that i no longer go to an office to work, the days have flattened out. It's harder to see the difference in days any more.
When i went to the office, I was happy to get a paycheck. But that's not what I meant here. I loved working. And I love not working. But not going to an office (at the moment) means sometimes I honestly do not know what day of the week it is. I'm lucky for that, i know. I rest when i want to. I make art when i want to. I get by with what I have. It's a very good life.
Somehow you seem to get to know when it's Monday Mary, at least this half year past... your 'what next?' is just the Monday stuff to kick start the week, a veritable antidote to, you know, whatever the Sunday stuff has been... and surely making art takes work but, thing is, not of the Toads work kind.
Life is good. Life is very good. Life is very good indeed. Especially when there's word-work in the mix and free-flow of some days .
Nothing to do with Sunday, but I remember people like this:
-
"Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines —
they seem to like it.
-
Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets — and yet
No one actually starves."
-
Up Green Lane they came once a year and stayed for a few weeks, a few miles from any village. Locally people said they were Gypsies. What they called themselves, no one knew. Travellers, no, no one had heard of Travellers. They had cars, not many. Horses, small horses, and wood-built caravans. A book I had said they were Romanies and they ate hedgehogs. Baked them in clay, slowly, in the ashes of their fires. Broke the clay and out came all the spiny bits and you could get at the meat with your fingers. How I wanted to be with them and eat hedgehog! I think of it now, and my eyes well with tears.
John Betjeman's poem 'Slough' being published back in 1930, or thereabouts, leads me to wonder who lives up where the lanes were then, whether hedgehog - Spikey Erinaceus *Baked Hot n' Spicey* or *Stewed Slow n' Savoury* - is served, a delicacy of local delight, on the menus of Fast Food joints available to Eat-In, Take-Away or Deliverood to Doors (Free within a 3-miles radius?
Of course, unless Hedgehog Farming has been a innovative upstart, given the ecological pressures to preserve the presence of hedgehogs in the wild, maybe availability will be limited to Sunday Lunch Menus in Season?
Two Thousand Sundays Later, I Think of You
Sundays we steal lipsticks from the drugstore, sometimes earrings, a popsicle from the freezer. At the ski shop, we try on parkas, laugh too loud and get asked to leave. Inside Durbin’s we take armloads of bathing suits into the dressing room, put on the lipsticks, compare boobs. There is only one thing I want in life and that is to live in your house with you and your sister and your mom who is on her way to pick us up. Your house with its wood-paneled basement, its deep couches, the smell of laundry, the Kotex boxes in the bathroom where anyone can see them, the table in the dining room, covered with books and papers. Your mom, asking me questions. What do I like to do? You girls should write some stories. Dinners are stews and whole chickens which we eat in the living room. On this Sunday, you put a bikini inside your bag. At the bottom of the escalator the security guard is waiting. You transfer to the private academy for smart kids. On Sundays, my dad opens cans of chili and boils hot dogs. My mother's back on the 7th floor, making decoupage. What I like to do is anybody's guess. Last I heard, you were living, I think, in Ithaca.
Loved this one Mary. Your writing feels raw and true and is quite a gift. Pure memories served up in these evocative, crisp bits that cut through all the crap. I feel like you can write 10 sentences that do the work of 50. It really affects me. Thank you for sharing these. It feels like some of them must hurt and yet be palliative to write. They are so perceptive and beautiful.
Thank you so much, Kurt. I love writing them.
Beautiful memories. Life has taken us in different directions, but the memories of our Sundays together will always hold a special place in my heart.
I remember thinking wood paneling was super luxe. The end all be all— wood paneling. I love the way you write! Love the shoplifting part- such a glimpse into her life.
thanks, Sea!
You girls should write some stories.
This is potent, here, in the middle of this.
Well done.
Thank you, Niall.
The descriptions of the two homes are wonderful, if very sad in one case. And the petit larceny! I stole Hostess Fruit Pies on a regular basis.
It's terrible how much i shoplifted back then. I do not recognize myself as being that person at all.
yes, well, children and trauma often lead to some strange behavior. I knew I shouldn't take the pastries and I'd be in lots of trouble if caught, but still I persisted. Along with some other behaviors, thankfully given up.
Don't get me started on "some other behaviors." Thank god, i'm alive.
I stole stuff too when I was a kid, mostly toys or candies.
This is so well written! I love "What I like to do is anybody's guess." And so much more of it. The details are wonderful, all that abundance the speaker never had.
Emma, thanks so much. Means the world coming from you.
I shoplifted too as a kid. And a lot of other awful-r stuff, and if that's not how to spell awful-r, then I apologize.
definitely the right way to spell awful-r.
I want to apologize for something, just can't figure out what.
story of my life
Mary, you have a gift for endings! Love the "last I heard."
Thank you, Christine! Endings are where the magic happens in these short ones.
It's gratifying to hear you also have a criminal background, but not the kind that shows up in a check! (So far as we know). :)
Are those long ago memories when were were young the sweetest, I don't know.
Either way, there are so many things we let go.
My youthful memories are painful to me, not sweet. In fact, i try not to think about my youth as much as possible.
🥲Big hugs to you. This was a brave piece of writing.
Thank you.
I've read this three times already, and slowly. What poetry, Mary! I'm wanting more!! Every detail, so rich. Love the title, first sentence, the lipstick, the comparing boobs... What a joy to read you, always.
Imola! Thank you so very much!
Mary, I hope this is a chunk of something longer you are writing. This has so many potential pathways. Love the details.
Thank you, Angela. i wrote it this morning--i do the prompts after I post them with everybody else. So, we'll see what becomes of this one.
A cacophony of sound and aroma bombarded her senses.
Clank! Hissing, then an ear-splitting shrill whistling. If her head hadn’t already ached, this would have set it off. Two women burst into laughter as they queued, then relaxed into indecision.
She felt her insides churning with impatience. Come on, already. Decide. Coffee aroma, strong and thick. Thrum of banter between drive up customers and overly cheerful staff at the window. “Have a nice day!” punctuated each encounter. She shifted her weight, rolled her shoulders, and sighed. The day was already warm and this place felt sauna like. One woman turned and glanced at her.
“Oh, sorry. We’re slow, today.”
Sunday nodded at her, hoping her mouth was smiling, not grimacing in impatience. BANG! Knocking out the grounds, she registered. Clank! Hiss. Shrill Whistle. Bang! Rinse and Repeat.
The two women shuffled to one side.
“Good morning and welcome to…” Sunday cut him off, smile/grimace in place. “Twelve ounce latte. Hot, please.”
“No flavor?”
“No, thank you.”
“Regular milk?”
“Please.”
“And you said ‘hot?’”
“Yes.”
“Your name?”
“Sunday.” He scribbled on her cup.
“And what are you up to, today?”
Oh God. It’s the Spanish Inquisition. I just want a latte.
Clank! Hissss…and whistle…! And more laughter as one woman picked up a garish looking mug.
“Just on my way to work.” She couldn’t suppress the gleam of fire from her green eyes piercing the hapless barista. Must we engage in this inane guise of conversation?
She paid and dutifully stepped aside, slinking as far away from the early morning sun’s assault on the windows. She focused on her phone, then looked up, catching herself in the robotic gesture. As she pocketed it, she became aware of someone standing next to her–also putting his phone away. Clearly impatient with himself. Tall and slim, his dark hair just long enough to curl around his collar. He chuckled as he caught her gaze with his own deep brown eyes.
“Can’t wait to see how they spelled my name, today,” he offered.
She laughed in response. “Same here. But my name is a bit unusual…”
“How unusual? I bet mine is worse.”
“You’re on,” she said, holding out her hand to shake his.”
“You first,” he said.
“Sunday.”
He laughed a low melodic sound. “Friday.”
They were interrupted by the barista calling. “A latte for Sunny, and a mocha for Freddie.”
I can see the cover: a portrait of a man and a woman. He's "Tall and slim, his dark hair just long enough to curl around his collar." He's chuckling as he catches "her gaze with his own deep brown eyes."
Oh no! What have I done?🤣
Get Harlequin on the phone.
With the publishing world in its current state and knowing that the hottest market right now is romance, I have been tempted.
Sunday Latte?
oh what a sweet and funny story! A little rom-com on a Monday. Love it. I was wondering if anyone would choose the "name your character Sunday" option so I'm glad to see you went for it!
Thank you Mary. I had fun writing this on a Monday with so much unsettling news.
Love the depiction of the coffee shop via all of its sounds. And the mistaken sound at the end with Friday becoming Freddie - we hear our own expectations instead of listening to/recognizing each other. Well done.
Thank you.
When we were kids you were the pious one, Ellen, I the skeptic.
“If God is all about love, as you like to say, how do so many of us end up burning in hellfire?”
“It’s not His fault,” you’d say. “The Devil invented the bad place.”
“Oh, really? You might want to connect the dots on that one. Did God create everything that exists, or not?”
“Does all this questioning actually make you happy, Aaron?”
“No. I’m miserable. But I can’t help it.”
“You make everything more complicated than it needs to be.”
“It’s how I roll.”
We debated from our respective positions incessantly, until that one Sunday when I was seventeen, and you were fifteen, and I went to church with you. Afterward we went to see some flick, and walking home we noticed Pastor Frederick’s car in Mrs. Hansen’s driveway. You paused, wondering whether you should knock on her door and say hello, when we heard the unmistakable sounds of a passion play emanating from her bedroom window. My God, the look on your face! I was more or less amused, but you were stricken, mortified. I didn’t understand at the time the breadth and depth of your unraveling. I remember saying something like, it just goes to show that nobody’s perfect, we can talk the talk but not always walk the walk, but you looked right through me and took off for home, where you cloistered yourself in your room and sobbed for hours. When you emerged around supper time, you were not the same person. You repudiated your faith with the same fervor with which you had once embraced it, casting yourself to the winds of doing whatever you felt like with whomever would have you. It seems like we rarely spoke after that, you didn’t want to give me the satisfaction. You proclaimed yourself an atheist, while I dabbled in Eastern religions. You always reveled in being extreme.
We grew up, and grew apart. I became the more conventional sibling, the one with a lucrative if lifeless career, a wife and a house full of cacophonous children, while you roamed the Earth, dating rock stars, first male ones, but evolving toward the female ones, always restless, jumping ship the moment it became apparent that someone actually loved you. You would not be pinned down. You began with the hiking and backpacking and mountain climbing, proving yourself to yourself. I worried about you, but I got it. Somehow we’d traded places, that spring Sunday afternoon, and taken over each other’s life.
Then came that day, a year ago, if I’m not mistaken, another Sunday afternoon, when I received the news you’d gone missing, while mountaineering in Alaska, not far from Denali. No remains were ever found. I wasn’t entirely surprised, the world as it actually is was never quite enough for you. I try to imagine, on good days, that you’d located the stairway to heaven, and taken it home. Maybe, for you, it really was something like that. On bad days I just see you in over your head, running out of warmth, going cold with your last breath in a brightness of snow and ice, alone. And I remember us, quite young, at seven and nine, not quite old enough to know any better, when our parents finally went to sleep, and one of us would always sneak into bed with the other, it was easier to fall asleep warm, and not alone, and I send you some of that warmth and camaraderie, or try to, across the space that separates us, and of course I can’t tell if you feel it, wherever you are now, but I feel a bit better on the off-chance that you do, or even if you can only hear the echo of the words I never dared to say while you were alive, because they seemed manipulative somehow, loaded with demands and expectations, but I’ve been able to let go of all that now, Ellen, so I can finally speak straight from the heart, and tell you that I love you, and always have, and always will, no matter what, sister.
This is so powerful and beautiful. And i am so happy to see you here again, David!
Thank you. It’s good to be back!
Very powerful David. This one really got to me., especially the bit about 'the echo of the words I never dared say while you were alive.' That floored me. Such powerful longing and love in this.
Thank you, Kurt. Your comment floors me in return.
Wow, man alive. I adore this piece of writing, David! This is a keeper. It really took me on a nice ride. When I was in high school, a pastor in our town who'd kicked his son out for being gay and spent his days casting stones...well...it turns out he spent his days cheating on his wife with several church ladies. It was a small town, but still, he kept his position and his opinions of gay people. I thought about him while reading this, and about the extremes, as you wrote about. Thanks for the kick ass read.
Thank you! It feels so great to be able to do a little writing again in the midst of my chaotic existence. Hoping for more.
Have a great day!!
Wow. So very powerful..
David, this is beautiful. The wistfulness, 'on the off-chance you do.'
Thank you, Kevin.
So sad. So good.
Thank you, Mark. I’m glad I was finally able to generate something after too much time not having time…
It seems so easy to not have enough time. Glad you found it.
All too easy. And once off-track, easy to rot.
Centurion Sheila: This meeting of the Day of the Week Task Force is called to order. Hail Caeser!
All: Hail Caesar!
Centurion Sheila: Before we start, I have a couple of admin items. First, HQ says we will continue to hold all meetings on ZEUM until the current pox wave subsides, and it may be a while due to a shortage of medical-grade leeches. Second, I just got another nasty scroll from Accounting about the cost of replacement abacuses. People, please, these are precision instruments and not toys, you need to activate Find My Abacus and help us reduce costs. Got that?
Scribe Bob, please read the minutes from the last meeting.
Scribe Bob: Hail Caesar! At the last meeting we settled on “Saturday” for our sixth named day. The Saturnian representatives thanked everyone for their hard work. We reviewed complaints about Monday and Wednesday, and tabled discussion about naming the seventh day to today’s meeting.
Centurion Sheila: Thanks, Bob. Plebe Paul, what can you tell us about the Swedish Uprising?
Plebe Paul: Hail Caesar! The Swedes are reported to be heavily in favor of the name “Thursday,” but our spies report they have almost finished their longboat building program and plan to invade our northern provinces at the next new moon.
Centurion Sheila: Thanks, Bob. Plebe Peter, have we heard back from Astrology about how to frame this seventh day matter?
Plebe Peter. Hail Caesar! Centurion, I’m saddened to report that Astrology has not reached agreement on whether this shall be the first or last day of the week. There is growing sentiment for making it the last day of the week, but our spies tell us that is due to the growing popularity of the sonnet “Living for the Weekend” which glorifies joyous fun over the serious work of citizenship. There is a vocal minority still advocating for making this the first day of the week, based on interpretation of entrails of the last several sacrifices. Looks like they may not
[clicking sound]
Centurion Sheila: Hey, we’re cut off! What happened?
Recorded voice: Your meeting has been terminated because you reached the meeting word limit for ZEUM-Basic. Would you like to have unlimited meetings? For three coppers a month you can upgrade to ZEUM-Plus and receive no word caps, plus the ability to collect points for exciting premiums, like admission to future executions and gladiatorial games. Hail Caesar!
TOO funny!!!
Hail Caesar!
Monty Python-esque?
Yes. Or Mel-Brooks-esque. Take your pick from the annals of sophisticated comedy! :-)
Humour's a really interesting thing to think about, I find. You've done it really well here.
I never think, oh I'm going to try to be funny today. But sometimes an idea arrives that makes me start to try to pick up on something that tickles me in it. I never know when it's coming, when I try to write. Often, in fact, rather than feeling amused, I find myself being a little precious or worthy, I guess trying to be deep or fraught with meaning. As if humour can't contain or express truths!
It's a mystery to me, how to figure it all out.
Anyway - thanks for providing some joy!
😂😂😂
Hilarious! Loved it!!
OMG hysterical, Centurion. Hail Mark!
Three thousand eight hundred Sundays.
My, that is a lot of forgotten days.
Let's see. Brunch? Rarely.
Church? They made feeble attempts, but the annoying cultural persistence is getting worse.
Mittens frozen to a rope tow on a Massachusetts mountain built more character.
Sunday’s Homework and the premonition angst of amo amas amat.
I was also versatile at striking out
dribbling a grounder to short
Dropping the blooper to short center.
The monotony of The Hartford Courant and the New York Times.
Folding sections and dropping them in a pile on the floor.
More coffee ? and where did you put the cigarettes.
The Sunday Drive in the Country Squire to god knows where,
For a bag of Macintosh, and open the vent why don’t you and let the smoke out.
If you kids don’t cut it out I’ll stop the car.
So what. He started it. No, he did. Mommy they’re punching me.
Years later Sunday morning wake up and make love.
Nothing particular about that.
Bedroom windows open year round,
Coffee and fire are my departments.
And boy do I miss the bacon of back in the day.
An ambulatory Sunday, holding the door for her.
I’m still holding the door.
One of us moved on I’m not sure who.
When you have mastered your work and are good
Sundays slide by in a reverie (anticipation ) for Monday morning.
Tidy things up Sunday night, ready, I’m ready to be good.
No, better than anyone else, face it. For now.
Then one Sunday in the middle of a bad marriage
Reading the Comic section my mother called, and hung up.
What? Then the dear family friend calls back.
Your father, you better get down here now.
The funny pages were in four colors and the wife said pack a suit.
Her face all broken out because of carrying the dead child.
Mixed bag Sundays, Mixed bag life.
Who wants to volunteer to make a mess of things
Then hey all cheerful, one day at a time right?
The Buddhists don't see a problem.
At this point every day is a gift
people say, even Sundays alone.
There's still time.
That was a whirlwind of a life story right there. Heartbreak and resilience of a "mixed bag life." And that 'hey all cheerful, one day at a time, right?' killed. The last line is the one I'll hold onto until it's not true any longer. Loved this one, Tod.
Wow. Multitudes of vivid description here. And so many stories--so many Sundays.
Sunday. Wake early. Shower and primp hair. Scrutinize every inch for wrinkles. Tie an apron over the dress while frying the bacon. Rouse the kids and ignore their complaints about itchy clothes and missed games. Pile them into the car and say prayer it makes it to church without sputtering to a stop. Regret stuffing your toes into those shiny new heels. Grin through the bunion pain. Find a shady spot and praise yourself for getting here early enough to succeed. Herd the kids into the church and resist the urge to curse the committee that turned down the air conditioning project again this year. Smile sweetly at the little old widows giving you the once over. Try to maintain Christian thoughts when acknowledging your husband volunteered for the Sunday shift at work again. The organ pumps and wheezes and the loud chatter fades as the choir lines up in back. Church begins.
But that was last week. I lay in bed eyeing the alarm on my phone preset to 7 am every Sunday. I hit the stop, not snooze, and roll over. My husband mutters and resumes his snores. I slide out from under the covers and slip my feet into my favorite worn mules. My big toe finds comfort in the familiar worn spot. I tiptoe down the hall. Let the kids sleep. I cringe as the front door creaks and softly close it as I feel the sun warming my face. I stand at the railing and breathe the warm moist air. Another hot one was brewing. My face reddens but not from the heat. I can’t push away the memory of last Sunday.
The minister strutted back and forth like a tom turkey. His saggy throat waggling like one too. Praise Jesus and Amens echoed in the pews. He was fired up about the local election. Pleading with us to go to the polls and vote out the hellions who were approving of the smut in our schools. He rattled off a list of books who had been my best friends and mentors in my youth. My daughter’s eyes flashed anger. My son kicked the pew. My stomach clenched and I felt a fire in my gullet. I looked around. Didn’t anyone else hear him? Feel the hate? Come on kids. We’re out of here. Let’s go get ice cream. Don’t look at anyone. Heads high.
I love how she goes to church seeking peace and then finds it on her own porch, breathing the moist air.
I love how this turns from the expected Sunday-ness into a response to what happened in church. I'm grappling with all of this hate in the guise of Christianity. Your piece expresses my own frustration so well.
Yes! I feel this one.
My mother walks us to school on a Sunday. She says, here it is the first day of the week. “Yom rishon,” she repeats proudly, in her new, invented language. She had never walked us to school before, so I suppose I should be grateful, but deep down I hate her. I’m sweating like a monkey in this country. My skin is burnt from the harsh sun, and those palm trees… they were never worth the trouble. I wish I had said no to her proposal. Then, maybe, I wouldn’t be here, melting in the sun, walking to school, on a Sunday. My little brother is silent, like me. At the door we part ways. My mother wishes us a good day, and walks away. But where do we go from here? We don’t speak the language. We look at each other, suppressing our tears. Until a tanned lady gets hold of my hand, and smiles. She says some things in a foreign language and is pulling me along. My brother follows me, clutching my hand. At the entrance to a classroom, we are separated. The tanned lady pushes me in and smiles to the teacher. The door is closed behind me, where I hear my little brother wailing. The teacher is inviting me to sit by the vacant desk. But first, I need to walk across the classroom, with everyone staring. I hate to be the centre of attention. I bow my head down and open my new notebook. On the blackboard strange looking letters are arranged from right to left, making no sense at all. What do I do now? I feel the tears building up at the corner of my eyes, and I do my best to hold them in. But there is no use, because the teacher is walking towards me and is drawing something in my notebook. “Babaait. Babaait. Babaait,” she repeats, and the more she repeats it, the harder I cry. I want out of this classroom and out of this country. This is the worst Sunday. And I miss my daddy.
Oh, this makes me so sad for the little girl you once were, thrown into a circumstance you never asked for in a strange land where you were a stranger. I so look forward to reading your life story one of these days. (I often say shalom ba-bayit to my husband. Let me have my way and there will be peace in the house!)
Shalom babayit:)) you make me laugh Mary!
I’m beginning to think that Anne Lamott had a point when she said that if you survive your childhood, you have enough material for a life time. I don’t know what it is about your prompts that bring this out in me, but I try not to overthink it. And as with everything, this strange childhood came with many gifts. The Hebrew language is one of them :) xox
But did we survive our childhoods?? Okay, i guess we did! And yes, we've got massive amounts of material!
Until I wrote this, I wasn't aware that I thought much about Saturdays or Sundays. I'm not religious so Sunday had no connotation with church or god. When I went into recovery, Saturday became a day of recovery starting with a meeting in the morning, errands after lunch, and movie and/or dinner with a friend in the evening.
Sunday night has always been a school night. I'm 76 years old and it is still a school night. When I went to Graduate School where I had to talk and listen a lot and then when I launched my career where particularly listening was a non-negotiable requirement, I wanted to protect my Sundays--no talking on the phone, only being with close friends or alone. No work, not even professional reading. It was to be a day of rest for my mind. I don't remember how long it lasted. I wasn't consistent and have no memory of what tempted me away from such exquisite self-care.
Eventually, as I took on more service in my 12 step program, Sunday became a day of meetings--the opposite of what I had longed for and actually had created. I accepted it because the doing of service, of giving back what had been so freely given to me was paramount. I tried to find another day of the week to hold closely to my heart. But it just wasn't Sunday.
Cuz on Sunday, one can sleep in with no guilt. It isn't the same on another day. It's a delicious luxury.
One can sit around for hours with cups of coffee and the New York Times (I'm extraordinarily mad at the NYTimes these days so if I lived in the US, it would be the Washington Post).
One can do three loads of laundry and love it because there is nowhere to go and nowhere to be.
One can look forward to a lazy dinner and watching Masterpiece Theatre with a neighbor.
Sundays have always been sweet days though over the years, they haven't often resembled each other.
I'm so angry at the NY Times. And I'm with you--Sunday night is forever a school night (and the year starts in September and ends in June, with a break for summer).
Been pissed off by the NYT for so many years I don't look at it any more. He said - she said, and The Mustache of Understanding.
I'll never get my husband to cancel the NYTimes, he can't see how it's gone down hill. I heard the Cleveland Plain Dealer is still a good paper.
Also the Philadelphia Inquirer.
I have to say that I, too, am angry at the New York Times. And also David Remnick of the New Yorker. Love your description of what Sundays should be...
The Times has turned into a tabloid.
It’s sad.
I’m with you. I share your service experience. Happy to say mine is another day.
Sun Day
Flying from Seattle to Los Angeles in February feels like going from a vampire movie to a RomCom. Morning sun on the face causes her brain to adjust from grim existence to wild exuberance — Sun, and freedom from the oppression of children. Banked self kindles into a solar flare of charisma — sparking laughter, intelligence, seduction. To feel intensely alive after months of drizzling grey is a magnetic storm. To reclaim body and mind after weeks of domestic enslavement is cosmic radiation coursing through the veins. By the end of that sunny day, in spite of the banality of meetings and corporate speak, she was burning, a comet of intensity that knew it had to plummet back into the atmosphere of her stifling life. Of course, he fell in love with her on that one sunny day in LA. She radiated the energy of a dying star.
Yes, of course, he did! Wonder what happened next, when the energy burned off...
“this is going to end badly” she says to him sadly.
“How do you know?” He says lustfully.
“I’ve read the entire western canon. It always ends badly” she says as she crawls onto his body.
Ha. So true.
Ps. Thanks for bringing me back into the fold. Have missed you
So happy to see you here.
OMG. My dream is to live in Los Angeles in the winter. And by "winter" in Seattle that means October-July.
LA in the winter; Seattle in the summer. I'm working on making that scheme happen. (And by "Seattle" I mean one of the islands....)
It's a good dream. And doable! Check out this little place called Quilcene.
Oh, yes, I know Quilcene. But my former life is Bainbridge, and we often think of going there for a couple of months in the summer when it's too hot here. And from there, it's easy enough to get to Seattle to see relatives (I still have many relatives there, since I grew up in North Seattle), including PKT's mom who, thank God, is still with us. And I can see you too!
I'll meet you downtown!
Yay!!! Coffee!!!
I feel like Seattle is two different cities — the perfect PMW city of crisp blue sky days with everything green and brilliant, and the grim February dingy 60s era town of mid-February
Around April Fool's Day I'm ready to curl up and sleep until summer starts in July. Let's get a bunch of people together to get out of here in the winter and rent a big house in Los Angeles. We can call it a writer's retreat! We can all do Mary's prompts together.
Yes, do that!!!
Let's do it! A Mary g. retreat.
The pigeons took their places without, apparently, any prior coordination. The coffee orders were a lot of variations on a narrow theme: coffee from the roaring machine and milk tipped fast out of stainless steel carafes, in greater proportion or lesser, poured deadly hot or at room temperature. In every case, it would be milk with an undertone of UHT flavor, undiscernable to those who have all their lives sipped these same coffees. There were advantages to being from a place.
Also, Sundays. If you had any family or friends, Sunday was a time to see them and do nothing together. You could lean into the doing nothing, even flirt with the idea of doing nothing by yourself, arriving showily late for lunch or first for a glass of vermouth in the sun.
Or, if you went it alone, a flock of people would be sat there nursing their drinks, roosted all around you like the grey, pecking pigeons. Each one left in Sunday peace to let their minds drift to itching, private thoughts, while they waited for the rest of their parties to arrive. And all the variously floating minds would stare in more or less the same direction, vaguely towards the center of the plaza, at the bright world that started just beyond the edge of the awning.
“I know that book.”
But that Sunday, a voice came from two tables away, and in English. It wasn’t a known voice. It couldn’t have been a known voice -- who knew you in that town that would speak to you in English? In one second you would glance up from the book, and in that one small timeless sweep of saccades, switching from text to human face, there may as well have passed through your mind everything that would follow after, the whole lifelong history of how one thing inevitably unravels into the next. But if it did happen, it was so fast that there would be no recalling it. As those who live through a car accident strive to express how something could be just so sudden, all your powers of observation and recall fell short at last that day, and the wide open loneliness of your Sundays was no more.
So lovely! (I had to look up "saccades," what a great word.)
On this gloomy Sunday morning, with its grey sky spitting rain that the wind blows against the window, Sam comes to a decision. Perhaps not so much a decision as a realization. Perhaps not so much a realization as an acceptance. Sam stops.
Sam realizes that she is like the rain against the window come into existence just because such things have to happen in this universe and blown about because that’s the way it is and will always be, until she isn’t the rain anymore. Maybe then she will be mud, or a puddle, or a river, or a glass of water, or just vapor. Sam stops hoping for an escape because there is no escape. Sam stops trying because trying never works. Sam lets go.
Sam rests quietly basking in the letting go. A peace unlike any she’d ever known fills her. She sits at her table, sipping her tea, watching the rain and just being. The better part of this gloomy Sunday flows by. And, of course, Sam begins doing again. She makes a sandwich. She wipes down a counter. She considers the week ahead. She even puts on a jacket and takes herself out for a walk.
On Monday, the sun returns. Sam dresses and goes to her job at the insurance company. Nothing about this Monday will be any different than the ones that have preceded it and the ones that will follow. Only Sam is different although it’s anyone’s guess as to how long that can possibly last. But, just for this Monday, so far, Sam is a tiny bit comfortable in the afterglow of her gloomy Sunday.
"And of course, Sam begins doing again." Yes, that's the ticket, always. Movement in some direction. Really nicely done.
Thank you. This was my very sideways tribute to Wallace Steven's Sunday Morning.
Beautiful. Particularly the entire second paragraph; such motion in stillness. Reminds me of Emily Dickinson's After Great Pain.
Thank you so much! As I just told Mary, this was inspired by Wallace Stevens' Sunday Morning, a poem I was assigned to read in college, but it turns out speaks to me more clearly these decades later.
That Stevens poem I for some reason remember as green and orange? I'll have to look it up.
Great work.
'just because such things have to happen'
Here's the link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/13261/sunday-morning
Green and orange is a good title for it too.
Just looked at the Emily Dickenson. I hadn't made that connection in my aware mind, but that is the feeling I was thinking of. Must have been bubbling down below.
SPANISH SUNDAY, a travelogue
—wc 465—
Sunday in Madrid, and the terrace cafes host throngs of ‘Domingueros’, the Sunday People. Saturday night is for ‘La Marcha’, as the Spanish call it. This is the nightlife of the young and old, but only the most robust party-makers will last til the end, and in the wee hours, have their churros y chocolate.
(https://rb.gy/juetnv)
Then you go home and sleep for a few hours and are back in the street in the late morning for the weekly jaunt in El Rastro. It’s one of the oldest districts, where the buildings are from the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The names of the streets tell tales, like la Calle del Desengaño, which you could translate as the street of the rude awakening.
On Sunday, every shop and bar is open, and the streets are closed to traffic. There is music in the streets, food, and waves of people. Talk is loud and the vermouth and beer are cheap. Everyone is hanging out and life is good, even when it’s anything but.
It’s where you go to hear a concert in a bar so small, the patrons and dancers spill out into the street, where you stroll arm in arm with your lover from the night before in your last night’s clothes. It’s where the half mad poet who threw away their lithium is raving on the corner, and where an old woman dressed in the costume of two centuries ago is cranking a painted barrel organ. She smiles as you pass by, and an old key maker pushes his wooden canopied cart festooned with every species and size of keys imaginable, including some enormous skeleton keys.
Sunday is the result of the entire week’s progress. It’s the promise of a new dress or an ‘occación’ (unexpected special offer), like a mint condition 45 rpm of Mavis Staples’ “I’ll Take You There”. You wonder how the hell it made the long voyage to this vintage record seller’s stock. There are hundreds of stalls selling a dizzying plethora of new and used stuff. You want a piano? A drill? A leather jacket? Baby clothes? Hiking boots? There are even streets where you’ll find crazy stuff no one would ever want, and a lot that’s probably stolen.
At three o’clock, the sound of the galvanized metal poles falling onto the pavement echoes in the Plaza de Cascorro as the vendors break down their stalls. It’s time to go have lunch, either at grandma’s house (La abuela) or your favorite restaurant.
The defining authorities of Spain's collective past—the Church and the military—don't have the same psychological power over people as they once did, and so this kind of Sunday event is emphatically secular, but its observance is a ritual bordering on the religious.
Full version with photos and video here> https://open.substack.com/pub/camilahamel/p/sunday-in-madrid?r=1tfs3w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I feel as though I am there. Thank you for taking me along! And i absolutely love Street of the Rude Awakening, which I think will be the title of my next short fiction!
The name refers to an incident in 1843, when an attempt was made on the life of Ramón María Narváez y Campos, the Duke of València and a military figure turned politician. He was attacked in his carriage on that spot. It's a very short street.
Thank you! (Do you live in Madrid now?)
No, I moved back to Barcelona 9 years ago. But I was there for quite a while.
This is very colorful. I can feel the place you describe.
The world is so rich.
I loved El Rastro when I was there a couple of years ago; spent hours wandering. And Saturday night is just as you describe it, everyone out, walking. Toss in the beginning of Semana Santa and some small processions in the street on Palm Sunday...Madrid is maravilloso.
i want to go!
Go! It's a fantastic city.
Sunday Was –
a toasted garlic bagel, a smear of cream cheese, a touch of sweet onion. Sometimes I
smothered the whole thing in arugula fresh from my garden. We drank too much coffee,
black.
I always read the book review, while you read Maureen Dowd. Then we argued
about what you said Maureen said. That’s when we decided not to nap, rather to walk
along the lakefront and continue to argue.
Then you went home on Sunday night to your family.
oh, wow. LOVE this one.
Here, I guess.
Er, no. No I don’t think anyone can, I was here on my own all day.
Well. Nothing really. Just Sunday things.
Washing, ironing. You know.
Watched some television. Not much at all.
Nothing I can think of, sorry, why are you asking me this?
And you think I did it?
So, am I in trouble or something?
Well. There’s not much more I can tell you.
Pretty early. I’m a lark. Susannah was always the night owl before she… .
My wife.
No.
No, she isn’t.
No.
Two years ago.
An accident.
We didn’t own a car. She fell.
The stairs. Look, I don’t see how this bears any relation to
No of course she hadn’t. It was 9 o clock in the morning. Look
It’s not that early.
Not even for a night owl, no.
No, we never argued. Unless you’re going anywhere with this, I really think I don’t want to
I’m not obstructing anyone. I just don’t see how
Of course I do.
I’m sorry I just don’t remember much about Sunday.
They just all bleed into each other, when
What’s an interesting word?
I just meant they’re all the same.
I haven’t been able to since, for the last year.
I have my pension, and…
Yes there was some insurance.
Enough.
If you call this living. These days bleeding into, blurring into each other. Every day may as well be Sunday. Nothing changes, turn on the tv, watch the same shows, wash a dish, no need to fill the dishwasher, no need to cook a meal even, just live off a few crackers and what not, if you call this living.
That’s it.
Ok.
Ok, thanks.
Glad to be of help.
I’ll see you out. Look, sorry if I was…
No, I know, but still, there’s no need for me to be rude.
You’re only trying to do your job after all?
And, how is the job going? You enjoy it?
I dare say. Listen, would you like a..
Oh it sticks sometimes. I could put on the…
It’s the heat. This dreadful heat. It’s been dreadfully hot hasn’t it.
Humid. That’s the word, you’re right.
Oh, you’ve managed it.
No, don’t go.
Don’t go.
If you have any more questions, you know where to...
Don't go
What a great read. All of it happening between the lines.
Wow. I love the way you did this! So original, so much tension and sadness. It has a great shape.
Brian completed his calculations. He took down the calendar and circled 30th October.
So, it would happen on a Sunday. How apt.
He had a little over six months to wait, and in that time he got through many pencils checking and re-checking his calculations.
‘What are you writing?’ asked his son, picking up the loose papers and turning them about, frowning earnestly. His son fetched some paper and set himself up across the table copying out the symbols with his crayon.
‘What are you writing?’ asked his wife, resting her chin on his shoulder, peering at the calculations. Her breath was warm on his cheek.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked himself when, with just a month to go, his calculations converged yet again on that Sunday.
His grandmother had taught him the art of calculation, but it was not mathematics, or rather, not only mathematics. You could say it was a blend of poetry, of logic and of prognostication. Or, you could say it was nothing more than marks on a page, one after the other, a boy’s scribbles in crayon. He picked up one of his son’s sheets. There they were, the symbols, the words, chains of them, made mechanically and with care but without the intuition or sense needed to give them heft. And here, look here, a mistake had crept into the workings, and the sense faltered and the conclusion could bear no weight.
No matter.
Come October the 29th, he was satisfied they’d made the most of that month together. At the beginning of October, he’d put away his papers, shuffled them into a pile along with his son’s scribblings, and weighted them under the carriage clock on the dresser, where it had told the time without a single winding for the twenty years since his grandmother's death.
On that Saturday, they walked through piles of fallen leaves. They swung their son between them and he laughed as he kicked up the soft yellow leaves and the sun sank between the bare branches along the lane.
Brian woke before his wife and their son and sat quietly at the kitchen table. He resisted the urge to look one last time at the calculations. He did not, therefore, notice that his grandmother’s clock had stopped on Saturday evening.
His calculations had been consistent. The sun, they said, would not rise on this day.
There are gaps in my sense of what's going on here, but I thought I'd just let it sit as it is.
a kind of horror story, playing out slowly. Have you seen the movie Melancholia? i would not recommend it, it ruined me for several years. But this reminded me of that--the world coming to an end.
Not seen it. I'll have a look.
don't blame me if it gives you nightmares!
"So what are you doing Sunday?"
"Sunday stuff."
"Sunday stuff?"
"Sure. Same kinda' stuff I've been doing, Sundays, all my life."
"Same?"
"Sure. Sunday's stuff'll be pretty much what I did last Sunday, 'n pretty much what'll be doing next Sunday."
"What kinda' stuff do you do Sundays?"
"You know, Sunday stuff."
"Such as?"
"Serving altar, first mass, seven thirty. Sitting down to fried breakfast, tea, toast, marmalade. Books, pens, paper, studying some, on the dining table; or football, kicking about some. Serving beers, behind the after last mass pre-lunch time bar in the catholic club. Sitting down to roast Sunday lunch, spuds, veg, Yorkshires and gravy. Basketball, late afternoon training; or park walking, talking some. Serving time, passing from boy's league Bishop to men's league Cardinal, treated to a burger and fries in the Wimpy, by my older peers with deeper pockets. Sitting down in the Golden Cross, serving the guys with the round of beers I've just stood, five lagers and two packets of peanuts for under a quid. Back on the last Sunday bus, homework imperative for first thing Monday, English Lit teacher's a tyro, not excuses tolerated, he being the coach of the Bishops and player coach of the Cardinals."
"Sheesh. All that stuff on a Sunday?"
"Sure. That's typical enough, albeit that Sunday sample is a blast from Sundays' past. Still the same, Sundays, ever one full of today's Sunday stuff, just another variation on the never ending story of the day of rest. So, anyway, what are you doing Sunday?"
"Oh just, you know, Sunday stuff."
"I get you. Right on. I surely do. Can't stop now, gotta' go get my stuff ready for sofa surfing the sports channels on Sunday. Have a good. See you Monday? Share a cart? We can compare notes between holes as we trundle around the course?"
🤣
"Sunday stuff." That about sums it up right there.
Really stirred the mud swamp of memory for me Mary.
Found myself realising that on reaching three score years and ten a body passes the milestone having headed into and out of 3640 Sundays, give or take. Seemingly set, staid, same old-same old... except no two Sundays, and the stuff we do in them are actually ever quite the same... there's constant, slow, so slow change as we move along the arc of our life story...
Fine prism for prising moments from memory as formable fragments for memoir. On a grander scale, just think, stuff that's happened on Sundays is a whole seventh of the stuff that we call History... at least since bright minds started seeing cycles and building the timescales that we, in our time and culture, call calendar seven days weeks and reasoned that one should be different by being the day of rest from the toil and grind of labouring through the previous six days.
That's a lot of Sundays, Rob. And yes, no two alike. It's amazing how change occurs whether we are paying attention or not. As far as a "day of rest," now that i no longer go to an office to work, the days have flattened out. It's harder to see the difference in days any more.
So its Toads that made all the difference?
https://www.poetry.com/poem/58800/toads
Beyond the Toads and the Six Soiled Days that structure lives there's nothing but ennui of the endless isotropic plane of Sunday Stuff Days?
Makes a body think does an encounter with poet Larkin's Toads. Or at least it is a piece of writing that struck and stuck with me.
When i went to the office, I was happy to get a paycheck. But that's not what I meant here. I loved working. And I love not working. But not going to an office (at the moment) means sometimes I honestly do not know what day of the week it is. I'm lucky for that, i know. I rest when i want to. I make art when i want to. I get by with what I have. It's a very good life.
Somehow you seem to get to know when it's Monday Mary, at least this half year past... your 'what next?' is just the Monday stuff to kick start the week, a veritable antidote to, you know, whatever the Sunday stuff has been... and surely making art takes work but, thing is, not of the Toads work kind.
Life is good. Life is very good. Life is very good indeed. Especially when there's word-work in the mix and free-flow of some days .
Nothing to do with Sunday, but I remember people like this:
-
"Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines —
they seem to like it.
-
Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets — and yet
No one actually starves."
-
Up Green Lane they came once a year and stayed for a few weeks, a few miles from any village. Locally people said they were Gypsies. What they called themselves, no one knew. Travellers, no, no one had heard of Travellers. They had cars, not many. Horses, small horses, and wood-built caravans. A book I had said they were Romanies and they ate hedgehogs. Baked them in clay, slowly, in the ashes of their fires. Broke the clay and out came all the spiny bits and you could get at the meat with your fingers. How I wanted to be with them and eat hedgehog! I think of it now, and my eyes well with tears.
John: If it's okay to ask--where was this?
A scientist shot a hedgehog on our farm in Maine because it was interfering with some experiments. He made a stew out of him and gave us some.
John Betjeman's poem 'Slough' being published back in 1930, or thereabouts, leads me to wonder who lives up where the lanes were then, whether hedgehog - Spikey Erinaceus *Baked Hot n' Spicey* or *Stewed Slow n' Savoury* - is served, a delicacy of local delight, on the menus of Fast Food joints available to Eat-In, Take-Away or Deliverood to Doors (Free within a 3-miles radius?
Of course, unless Hedgehog Farming has been a innovative upstart, given the ecological pressures to preserve the presence of hedgehogs in the wild, maybe availability will be limited to Sunday Lunch Menus in Season?