Sunday Morning

Sunday mornings are a special time. My mother is at church, usually gone before I wake up. My father spends the whole morning in the basement doing work or goofing off or doing whatever it is that he does, presumably enjoying the change in routine as much as I do. I sleep as a first order of business. I work Sunday evenings, so Sunday morning is the one time I can sleep without my subconscious buzzing with the thought that maybe I’m late for work. I don’t always sleep late. In fact sometimes I’m up rather early, ready to start my (Sun)day.

I wake up on Sunday mornings and instantly try to fall back asleep. I was never able to fall back asleep until a year or two ago, and I’m still not great at it. If I can’t, I usually smile and mash my face into the pillow, enjoying the warmth and the lack of urgency. There is no “usual” time to wake up on Sundays, sometimes it’s 6:30am, sometimes it’s noon. While I am mashing my face I let a few thoughts drift through my head, and more often than not one of them sticks and I ponder that for a while. I reach my hand over the side of the bed and pad it around until I find one of two things: (1) my cell phone, or (2) the book I’m reading. If I find the cell phone first I check the time (smiling again at my lack of schedule) and see if there were any messages left for me after I fell asleep. Usually I find the book first, it is a bigger object after all, and I completely ignore the phone and its time and its messages. I turn on the light next to the bed and snuggle back into my cocoon with only the tips of my fingers exposed to hold the book. Before I can get through a page my eyes start to water and I have to wipe the tears and sleep dust away, but since no part of me wants to leave the warm womb of my bed, I just mash my face against the pillow again. Having cleared my eyes, I read the book that is balanced on its side in front of my reclining face. I don’t stop myself from dozing off in the middle of a sentence.

I stay in the warm bubble of flannel sheets and printed words for as long as I can. Usually the first thing I do in the morning is head for the bathroom to evacuate, but not on Sundays. Every step on Sunday is a sort of game where the goal is to press back against the usual morning routine. How long can I go without opening my eyes? How long can I stay in bed? How long before I have to go downstairs? To eat? To shower? To put on pants? Eventually, after maybe an hour, the need to eat or wash overtakes me. Usually it’s the need to eat, but that depends on the Saturday night that preceded the Sunday morning– notably if I ate something substantial or hung out with lots of smokers I’ll feel the needs to bathe before I need to eat. (This morning my hands smelled like plastic, which was as distracting as it was inexplicable.) Often, after eating or showering or both, I’ll go back to bed, reclaiming my cocoon, and read or sleep some more. Sometimes I’ll feel compelled to write and I reach for the pad of paper that lives under my bed. Occasionally I’ll find something scrawled on the paper already, the last remnant of Saturday night left behind before I drifted off. I’ll write whatever Sunday thoughts I’ve got going on in the form of a note-to-self journal or a letter to a friend. All the writing invariably gets shoved back under the bed into a pile of late-night and early-morning thoughts. That pile, if anyone was to read through it, tells the story of my life from the periphery of consciousness. I have not read through it. I took the pile from Cleveland back with me in a box and started a new pile here in Buffalo.

Finally Sunday morning (long-since turned in to Sunday afternoon, just not in my mind) will come to a logical close. A friend will call me and invite me to lunch, my mother will return home from post-church brunch and rouse me, or I’ll just have my fill of dozing and reading and writing and thinking. I will put on pants, which is the final step in my acceptance of a new day. The writing goes on the pile, the cell phone goes from charger to pocket, the book lays closed beside the bed. Today I looked out the window and was surprised that it was snowing, because in my Sunday morning world there is no weather, there are no seasons, there exists nothing beyond my immediate surroundings and the comfort of my mind. The snow draws me out the window into a world with weather systems, traffic patterns and even Other People. I see the cars on the street and know that the world doesn’t value Sunday mornings the way I do. I doubt they could understand the value of my lazy Sunday morning life. But Sunday morning has bolstered my constitution for another week, and I am ready to confront this world. I am wearing pants after all.