Years of Sundays

If you write long enough, it becomes harder to scrape out a column, as you feel you've already said everything you wanted to say.  Sure, there are thousands of stories in any given 24 hours, but many of them echo what happened before and thus do not haunt the brain and demand to be written the way they once did when it was the first time one thought of telling such a tale.   However, the desire to carve out something new from the every day persists.  

Today is Sunday. It's September 4th, Saint Mother Teresa has been proclaimed, and we had our traditional bacon and bagels after mass as a family.  We honor Sunday by not demanding too much of anyone if we can avoid it.  Sure, there is homework and laundry, dishes and groceries, but much of the day is marked by a stillness, if not of body, of spirit.  We all come to the table, we say grace, and Paul makes sure everyone is there.  If someone hasn't made it to the table, he will get up and lead them.   It is a ritual, and it is a source of joy, we start a new week.  We call the older children if we can, so that everyone gets a "Hello" and "What's going on this week?" before the grind of the week itself starts.  

Today we will make brisket and watch Notre Dame play Texas.  I will finish up the last of the paper work from the first week of school and try to keep up the mental promise to 1) keep blogging, 2) write a column a week for publication, and continue work on the two book projects I thought I'd have more time for when Fall hit.  

There is never more time than we have in the day we are in, and that's the real key I think, to writing, to exercise, to prayer, to paper work, to all of it.  Making today a good day, requires I not so much not fritter the minutes, but spend the time well.  It is okay to sit and watch a movie with your almost eight year old son because he loves it, it's also okay to doze during half of it because you have seen it so often, but still get the high five when it ends for being there.   We live in a busy age, when every minute can be plugged in, tweeted, monitored and measured, so I hope when they all grow up, what they remember are the moments like my 17 year old playing chase with the five year old, and the two of them making fifteen cats out of duplos for her cat shop.  I hope the 14 year old remembers taking a break from her AP homework to practice guitar and make the rub for the bbq.   I hope the twelve year old remembers playing chess and sometimes losing to his mom and the girls recall cranking the tunes while we did the dishes.   I'll also hope the Irish win tonight and don't look bad doing it.

What I really hope is they remember, every day is great in the details, even if the plans aren't always fleshed out. I hope they remember childhood as years of Sundays.