Sunday Mornings

On Sunday mornings, we walked three miles downtown. Past our high school lockers and the playground where I spent weekday afternoons monitoring the swings. Sometimes we jumped on, let our feet kiss the sky, and then soared mid-air for just a moment before our feet hit the gravel below. We laughed at our clumsy landings, proud of the moments snatched from years ago, not so long ago, really. Cut through the field and out onto the curved back road. We dissected high school crushes and the Friday night game. Who stood where, in the stands, leaning against the fence, waiting in line for the hot chocolate. We watched the Friday night game - we won the state championship that year, I learned plays and players and statistics - but also kept watch for those quiet smiles and a chance, away from the florescent hallway lights, the muted beige walls.

On Sunday mornings, we walked to the center of town and stood in line for Dunkin Donuts French Vanilla coffee and free maple donuts. She worked the weekend morning shift and handed them over the counter with a smile. She hated and loved that job. We walked to the Friday night field on sunny Sunday mornings, and in the rain, in the mid-November snow. Three games of youth football, my brother, their brother, and the junior league. Back to back to back with just enough time to pay homage to the ocean. At the top of bleachers, the ocean appeared above the surf club roof. We answered its call with our hoods pulled over our ears. We made plans for our twenties along the shore. Urban lofts, paint easels, world travels, and mostly love. For three years, the pavement, the bleachers, the shore courted our wishes, our hopes, our maybe somedays...

***

We tried to make it to brunch by noon most Sunday mornings. Before the last call crowd rolled in wearing pajamas and slippers, we slipped in at noon and congratulated ourselves on dressing and eating early, earlier than most. Heaps of fake eggs, bite size pancakes, endless bacon, and orange-grapefruit juice blends. We ate almost every meal together for four years. Before text messaging, digital cameras, and facebook, we completed Saturday night reviews before we swiped our card and we ate Sunday mornings mostly in silence. A quiet comfort of a family and a home, away from, amid a sea of bed-head and sea-sick stomachs. A library afternoon loomed, promises to ourselves to get it done and get ahead, but the morning minutes ticked slowly and we sipped our orange juice without concern for time.

***

"Hey, hey, it's okay, this will end soon, I promise, you are okay, I promise, it will be okay." It was almost a Sunday morning mantra. Repeated frequency dependent on how many hours we spent outlining on Saturday night. Even during the weeks, months, of finals preparation, when one hour rolls into another without much divide between life and law, when it's all just law, Sunday mornings announced themselves. I stood in line for Mr. Bagel's everything bagel with vegtable cream cheese and a medium Green Mountain coffee with too much, just enough, sugar. The first two years, I climbed the steps to the library balancing books, computer, bagel, coffee, and my sanity and settled into the the table in the corner or the carrel on the third floor. Put in my headphones and took the first bite.. The third year, I returned home, to our warm apartment, with dark wood molding and bay windows. Opened the blinds to the morning sun and slipped into my bedroom desk, turned on the Pandora jazz station, took the first sip of coffee... Sun, saxaphone, and sugared coffee set my daydreams free. On Sunday mornings, I watched my daydreams dance to the scattered beats in the sunbeams. And I promised myself, it will be okay. And it is. Okay.

***

Sunday mornings have marked and moved my life. Ebb and flow and moments to just stand still. These Sunday mornings I am here and there and never quite sure where I'll take that first sip of coffee, brewed or purchased. I worried this morning, as I waited for the shop to toast my bagel, that here and there and never quite sure won't mark or move my life. I worried about these days slipping through the cracks and disappearing. 

Hold on tighter, I told myself, as the shop door opened and she walked through. The friend who shares a bedroom wall with me. I lit up and she lit up and we had so much to catch up on from the past seven hours we spent sleeping. It could have been our kitchen on a Sunday morning, but the coffee shop played music with a latin beat. And while her bagel toasted, we danced right there in the middle of the coffee shop floor and laughed and began our Sunday. As it turns out, here and there and not quite sure marks and moves too. I am learning, not to hold on tighter, but to let go.