Sundays are lazy.
I wake up early because I always wake up early. I can’t sleep in like I used to sleep in. Seventeen-year-old Sam could sleep until noon. Not forty-four-year-old Sam. He’s up with the sun. Usually before the sun.
I feed the cats. I make my wife Katie’s coffee. Have breakfast. Drive to Press Coffee and buy two chai tea lattes with oat milk. One for Sam. One for Katie. Katie chases her first cup of coffee with a chai tea latte. I’m drinking caffeine again, but nothing like I used to. A chai tea latte is half the caffeine of the black coffee I used to chug.
We watch church online because that is how we watch church after the pandemic. I go for a run. And then I collapse on the couch, watch some football, play some video games, eat too much food, and the day gets away from me.
Sundays are lazy.
***
Sundays depressed me as an adolescent. I’d be eager to watch the Vikings but, as the day wore on, I became anxious about going back to school. This was especially true in 6th grade. We’d moved to a new school district, I was chubby, and my buck teeth were the size of skyscrapers. Fitting in at a new school in the aftermath of my parent’s divorce proved difficult. I suppose living in diaspora from Highland Park made me anxious I’d rather be at home playing Super Nintendo, reading books, or looking at baseball cards than walking the halls of Chippewa Middle School. Leave me alone, will ya?
Eventually that anxiety passed. Or it didn’t, but I put it away all the same. In high school, Sundays usually meant 8-hour shifts. I was the opening manager at McDonalds and Subway. Talk about prestigious. I’d get to work at six in the morning and be done by the late afternoon. Drink enough coffee to stunt Dikembe Mutombo’s growth. I should have been 6’7”. Alas. I’d go to my girlfriend’s house after my shift. Stay there too late. Wake up too early. I don’t know how I did it.
Sundays were sacred when I started my career as a high school teacher. This was in my early twenties. I’d spend everything I had in my classrooms Monday through Friday. And then I might go out with friends on Friday or Saturday. I was beat by Sunday. Typically, I’d lounge around in my underwear, watch football, play video games, and hide from the world. Or I’d grab a coffee and a bagel, go to my friend Mike’s house in Northeast Minneapolis, and watch the Vikings with him. Nothing more than that. Necessary respite for an extreme introvert.
These days, the house is never quiet. And there is always more stuff to do. Work to do. Adult life to attend to. Two young children. Responsibility to beat the band. Still, I’ll admit that the last couple of Sundays have been lazy. And that seems like a good thing to me.
***
There’s nothing all that profound in what I’m writing about here. The Sabbath is intended to be holy. I’m well aware that the Sabbath lasts from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. And I’m well aware how heretical it is to imagine the Sabbath should take place on Sunday. Everybody is a heretic, I suppose. To each their own.
As for me? Sam needs his Sabbath. Lounging about in underwear. Watching football. Playing video games. Reading books. Meowalicious dozing on the couch. Lazy, lazy, and more lazy.
Samuel Jaye Tanner 