there's something to be said for sunday

There's something to be said for Sunday. For hot cups of coffee, plates of scrambled eggs, and the crinkle of the fat morsel of the Sunday New York Times. For waking up early to the muffled sounds of a world outside the door and choosing to avoid it for a little while. For knowing that there are no obligations today, just to float through peacefully in preparation for the week to begin tomorrow.

I woke up this morning to a sound that I was severely hoping to not hear again: a mouse scratching frantically inside the live trap it wandered into sometime last night. This is the third mouse, in less than twenty four hours, that has been relocated from my kitchen to greener pastures. After returning from releasing the little bugger to join its kin, I shuffled back up the sidewalk, grabbing the familiar blue plastic bag from my porch on my way in. The blue plastic bag loaded down with the weight of the world inside of it. Piles and piles of words are contained within it, describing the state of the world as it is on November 22, 2009. Or, at least, highlights and lowlights of the world as it is. First order of business before diving into my portal to the world at large, is COFFEE. While it brews, I take the time to shower, washing off the grime of yesterday and replacing my pajamas with similarly comfortable sweat pants. Once coffee is in the mug, I am back to bed, pages of newspaper spread around me. This is a Sunday morning.

I stand in solidarity with the other members of the Brown family. I know that 270 miles down the highway, the Sunday morning ritual is also occuring right now. The same elements are involved: coffee and New York Times. This is the way it has been in the Brown household for as long as I can remember learning how to read. Every Sunday I would be woken up to the sound of NPR on the radio (although, way back in the day it was Ravi Zacharias' sermons), the smell of coffee and scrambled eggs, and upon emerging from the cocoon of my bed, the sight of a kitchen table covered in newspaper. It used to be uneventful. My dad with the front page, me with the comics, my sister with a different book, and my brother still in bed. As we started to grow up, there would be a need for more pots of coffee and a peaceful strategy of newspaper distribution. Next week when I'm home for Thanksgiving, there will be a bartering of newspaper sections: "I call the front page!" "Trade you Week in Review for the Magazine?"--until we all have a section or two we can live with. There won't be much talking, just the absorption of tiny print into our already cluttered brains. Perhaps, there will be the occasional "huh" or "wow", but mostly just the rustling of paper against paper. Until then, I will stay in my bed with my coffee and paper and wallow in the glory of having it all to myself--knowing that the feeling is shared across the state border.

There is something to be said for Sunday.