by Patti
week·end/ˈwēkˌend/
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Long ago, at some point in this life, I had weekends. They consisted of leisurely strolls through book stores, and coffee, and shopping, and sometimes, sometimes? JUST NAPPING AND THAT IS ALL,WHY? IS THERE SOMEPLACE I NEED TO BE? "What are you doing this weekend?" would be the big question at work. "Oh, going to a couple of parties, brunch on Sunday, you know... stuff."
Along the way and somewhere deep into motherhood, my weekends vanished. As the work week comes to a close now, I know I won't be sleeping in the next day just because it's Saturday. And that is because Saturday will consist of ballet class, harried errands that can't get done during the week because we're too busy with work and school, probably a birthday party or two, and some serious shuffling in-between. Sundays will most definitely include laundry and cleaning and weekend homework and groceries, and maybe, possibly if we're lucky, dinner with friends AND THEIR KIDS. And then, suddenly and just like that, it's Monday again and the whole Groundhog Day of Life begins again. Again. Again. Again. Again.
It's funny - if I find myself driving through the city on a Saturday afternoon, I see the joggers, I see the girls in jeans and oversize sunglasses with shopping bags in one hand and Starbucks in the other, I see the people walking their dogs in a way that I can tell they aren't really going anywhere; they're just walking. And then I remember that I just came from a dance studio stuffed with ten other moms that were also experiencing the same non-weekend I was - the one that found them hurriedly shuttling their kids from activity to activity to activity, the minutes of the weekend ticking away toward Monday.
I wonder how many weekends my parents gave away to us, and then I remember that our weekends were spent climbing trees, playing football in open fields with friends, riding bikes that were thrown carelessly onto each other's lawns as we ran from house to house... We didn't have "lessons", "playdates", "activities"... we just burned daylight from Saturday through Sunday, and my parents were allowed to do the same. We didn't need entertaining and we didn't expect to be entertained. We just... were.
Now, every. single. day is scheduled to within an inch of its life, and those long-ago weekends that often provided such reprieve and separation are now just an extension of every single day. To be fair, it seems that even kids - the very ones we have given our weekends to - are wishing for weekends that they never knew. Just the other day S said, to me, "Mom, I don't feel like doing anything at all. Can we not have any plans?" Without even knowing, she expressed the very thing I was feeling -- can we not have any plans. Can we?
This weekend just passed, and, it being Easter weekend and most things being cancelled or closed, and us being kind of heathen-like in our non-attendance of Easter-related things, did just that -- we had no plans. It will be quite some time before that happens again, before a Saturday calls for sleeping in and coffee in a coffee shop, and a Sunday calls for pancakes, pajamas, naps and a movie -- as all of the upcoming weekends are kind of jam-packed with "stuff". Because of that, I have decided to stop waiting for the weekend to have a weekend. Instead, I will snatch pieces of time whenever I can and turn moments into that "time for leisure". It's Tuesday, but it feels like Saturday! Let's rent a movie! Pancakes? Are not just for Sundays! It's Wednesday night - time for breakfast!
Hey! It's Monday. What are you doing tonight?
