Sundays

    Back in the late 90s, when Madeleine and I were living in the northwest corner of the Iberian peninsula, Sundays were my least favorite day of the week.  Everything was closed except churches and bars and the streets were eerily quiet as everyone spent the day with family.  I was so homesick it hurt and so after Mass (and I'm embarrassed to admit this), I would bundle Madeleine into the umbrella stroller and walk forty minutes to the only McDonalds in Santiago de Compostela.  There, while eating a cheeseburger and drinking a considerably smaller "large" diet coke than I would have been served in the States, I would gradually feel better, having satisfied my US of A craving for the week.
    Cross an ocean and fast forward a decade and I'm still not fond of Sundays.  I don't understand it.  They are our day of rest.  We go to Mass, avoid doing many chores and spend time as a family.  We try to do fun things but really, because we home school, we are together a lot already.  The bottom line is though, on Sundays, something is missing.
    And I think I've figured out what it is.  On Sundays, I long to be in context, together with the many people to whom I'm connected.  At the moment, my main roles in life are "wife" and "mother" but I am also a daughter, sister, cousin, niece, granddaughter, aunt and friend.  I am one of thirty something grandchildren on one side and twenty something on the other.  I do not know what it is like to be an "only".  I do know a lot about family relationships and connections including the fact that I would not be who I am if I had not been the oldest sister of David, Neil, Tara and Jamie.  We are a motley crew but very special.  I miss them on Sundays.
    My perfect Sunday is a typical day at Camp Kreitzer.  It is crowded with lots of kids playing some kind of sport in the front yard during which Chris inevitably injures someone.  The "girls" are in the kitchen.  I know, I know--tres cliché but I don't mind cooking quite as much when I have company.  Dinner is very noisy, dessert is plentiful and the guys do the dishes.  Extended family abounds.  Aunts, uncles, cousins, everyone I love.
    Of course, everyone I love would not be able to squeeze into Camp Kreitzer and several of the people I'd want to be there have passed on.  So, my perfect Sunday is truly a dream, something I miss but have never experienced.  I think it may be heaven.  I hope it's heaven.
Happy Sunday!