I still wear a watch, but on Sundays I try to leave it on the nightstand,  hoping my eyes will open before the sun warms the windows of our bedroom and the robins begin their conversation. 

I love the Sundays with no hockey rushing us to the rink, no soccer taking us over the bridge, no work tethering us to the computer, and no social invitations piling us into the car. An empty day: nothing to do and no place to go.

Free to do our own thing, we orbit each other bubbled by the gravity of our interests. The quiet sound of reading, the jingle of the dog tags as someone clicks on Stella’s collar for a neighborhood walk, the bowing and plucking of the double bass played from the back room, the sound of turning magazine pages, the wind through the chimes on the deck.

We circle around our kitchen table for family brunch. Everything timed to be ready together. Food overwhelming plates. Glasses filled with colored juices, pancakes stacked, eggs scrambled with vegetables, and the rare smell of bacon in the oven. The fixings for the bagels, sliced and toasted. Stella, stationed and drooling at the ready.

The soundtrack is jazz: music designed for improvisation. Miles Davis’s haunting horn. Ella Fitzgerald’s perfect pitch, and Duke Ellington’s mesmerizing compositions. Music that cradles you through the day. Elegant structures with space for the unfettered joy of riffing.

Someone eventually suggests a walk. The long one down to the water, along the marsh, through the woods and back up the road. I always fall behind with my short steps – straining to listen to their conversation. I find myself wanting to keep up and enjoying the witness-perspective of my distance at the same time.

Two by two, like Noah’s friends, we walk down the road, single-filing for passing cars. We stop with each leash-collared dog, my wife asking permission of the owner, then leaning down to say hi, hand scratching just behind the ears. She loves dogs – good thing they come attached to people or we would almost certainly bring them all home.

After the walk, we disperse again into our circling orbits. Puttering here and there. Fixing the thing broken for months, updating the grocery list, gathering kindling for the night’s fire, battling a virtual screen-framed foe, looking for Stella’s ball rolled again under some heavy piece of furniture, sitting at the piano playing a song from memory, stretching warm clean sheets across our beds – being together outside of time.

Our late breakfast stretches us to an early dinner. We sit outside, each in our own chair, balancing a plate or bowl. The music changes – James Taylor, Fleetwood Mac, Simon and Garfunkel – story tellers with lyrics echoing our own history. Ancient ritual, oral tradition: circle around the fire to share stories told in the soft focus of memory. 

Then, because it is summer, the evening is allowed to fade without ceremony, without the check of homework, without coordinating the schedule for the week. Simple sand draining without notice, piling to be flipped for the new day.

At the end, our house feels quiet – anchored. Stella has been out for the last time to do her business before being the first to climb the stairs for bed. My wife has finished talking with her mother on the phone. I have put down my book and marked the page before the next chapter. Our twins have brushed their teeth and closed the door of their bedroom. I push the front and back doors closed until their latches click, check the windows, clean a milk-laced glass left in the sink, turn off the living room light, and climb the stairs using the railing. 

I know time and the systems it organizes make modern life possible. I love the buzz of a life filled with change and the roller coaster of emotions we feel with each new experience. I realize having nothing you need to do and nowhere you need to be is not sustainable.  But at the end of a rare empty Sunday, I always find myself hoping for the next morning when I can leave my watch on the bedside table.