Last Sunday

At times that memory comes so swiftly it startles all my senses at once, and the warmth of the sun and slap of the breeze is just as it was then.

I’m seventeen, on a Sunday in mid-August, in the kitchen of my teenage home with my parents during their martini hour; the sun is streaming through the white café curtains above the sink, my mother is at the counter near the stove preparing some exquisite meal because, well – every meal she made was exquisite. But she’s close to the stove, with the vent fan going, not to stir a pot or check the pan in the oven but rather to ensure the smoke from her cigarette won’t get too near my father who sits across from me at the table. By this time, he’d had his heart attack and failed bypass surgery more than five years earlier and every day since then mom lived each day with one goal: to ensure he’d never have another. He didn’t. He lived to nearly ninety-three years, by then widowed for sixteen. Cancer took her early and, for him, old age took its time. His heart was the last thing to fail.

Maybe you’ve known them; those long Sunday afternoons that felt as if the next day would take twice the time it should to get there. For me, no matter how I sliced or tried to fill them, Sunday afternoons were the longest and loneliest times of the week. I realized long after then and long before now that I was no different than most seventeen-year-olds who was just biding time for my real life to begin. I’d be leaving for college in a few weeks and finally, at long last, my time would arrive. Until then I felt as if I’d been on the same train platform for a decade, watching my six older siblings board their coach and set off for parts unknown and certain adventure. I’d grown anxious and inpatient waiting my turn for my reserved seat on the grown-up express that would catapult me to the life I’d dreamt.

Dad began to make another martini – just a half – and mom asked if I’d mind going up to the farm stand and buy a few ears of corn. I didn’t mind; it was something to do and since dinner was clearly a good hour away and the day was unseasonably beautiful with spectacular blue skies and a breeze that didn’t feel at all like August, I decided to bike to the vegetable stand just a mile or so away.

We lived among the fields of corn then, surrounded by farms in every direction. Just eight houses out there on that rural road; six – ours among them – inhabited by General Motors’ mid-level managers who had been transferred to that Ohio outpost from Detroit or Connecticut. The homes were pretty, nestled on the edge of several acres of woods that seemed to be the only trees that escaped the felling for the endless acres of fields to plant the corn.

I pedaled against the breeze as the sun warmed my face; more than not I rode without holding on, confident and sure about the dips and bends on the road before me. On that Sunday the vastness of all that was around – the deep greens, sun-drenched golds and vivid blues, finally – or perhaps just in time – struck me as stunningly beautiful and I drank it all in. On that day everything was in front of me; every dream and hope not yet realized, traded, replaced, or rationalized away by anything that life would deliver. And it came to me then how the slow and unhurried hours of that afternoon with my mother and father was a gift – and a memory – I would hold forever.

Forever is tricky though, isn’t it? We assume there’s a tomorrow and many more to follow; hours, days or decades to make plans, make memories, make amends. That train we catch early on goes so fast. So very, very fast.

I’m ten years older now than my parents were on that Sunday afternoon when the sun came streaming through; so much still in front of us.

~ August 2024