I'm Easy Like Sunday Morning...

I love the crooning of Lionel Richie, "That's why I'm eaaaaaassssyyyy, easy like Sunday morning..." Perhaps I'm so attracted to this song because 1. I don't feel very "easy", and 2. My Sunday mornings have never been the kind of kick back, enjoy breakfast, chill times that Lionel must have been thinking of when he wrote the song. There's something so appealing to me about relaxing one morning a week.

In my preteen years, Sunday mornings consisted of sleeping until my mother's fists, pounding on the walls adjoining her bathroom and my bedroom, roused me. Though no longer sleeping, I showed no signs of cooperating with her agenda. I would pretend to have not heard her dire warnings that we were going to be late and walk in like "rejects", nor did I respond to empty threats of her revoking Nintendo-playing privileges. Eventually, she would come into my room, her voice at a similar decibel level as the neighbor's lawnmower, and insist that I get dressed that instant! I usually mumbled a final lame attempt to avoid the inevitable: my head hurt; I had a sore throat; I thought I was getting my period; I had too much homework. I had enough tricks in the bag to rotate them on a monthly cycle. However, much to my chagrin, not only was I forced to go to church, but we consistently arrived 15-30 minutes late, and walked in, like rejects, with sour faces and spoiled attitudes.

Needless to say, Sunday mornings during those years were less than easy. As I charged full speed into the thick of adolescence, the hold my mother had over me diminished considerably, I was able to evade the Sunday morning service at least half of the time. But even then, there was nothing remarkably relaxing about my mornings. In fact, they may have been even more stressful. Thomas and Mollie, who were still at the age where waking up around 7am was the norm, were often left home with me, which meant that any peace that resulted from my mother's resignation to go to church without her children, was erased with the first blood curdling screech of the morning. The cause of the screams could be any number of possibilities: Thomas chasing Mollie around the house with a knife; Mollie locking Thomas in the bathroom and then hunkering down in the living room to watch My Little Ponies; Thomas, late for a "trip," putting the cat in a suitcase and running down the stairs to catch his train on time. No, Sunday mornings were not easy growing up.

During my early college years, Sunday mornings were non existent. I generally woke up around 1pm, hungover and uninterested in anything except bagels from the dining commons. As my attitude about God and church shifted, I found myself looking forward to Sunday mornings as a source of peace and strength and community, a place where I could recharge from the week, and fuel up for the coming one. But still, it involved a frenzy of tasks, none of which lent themselves to low blood pressure or relaxation. Mark, never an early riser, was my biggest task. During the year we dated at UMass, I would drive Mark, and several of our friends to church. However, my ironic fate would be to relive my mother's frustration, as I spent from 5 to 30 minutes weekly, alternately pounding on Mark's dorm room door, and slumped against it, calling him over and over. I often listened helplessly as his alarm clock and phone ringing seemed to harmonize in a tune that eerily resembled my mother's voice telling me that one day I would have kids of my own...

Now that we've been married for over five years, I'm finally at a point where I don't care quite as much as I used to about getting everywhere five minutes early. Mark has made admirable concessions in his sleeping (and I suppose waking) habits, and is usually willing to get up about thirty minutes before the service starts. Still, we're not exactly kicking back with the Sunday Globe, sipping Chai and nibbling on freshly baked muffins. So one might wonder, what would possess me to undertake culinary tasks at 9am on a Sunday, knowing all of this? Habit, I suppose. Perhaps I'm uncomfortable when we actually do have time before church. Maybe I just don't know how to have an easy Sunday morning. Today was no exception. I started cooking rice around 8:30am, and then decided it would be fun to find rice pudding recipes. So, at 9:40am, twenty minutes before I was to head to church, I embarked on a rice pudding making experiment. I may not be easy, but I'm sure not boring...