The Perfect Weekend
It’s a Sunday morning at home. I’m drinking coffee and sitting in my favorite chair while a record plays and a candle burns.
I have this nagging awareness of the shortness of life and how I should be intentional about how I spend my time. I worry: am I doing what I am “meant to do”? Am I realizing my full potential? What will my legacy be? When I am old, will I look back and wish I had done things differently? This quote from Playground by Richard Powers plays through my mind like a skipping record, making me feel something like vertigo as the thought repeats itself with each revolution of the turntable: “Aristotle said that happiness is the settling of the soul into its most appropriate spot . . . What does that mean, exactly? What makes you happy, Todd Keane? What’s your work? How do you define a day well spent?”
I try to sort through answers to these questions, but my mind offers nothing, like a phone call that doesn’t go through—“please try again later.” I tell myself OK, I’ll try again later. That’s what weekends are for.
But the perfect weekend isn’t about solving existential questions; it’s about enjoying the little moments of just simply living. Sleeping in. Rosemary sea salt bagels and lavender lattes from Hive. Porch chats. Running errands and getting ready for the week, laughing in the car about something I now can’t remember, but knowing how good it feels to laugh together. Clean white sheets, crisp and warm from the dryer. An afternoon rainstorm; the yard perking up afterwards, the grass technicolor and spongy. A little reading; a glass of wine while cooking. Slicing the firm, smooth skin of ruby red tomatoes to reveal a burst of juice and seeds and arranging the tomato slices between pillows of mozzarella, topped with snips of fresh basil from out back. Steaks sizzling in a cast iron skillet on the stove. Calls from home–just checking in. Playing tug-o-war with gnarly, twisted, dead wisteria vines on the shed, making room for something new and green to grow into a mess of curls on its roof. Soaking up some quiet before the loudness of a week ahead.
These things don’t spell out a five or ten-year plan, but they are comforting to me despite all my unanswered questions. I want control, but life doesn’t always give you that—sometimes you just have to enjoy the ride and take in the scenery from the back seat as life does the driving. The simple pleasures in life show me that there is beauty here, amidst my discomfort and restlessness.
As for the skipping record in my head, I pick up the needle and move it along to the next track and Jason Isbell begins to sing a new ode to plans: “You thought God was an architect, now you know / He's something like a pipe bomb ready to blow / And everything you built it's all for show, goes up in flames / In 24 frames.” When I was younger, I wanted to know that if I worked hard and did what I was supposed to do and was a good person, good things would happen. Unlearning that and accepting the “pipe bomb” of it all is a challenge. I don’t know that I’ll ever have peace with that, but I am trying.
A beam of sun shines through the window, warming a space on the hardwood floors where the dog is napping. I’ve got some laundry to fold and errands to run. I suspect by the time I get in bed tonight, I won’t have identified what my legacy will be or how I’ll spend the rest of my days. But I think we will cook something good for dinner and talk about interesting things and we will laugh. And that should be good enough for today.
