It was our childhood prescription for normalcy, a trip back to the weekends of our past; we got up a little earlier than we wanted to and dressed in our Sunday best, we walked or drove to our local church of choice and sat obediently listening, joining in when required and hopefully learning a lesson for the upcoming week. We did much the same as we raised our own family and things didn’t really change that much until…they left home and made their own decisions about whether or not to attend a formal place of worship and we were suddenly afforded the luxury of choice.
Now, instead of leading by example we have become expert slackers. We have made a choice to stay in bed until at least nine and then, after sauntering down the driveway (in the truck) to fetch the Sunday paper we lounge about reading it and sipping a second cup of coffee or tea. We cook an animal fat based breakfast of sausage or bacon, sometimes both, fresh local eggs, toast slathered in real butter and homemade jam and then we begin in earnest, our true dedication to sloth. We sit at opposite ends of a room and share the Sunday paper. He removes all the advertising inserts first and stacks them neatly on the floor. He divides the paper into sections and reads them in the order in which they were presented to him by the publisher stating: “That was the way it was intended to be read, you don’t flip around in a book do you?” I hesitate to let him in on the secret that a newspaper is not a sequential story, but we are talking about relaxing here so my point is moot.
I, on the other hand need even more to relax. I must have my lap top and be ready at a moment’s notice to look up the first of the week’s new MLS listings. I am a confessed real estate stalker, I can tell you at any time where you can find a house in the tri-county area with four bedrooms and a deck or a neat little retirement cottage along Penn’s Creek. I can waste away considerable time reading the paper and snooping at the living quarters of total strangers in equal assignment. We have a system. As I clean up from breakfast, (it’s now at least ten thirty in the morning) he will spout off an MLS number and I will stop what I am doing to look it up. We are of course, preparing some five years ahead of when we will have to downsize to something that will more align with our needs as a couple, as opposed to our desire for the perfect family home, but that’s another story.
Once I am ready to receive the newspaper itself, I have very little reading left to do, because he likes to read aloud to me the bits he finds interesting but more important, the ones he knows will interest me. If I happen to be in another room I can hear this sound “Hmm?” It begs a response, and try as I might to ignore it, it will escalate in volume and intensity until it gets one. He will then read the little section or ask if I know the person about whom the article has been written. He will always tell me I could have done a better job on some subjects or should expand on it, on others. He is loyal that way. He shares the Sunday paper with me in a way that we would never be able to if we only subscribed on line. We will never sort, read aloud, and recycle anything we find on the internet. Our ritual of sloth and interest is founded on a principle of shared pleasures. He enjoys the holding of the real paper, the control of keeping bits from me until he has finished with them and the joy of presenting articles he knows will invoke a response. This cat like behavior aligns with his other pleasure, waiting for me to be outraged, or to laugh or add my own twist to the topic.
We are a couple of a certain age, there are few surprises left for either of us in one another but what we lack in surprise we make up for in the full account of shared understanding. I love how much he enjoys the paper, I am still trying to teach him that once finished it could go neatly into the recycle bin instead of onto the decorative stool in the kitchen where it will rise to alarming heights until it topples, and swearing mildly at the other, one of us will escort it to its almost resting place. There are two more stops on its journey. It will go from the pantry recycling bin to the much larger container in the garage, then, (semi-annually) will be heaved into the truck, remember it began its tour here at our house, then it will be taken to the recycling center. I don’t know what happens to it after that. There are other uses I know, barn bedding, fire starting logs and even decorative vases and artwork have been made and sold. But for us it’s over. The end of the journey, we will leave the recycling center and maybe stop for a milk shake or an ice cream cone, we almost always perform this task together, just like we read the newspaper together, on our Sunday morning rituals of sloth.
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