Doing Sunday

One year – to the chagrin and some horror of people who know me well enough to not have chagrin or horror at such a thing – I stayed home on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t go to any parties, I didn’t go out to dinner, I didn’t even watch that car wreck of a ball drop. I may have even gone to bed BEFORE the clock clicked midnight. The next morning, quite pleased with myself, I jump out of bed: It’s a new year! It snowed two feet last night! The world is for the taking! I donned my boots and set forth into this beautiful new existence that comes with the first day of a new year.

It turns out, the New Year was closed.

Not only did every house on the block belong to a bankrupt film set, but the streets were unploughed, the sidewalks yet uncovered. I walked. I drank in the solitary beauty of a world in which everyone is asleep. And then my marvel turned paranoia and I needed reassurance that I was in Massachusetts and not a twilight zone.

Luckily, Porter Square Books, a delightfully independent store with good books and good coffee and good food was actually open – and the person who took my coffee order did not seem vexed that my arrival validated her need to work so early on New Year’s day.

And finally, here’s my point. (A point to bringing up wintry New England from a Madrid-based computer in May? Yes.) The point is that New Year’s Day in Boston* is like every Sunday in Madrid.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but still. Many of us in the United States use our weekends to get things done. “Doing errands” is a true American pastime. And so, a culture shock for an American in Madrid is the inability to do anything that resembles an errand after 2pm on Saturday and anytime at all on Sunday.

This scenario is armed with a plethora of positives. In Spain, one is forced to slow down on Sunday, those with family in the area (and that would be many) spend their afternoon together, there is plenty of time to sit at a sunny terraza with a drink and the world’s best potato chip. There is time to just be. I’d say that’s rather good for the soul, wouldn’t you?

For me, Sunday bestows the time to attempt at shaping these words into some coherent form. And yet, make no mistake that as I write this, my dry cleaning remains uncollected for the second week in a row, my refrigerator is resolutely bare, my shoes need cobbling, and there are a million odds and ends that I need to do and buy but cannot. I cannot because it is also Sunday for the people who work in those stores.

And so, Sundays in Madrid – while there is still plenty to do (lest the Spanish tourism office take offense) – are delightfully quiet. And they often remind me of that New Year’s Day in Boston when I had the world to myself. If Sunday is the cousin of New Year’s day, perhaps it’s an opportunity to set some resolutions, to look at the world and our lives with a renewed enthusiasm that flows through the next six days.

Why not? There’s nothing else to do.

*and by Boston, I mean Cambridge and Somerville.