Not much choice here. The village I live near closes down tight and the people spend all Sunday with their families or at one gathering or another. It is the one day that they reserve for this. It is also a day for visiting as it is the one day you will find a person at home not occupied by some necessary chore. Ha. The men. After being packed off to church by their wives, the men finally get to rest after a long week on the water. The women socialize more and the work of feeding their families is often shared among them on Sundays. The women appear to work smarter, but they never seem to rest for long. They are almost always in motion, even on Sunday. They are the undisputed social engineers. Most of the men are fishermen, old style, as in subsistence living, and the old ones tend the gardens and animals. They toil hard and their fingers are bent with sinew and callouses by the time they are in their twenties from working and repairing the nets since before puberty. Young men with old men’s hands.
I do less on Sundays, but the animals still must be attended to. They can’t be bothered by calendars and clocks and church-going, but they must be pastured and milked and fed. I don’t schedule any projects for Sundays as that might necessitate a ride into town for something and nothing is open anyway, so putting such things off until Monday, or Tuesday, or… is just fine and makes sense.
Otherwise, Sunday isn’t much different from other days around here. I wake at around dawn, tend to the animals, get home from the orchards and fields about noon or so, eat and take a nap in a lounge chair on the porch. Sam wakes me with a snuffle from his wet nose, a sharp bark, or a tug at my sleeve when it’s time to get going again.
He has no conception of Sunday. He only knows that he is special, that we are partners and the other animals are our charges. He is the perfect sergeant major. Like all dogs, he lives in Now. Now we nap. Now we work. Now we eat. Now we sleep. Tomorrow doesn’t exist for him. He doesn’t worry needlessly if we’re ready for the next hurricane, or when the next feral animal will get at the chickens, or how badly he fucked up the other day. He focuses on what’s important. Here and Now. He shows me daily the value in that. Sunday is just like the day before and the day after here. And when you make your days good days, that’s not bad at all.