I grew up in a house where my father worked six days a week in the family’s custom shirt factory in downtown San Francisco, serving the wealthy, “well-heeled” citizens of our city. My father loved the factory and store, where he worked side by side with his father, my paternal grandfather, who started the business in 1919. But Sundays were a day of rest for my father, not that he ever actually rested. For this reason alone, I naturally adored this day of the week.
Dad’s energy was boundless, and if he had nowhere to go, he walked down our back steps to our rumpus room, which housed his special 1930s inlaid wooden desk. He was in heaven listening to Hawaiian music and typing on his 1940 typewriter.
Also, on this day, he drove me to Sunday school with some other kids in the neighborhood, and most times, after carpool, my father planned special adventures around the city he adored so much, all with my best friend Lori and me in the backseat. He knew every hill and countless one-way streets in San Francisco, so each week the three of us explored one section of the city. The crookedest street in the world, Lombard Street, cable car rides up Market Street, lunch in Chinatown, warm oatmeal cookies from Golden Gate Park, as we rode in paddle boats on Stow Lake. The zoo was his favorite place, due to his love of animals, especially the monkeys and orangutans.
He drove up the steepest hill in the city, Jones Street, and then turned the car around and rocketed back down the same street as we bounced around in the back seat with such glee. It was our own roller coaster. Occasionally, we would go to a movie, where we could get whatever treats we wanted along with our popcorn, as Dad slept through each movie. It wasn’t until I inherited this “sleep-anywhere” ability that I realized his movie naps had nothing to do with boredom or dislike of what was playing on the screen. When the lights went out, his eyelids closed, as do mine today.
On Sunday mornings, I would awake to the funnies (comics in the SF Chronicle) that Dad slid under my bedroom door. Later, it became the pink section, which reviewed books, my all-time favorite part of the Sunday newspaper. In those days, my father and I would sit on the golden quilted armchair where he spent his resting time when he returned from work each night and on Sundays when he was home. There we would read catalogues, and I could pick out what I wanted, and he would order the items. They were always gadgets: tiny flashlights, chewing gum dispensers, shower hats, toothpaste keys to squeeze out extra paste. My father loved these tiny innovations, and I learned to treasure them as well.
Those were the happy Sunday memories, but the day wasn’t always so lighthearted, for Mother detested Sundays. “The worst day of the week,” she deemed. I would ask her why, and she responded that everyone was home and underfoot. Actually, we weren’t always home, but she was, spending a large part of her Sundays in bed, as she did Monday through Saturday. “I don’t know what to make for dinner; there is no routine; I can’t wait for Mondays.” I came to see that her dislike for this seventh day of the week was because my father was home, and so was I. My 7-years-older brother was always out and about with his buddies. I had no understanding why my mother reacted so negatively to this special day of the week, except that we were disrupting her routine of nothingness.
During college, my roommate Nancy, who lived one hour away from UCLA, generously invited me to her home for the weekend. At her house, Sundays were delightful days for her mother, and the lightheartedness of Nancy’s house made me realize that perhaps joy and relaxation were the norm for a Sunday rather than loose ends and frustration laced with depression. Her mother read, went out with friends, prepared dinner for us, and opened the door for the sunshine glistening on the sand near her house.
Eventually, when I had my own family, I sensed the innate joy in Sundays. They were fun days, as my husband, Paul, loved to go out no matter how exhausted he was from his overnight call schedule. We frequented the Getty Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Science Center, parks, went swimming, and saw movies, but we always did something together with the three boys. I was grateful that no one in my family of five spent the day in bed lamenting the dreadfulness of Sunday.