sunday's best

When I was little, I despised Sundays. Sundays were slow days, days where I had to get up early to go to Church, a fate worse than school. My uber-Catholic parents only accepted excuses of serious illness or death (I assume) - no late-night sleepovers could get me out of this one. The day crawled by, the hours between when brunch ended at 11 to when dinner started at six-thirty were to be spent together as "family time." In the early years, I would sit dutifully by my father, bored out of my skull as he watched the Packers, munching on a bowl of popcorn and sipping half of an orange crush. As I got older, homework was my free pass out of football but wasn't exactly a welcome distraction.

Finally, towards the end of high school I was able to claim a few Sundays for myself. Working, volunteering, whatever. My favorite Sunday mornings were the ones where I had escaped going to Saturday night mass with my family because I was hanging out with my friends, and was left to go by myself on Sunday mornings. Yes, my dad ruled with an iron fist when it came to church, and as long as I lived under his roof, I was required to attend mass regardless of what I did or didn't believe.

Push your kids as hard as possible in one direction, they'll fight like their life depends on it to go in the other. Or at least that's the way we rolled in my house. Any time I had a free pass to attend mass on my own, I didn't. I felt guilty the first few times because I had the fear instilled in me, but like anything else explicitly forbidden to teenagers - booze, sex, drugs - the guilt lifted as time went on. And soon I relished these Sunday mornings to myself, an hour just for me. I'd usually head to my own place of worship - Barnes and Noble - and browse aimlessly through the shelves or curl up in an overstuffed chair with a stack of magazines. On particularly gorgeous sunny summer mornings, I'd just drive for a solid hour, playing my latest mix on the discman that connected through the tape deck. These samples of time to myself, doing precisely what I wanted to do helped liberate Sundays from there on out.

In college, after the forced penance of 9 a.m. Monday classes for my first semester, I planned my schedules so that I wouldn't be obligated to be anywhere for any reason until at least 2 p.m. on Monday, if at all. This meant that while my friends dutifully tucked into the library most Sundays, I still had one more glorious day of freedom before my own crunch-time. The fact that everyone else was busy left no one to distract me, and I expanded Sundays from just an hour of time to myself to a full day (a full day!) dedicated to doing whatever the hell I wanted. My favorite schedule involved a warm Spring day and hours laying in the Common, in the same spot, on the same hill, facing the sun, half-napping with headphones on, getting a head start on my summer tan. When the sun had lowered to the point where I'd feel a chill, I'd head back through the public gardens and up Commonwealth, walking the 3 miles home instead of taking the T, mostly because I had the time to do it.

Sundays in London meant one of two things - either travelling "home" to South Kensington, fresh from my latest foreign adventure, or heading out for a late brunch at Giraffe or croissant at Coffee Republic and wandering through a city who's accessibility screams at you to explore it. Some days I'd end up window shopping over in Knightsbridge, other days I'd hop a tube to Hammersmith, still other days I'd end up in one of my favorite stretches of London - South Bank to the Thames to Parliament to Big Ben to Westminster Abbey. Surprisingly, one of my favorite things about Europe is its churches. They don't necessarily make me believe, but they make me feel comfortable when I'm visiting them, and I've been surprised to unintentionally end up inside of one on more than a few Sundays.

Sundays in Sardegna meant days on the boat, a welcome change from the daily monotony of kids and sand castles and walks on the beach. These Sundays meant uninhabited islands and long swims off the boats to pristine beaches and monster dives off the bow of the yacht that could pull a bikini top up or a swimsuit bottom down with the force of impact. They were sunburn and sunbleached hair and gelati speed boats selling Haagen Dazs bars for 5 euros a pop. If my Sundays were ever supposed to be dedicated to something, it was this.

I'm still trying to get the hang of Sundays in Rome. I'm trying to throw myself in the middle of it all, without a map, so I can figure it out on my own. This city is full of things waiting to be found - courtyards and doorways and churches and ruins. Yesterday was the Pantheon, which still amazes me more and more every time I see it. Its flawless condition astounds me. Yesterday was also gelato from Della Palma - chocolate mousse, mint chocolate chip, Mars Bar mousse, and passionfruit. Some people combo up their gelati for a more powerful flavor (banana-coconut-chocolate) but I'm all about sampling whatever I feel like on its own. From there, it was just scaling hills for a view, only to come down the other side to try and find a better one. The sun came down too soon, but I went home happy. I don't know where I'd be without these Sundays to myself. I can't believe there was ever a time that I dreaded them.