I grew up in a time when there was something special about Sunday night. Maybe it was a pot roast that made our home smell more inviting than at any other time during the week. Maybe it was family visiting and we brought out the good dishes. Perhaps it was just that we were all always home, getting ready for the week ahead and enjoying the last part of the weekend together, as we watched our TV shows. Disney, Lawrence Welk, The Beachcombers. Our tastes weren’t always the same but there was never a doubt that we’d be watching together.
My wife and I have been travelling a lot back and forth to Toronto these last few years, often navigating the darkness of Highway 7 on Sunday nights, but when we’re home it still feels a little different. Valerie just said to me that she felt the urge to call her parents to provide the weekly update. Even when nothing was really going on, she would try to make the mundane sound interesting. “We went for dim sum yesterday and then to Canadian Tire. And Joe is doing well in his fantasy baseball league.”
But her parents are gone now. As are mine. I still feel the urge to call my mum or dad when something good has happened. Or when something sad has happened. We don’t have a land line anymore but I still look to the place where our phone used to be in our kitchen, looking for a flashing red light that was more often than not signalling a phone message from one of our parents. But that phone is gone now. Those messages are gone now and those updates aren’t necessary anymore.
I don’t know how long it will take for my wife and me to forget that Sunday night is the night to make that call to mum and dad to tell them that the week went okay and we have lots of good stuff on the horizon. I suppose we may never forget. And that’s okay. It’s okay to not forget some things that make us sad.