I want to write about a Sunday a few weeks ago that had nothing good in it, not because something bad happened, but because nothing happened at all, and I’ve noticed I don’t usually write those days down, which starts to feel a little dishonest after a while, like I’m only keeping a record of the parts of my life that make a decent story.
I woke up later than I meant to, stayed in bed longer than I needed to, and by the time I got up the whole day already felt like it had started without me.
What I Didn’t Do
I didn’t cook. This is a kitchen column and I’m telling you the most notable thing about that Sunday is that I opened the refrigerator four separate times, looked at what was in it, and closed it again without taking anything out or making any real decision about food until nearly two in the afternoon, when I ate a bowl of cereal standing at the counter because it required nothing of me.
I didn’t clean anything either, though there were things that needed it. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t work in the garden, which had things that needed attention after a week of heat. I sat on the porch for a while and didn’t really look at anything in particular, and Dot came and sat near me for a bit and then wandered off, apparently sensing there wasn’t much happening worth sticking around for.
Trying to Name What Was Wrong
I don’t have a clean explanation for the mood. Nothing had happened the day before. Nobody had said anything unkind to me. The weather was fine, if a little hot. I’ve thought about it since and the closest I can get is that some days just arrive flat, without a reason attached, and trying to find a reason after the fact is its own kind of exhausting, chasing an explanation for something that maybe doesn’t need one.
I know that’s not a very satisfying thing to read. I’d probably want a reason too, if I were reading this instead of living it. But I’ve decided I’d rather write it down honestly than invent some tidy explanation just to give the day more shape than it actually had.
The Late Afternoon
Around five, I finally made myself a piece of toast, badly, on the toaster that never gets it quite right, and ate it plain, no butter, standing at the same counter where I’d eaten the cereal hours earlier. It didn’t fix anything. I don’t think toast is supposed to fix a day like that. It was just something to eat, and eating it felt like a small, minimal gesture toward taking care of myself on a day when I wasn’t managing to do much more than that.
What Didn’t Happen With Wanda
Normally I’d have some small anecdote here about a neighbor stopping by, some exchange that broke up the day. That didn’t happen either. I saw Wanda’s porch light on in the evening and considered walking over, and didn’t, not because anything was wrong between us, just because I didn’t have the energy that day to start a conversation, even an easy one with someone I like talking to.
How the Day Ended
I went to bed early, earlier than usual, without having accomplished anything I could point to. No sense of a wasted day exactly, because wasted implies I should have done something with it and failed to. It was more that the day simply didn’t ask much of me, and I didn’t offer much back, and the two facts matched up into twenty four hours that left almost no trace.
Why I’m Including This One Anyway
I thought about not writing this down at all, since there’s no real ending to it, no small discovery, nothing fixed or learned. But I think that’s exactly why it belongs here. Not every day in a kitchen, or a life, produces something. Some days you just get through them, eat cereal at two in the afternoon, and go to bed early, and that’s the whole account of it, and I’ve decided that’s allowed to be enough of a story on its own.
The Monday After
I want to note, for whatever it’s worth, that Monday was completely ordinary again, no residual heaviness carried over from the day before. I made actual food, talked to a neighbor over the fence about nothing in particular, got through the gutters on the side of the house I’d been putting off. Whatever the flat Sunday was, it didn’t turn into a pattern, and it didn’t announce itself as the start of anything larger. It was just one day, self contained, that happened to have nothing much in it.
I think I used to worry more, on days like that, about what a flat mood might be building toward, some larger slide I needed to catch early. I don’t worry about it quite the same way anymore. Some days are just quiet and a little empty, and the emptiness doesn’t always mean something. Sometimes it’s just a Sunday, and then it’s Monday, and the toast gets made properly again, and that’s really all there is to say about it.
I’ve mentioned this particular Sunday to exactly one other person since, a distant cousin on the phone weeks later, and even in the retelling it resisted becoming a proper story. There was no crisis to describe, no turning point, just an accurate account of doing very little and feeling a bit flat about it. She said that sounded like most of her Sundays too, which I found strangely reassuring, this idea that a lot of people are quietly having days exactly like that one without making much of it either.