Sunday

And it’s just what a Sunday should be, clear and fresh, unclouded and easily paced. Sunday is technically the beginning of the new week, but I feel like it is an unnumbered day - hours when the world sort of exhales all the pressures of the week.
My goals for the day are somewhat domestic - we’re having a business reception here at home tomorrow night, so I have cleaning and baking to do. I’m not excited about the cleaning, but I actually enjoy the baking part. It’s a surprise, this interest in cooking. There’s something innately satisfying about taking separate, uncommon ingredients and putting them together to make some food that nourishes or just simply satisfies the taste buds. It’s also a good feeling to call my mom or my grandmother for a recipe - in some small way, making the banana pudding for my boys in the exact same way my Nanny makes it feels like passing down a part of my heritage. Sometimes, a recipe can be much more than just a recipe. It is a rush of security to make something the way my mother makes and it her mother makes it and so on…
Anyway, I am doing the stay-at-home-mom thing. My desk job sort of fazed out with a decrease of business. If someone had said to me when I was in high school that I’d be a stay at home mom of two by the age of twenty-three, I would have laughed. And laughed. And laughed some more. But this is my path, at least for now. Even though things aren’t as I would have predicted, I am still writing and now that I have an internet connection again, I’m able to keep up with the world. I’m not saying that I don’t get stir crazy sometimes - every now and then, as I fill up sippy cups, I’m tempted to hurl them through the kitchen window. I have to keep perspective - that, really, Sean and Christian are the greatest adventure I’ll ever have, no matter what else I manage to achieve in this lifetime. They are my greatest creative achievements. I guess I’m thinking about all of this because with every new year - heck, with every new month - it hits me that the years are quickly passing. And ever since I was a kid, I’ve had this terror of never doing anything that matters, never contributing to this world.
It’s sort of like plot - a story can be character driven or action driven…I want my life to be character driven. I want to choose my life - what I do, what I make of it, the people in it. If I need an official New Year’s Resolution, I guess that’s it - to consciously choose my path this year. I don’t want to be a floater. I want to offer something to the world - whatever else I come up with, I know that I can (hopefully) raise two boys into men that are compassionate and actively working to do something for their own generation.
And this is a good segue into mentioning a blog, written by someone I know is definitely doing a good job of the whole choosing your path thing…Betsy is a TV editor living in NYC, and you can read her witty observations of life here - http://www.humaninspired.blogspot.com/. Check it out - for the way she sees the world and for the way she lives her life, I whole-heartedly admire her, and I know you will too.
So I’m off to the grocery store…and after all of these meaningful things I’ve been pondering, we all know that I’m determined to get back and done with the baking in time to watch 24 and Brothers and Sisters! Such is the American psyche.