S-Day

Somewhere in this city, there are people who sleep in on Saturday mornings, perhaps even past eight a.m. They laze. They loaf. They go out to brunch.

I hate them.

It’s not that I want to be one of those swanky types who starts my Saturday with a noon-ish kir royale and finishes it in a swell supper club, snapping my fingers and cutting a rug, well into the wee hours of Sunday morning.

Okay, I do wish that, but I realize it will never happen.

I just want to have one Saturday of my life that does not involve the making of a schedule.

By way of explanation, I should say that there are five humans and three animals living in this shack, and that several of them usually need to go somewhere, do something, or have something done to them, every single Saturday. There are two cars and three licensed drivers among us. If the cat could just get a learner’s permit, I swear that all my problems would be solved, but I am not hopeful. She seems uninterested.

Instead, my Saturdays begin, not with sharp conversation among my snappy friends at our local brunchery, but with Sharpies and the backs of envelopes, and many, many contingency plans.

“I don’t think Eisenhower had to do this much planning for the Normandy invasion,” my husband sighed one recent Saturday morning, as we both surveyed what the next 12 hours of our life would look like. It was not pretty. While the teenagers were sleeping and the dogs were snoring, we were up at dawn, rearranging the haircuts and grooming, the SAT tests and drives to friends’ houses, along with the other mayhem that constitutes one day out of seven in these parts.

I took a picture of last week’s schedule. I’m going to press it in a scrapbook and remember it. And one day, long after they have all left home, I’m going to pull it out and take a long, hard look.

And then I’m going out for brunch.