Sunday is for …

by Kayce Stevens Hughlett 

(I apologize for wonky formatting. For the life of me I can't figure it out, so I've given up. More important things call...) 

Sunday is for … sipping, silence, sunrise, skeletons, sketching, stretching, solo time, silliness, sumptuousness, serendipity, scattering, soul strolling, soul searching, Soul, something special, sporty, spotty, spunky, surreal, subversive, soup … And evidently, it’s for Suleika and Substack. [Note: this post was originally shared on Substack.]

I sit here before dawn this Sunday wondering what I want and need. I want to be Covid-free. I wanted to go back to sleep when I woke up at 5:00 a.m. but that doesn’t seem to be happening. I want to finish an art project, tidy up my house, and have a good shower & shampoo. In this moment, however, I drift over to Suleika Jaouad’s Isolation Journals and sink into her guest writer, Elaine Lin Hering’s invitation to write about something nostalgic. For me, it’s popcorn and pot roast… both synonymous with Sundays in my childhood.

Pot roast and popcorn. Popcorn balls, to be specific. These were the defining aromas of my Sundays in Bethany, Oklahoma. Coming home from Sunday School (aka church) to the smell of my mother’s roast beef simmering on the stovetop. I think Sundays were the only time in my childhood that I ever ate carrots or onions—the ones steeped in beef au jus. Today I’m a vegan-leaning vegetarian, and in my 20’s I banned red meat. However, my mother still fixed it every time my then-husband and I went home. “Oh, honey, it’s just a little pot roast,” she’d say.

After the pot roast and a leisurely afternoon filled with who knows what, came the popcorn. Again cooked on the stovetop. It followed the requisite cold roast beef sandwich—white bread, mayo, beef slices 1/4” thick. I see my long-deceased father’s smile, “Hey baby,” he’d say with a wink. He and my mother (20 years passed) linger here with me amidst the smell of pot roast and popcorn and the sounds of The Wonderful World of Disney.

These were our Sundays. The days long before I knew the word dimanche (Sunday in French) or ever believed (or imagined) I could go on my own adventures to far off places like my heroes, Mary Poppins and Hayley Mills.

I wish I could take my own children (now grown) into this Sunday ritual with me. It seemed perfunctory then. Just something we did. Normal. The gathering as a family around our table of pot roast and potatoes. A quiet afternoon and then the smell of simmering sugar, a splash of food coloring, and my mother’s deft hands forming the most perfect popcorn balls ever. Fresh. Not brittle or too sticky. All without a candy thermometer. Pure magic as I sat on the naugahyde couch with a plate in my lap, my parents in their personal Lazy Boy recliners, and Tinkerbell lighting up the Magic Kingdom. Popcorn and pot roast perfection.

So, that’s it. My first Substack post. I’ve broken all the rules of an initial post, but hey, if it’s not fun … why do it? I hope you’ll pop over to read The Isolation Journals and join me in exploring your own bit of nostalgia.

Here’s a quick prompt to get you started: Sunday’s are for…

 

Thanks for reading and I hope you come back!!!