Sunday Night Supper Series: Spring

Every week begins or ends with Sunday, depending on what your calendar beliefs are. Every week we set aside the day for family. We set aside the day for walks to the woods and conversation and a meal together around a table. I didn’t necessarily grow up with Sunday night suppers, this is something my siblings and I decided was important as adults when we all moved out of the house. Like I’ve said before- “we all just liked the idea of being home together.”

I enjoy the winter month walks that gets us all moving to see the beauty that we sometimes miss in the colder harsher season of Wisconsin. But in all reality it is this time, this time right now, that holds the most anticipation. All the land is waking up and all of nature is getting ready. We’re not just counting down to summer- we are relishing every subtle change and extra minute of sunlight.

Soon Summer will be in full swing and then we will be living it- loving it- but also grieving it as it passes by as quickly as it does every year.

There is a sort of undefined magic in the time that exists before you get the thing you really want, the thing you have been waiting for. There is no pressure yet to make the most out of it and there is no wistfully looking back over your shoulder. Everything is ahead of you. Everything has yet to happen.

Spring it the perfect example of this.

And so I will watch the first flowers of the year push up through the mulch and the beige forgotten grass. I will watch the forsythia light up as if it were decorated with a thousand yellow butterflies. And I will crack open my windows at night, even if it is still a bit chilly, to hear the frogs proclaim-

Summer is on her way.

But I will also remember to thank Spring for what it gives to us. The ability to appreciate change, to see it as growth and rebirth and a fresh start (because not all change feels like that).

And that undefined magic around waiting for something that you really want…

It exists in every Sunday Night Supper as we gather together. As we happily dream of summer plans and the events that have become annual traditions and benchmarks in our lives. As fast as the time will come and go we all know we will have those Sundays, to start or end the week- it doesn’t matter.

We all know we have those Sundays together.