With this move, I was particularly excited about Sundays: rolling out of bed, throwing on a sweatshirt and shades, walking down the street to the coffee shop we found the first morning at my new place, ordering breakfast, picking up the Times at the bodega and bringing biscuits and coffee home to either eat on the stoop or upstairs with the windows open. I love reading the newspaper with somebody and I wish it were a tactile experience that people felt the need to preserve in this gasping industry, but to be able to sit there in a mess of sheets with coffee cups on the bedside table and swap the Travel section for A&E for News for Business for Op/Ed and Obits is so much more enjoyable than doing it alone. You can’t share a magazine or a book the same way—those are solitary pursuits that alienate you from having a conversation with the other person while you’re flipping pages—but a newspaper you can share, take apart, put back together and talk about with the person you’re reading it with, and to me, that’s a great way to wake up on a Sunday.
Had you told me two weeks ago that I wouldn’t be spending the first half of today this way with my boyfriend, I probably would’ve rolled my eyes at you: this was one of the (many) reasons why I’d come to Brooklyn, after all, and one of the things I was most looking forward to. I was looking forward to a long weekend with somebody I’d been living four hours away from for the entirety of our relationship, save for when we dated in high school and when we lived down the street from each other. I was looking forward to waking up next to that person and rolling off my side of the bed and sneaking out to grab breakfast while he was still asleep so that I could surprise him when I woke him up. And I was looking forward to reading the damn Sunday Times.
Instead, I’m in Westford, still, because my mom’s birthday is Tuesday and it’s going to be pretty terrible to celebrate it without her dad. I’m no longer in a relationship with that person, and when I get back to New York, I’ll roll out of bed and grab breakfast by myself, but I’ll probably skip picking up the paper.
I get that life’s not fair sometimes, but between moving, losing Grampa and this, I hope that “Bad things happen in 3s” rule leaves me off the hook for the time being.
