Friday Nights, Saturday Mornings....

This is my favourite part of the week. Work is finished and the weekend stretches before us. The husband and I generally have our evening meal after the children have gone up to bed: it's the one thing we insist on, and something that none of the children have had a problem with, even when in their late teens/twenties. Mum and Dad need an evening to themselves! It's going to be steak, chips and salad tonight with wine. The children eat early and are in their rooms by nine - they can watch any suitable telly (Have I got News for You is popular) - whilst we chill downstairs. Saturday breakfast is leisurely: croissants and jam, a big cafetiere of coffee and the papers before we go off to do our various things. The evening meal is usually home-made pizza so that we can accommodate whoever wants to join us to eat. Last week we had seven at table. Sunday may start early, with either Mass or a junior football fixture, with something quick for lunch like hotdogs or pittas and dips. If there's any motorsport on, we'll sit and watch that together in the afternoon or we'll go to the gym. In winter we have a roast dinner for which the husband makes some form of dessert. In the summer, it may be a barbeque if the weather's good, or a home prepared curry which has been slowly cooking all day, with bhajis, naans and pickles. sunday evening is prep night: shoe-polishing, pack-ups, ironing (if it's not been done before that), packing schoolbags for Monday. No-one ever goes to bed late in our house. Eleven pm is exceptional and usually means we've watched some sort of match on telly. And then it's Monday again. I know a lot of people would find this sort of predictability stultifying, but for me it encapsulates the harmonious rhythm of our home. Our freedom lies in knowing what's what - there's a liberation and contentment to be found in it. Other folk argue for spontenaity, but I know a lot of spontaneous people who live reactively rather than proactively and don't seem to be either happy or comfortable with taking life on an ad hoc basis, although they claim they do.
Rhythm, routine, ebb and flow....it's a heartbeat from nature itself.