How I Do a Football Sunday

A grey Sunday in late September has a particular quality to it -- the light comes in low and diffuse, everything softened, as if the world itself has agreed to slow down. I noticed it the moment I opened my eyes. No alarm. The room was cool enough that I pulled the duvet up around my chin for a few extra minutes and just lay there, listening to the rain starting up against the window. That quiet, that particular hush of a Sunday morning with nowhere to be -- there are weeks I spend the whole week earning my way back to it.

I didn't move fast. That felt important. I made coffee first, properly, with the stovetop moka pot, and I stood in the kitchen while it brewed and watched the rain come down on the street outside. The trees are starting to turn -- not fully yet, just the faint beginning of orange at the tips, a few early leaves coming loose. September is such a particular month. Still warm enough in the sun, but the light has changed. You can feel the year starting to lean toward something quieter.

By the time the game came on I had fully committed to the couch. I want to describe this outfit in some detail because I think the outfit is part of why the day felt so good: a cream ribbed turtleneck, oversized and soft, the kind you sink into rather than wear; my oldest, most worn-in pair of grey sweatpants, the ones that have lost any trace of structure and just drape now, comfortable in the way that only years of washing can achieve; and a pair of thick, slouchy wool socks that I pulled up over my ankles. My hair was in a loose knot, two days unwashed, exactly the way I like it on a Sunday when nobody is coming over. I had a blanket across my lap even though it wasn't really cold enough to need one. I wanted it anyway.

The food situation. I had made a big pot of chili on Saturday -- this is something I do sometimes, a small act of future kindness to myself -- and by Sunday afternoon it had done what chili does, which is get better overnight, the flavors deepened and settled. I heated it up and ate it from a wide ceramic bowl with a wedge of cornbread I had made from a box, slightly too brown on the bottom because I got distracted. I had a glass of apple cider, the cloudy kind from the farmers market, because it felt right. Later I made popcorn, the stovetop kind with real butter, and ate it by the handful during the second half.

The game itself was secondary to all of this, if I'm honest. I had it on, I was paying attention in the way you pay attention to something you genuinely enjoy but don't need to perform enthusiasm about. I cheered when it warranted cheering. I was on my phone between plays, texting a friend about nothing in particular, the way you do on a Sunday when there's time for that kind of conversation. At one point I fell asleep for maybe twenty minutes during a commercial break and woke up to the fourth quarter with the blanket pulled up to my shoulder and the bowl on the coffee table and the rain still going outside.

That's the Sunday I want to tell you about. Not because anything extraordinary happened -- nothing did. It was so ordinary that it felt like a gift. I think that's the thing about building a life you actually want to live in: you stop waiting for the big moments and you start noticing how good the small ones already are. A grey rainy Sunday. Chili from yesterday. A game on the television. Wool socks and a blanket you didn't really need.

I was so happy.

Welcome to the reverie.