What are Saturdays for?

I expected it, but I was not happy. I went to my PO Box this Saturday, and there it was. A yellow card indicating that something did not fit our tiny little square of property. Normally, this is cause for celebration. I like getting packages as much as the next person, and we have friends and family across two oceans who can send us pure warmth cloaked in brown cardboard.

But it's Saturday. Not just any Saturday, but the most beautiful Saturday since the fall. Not only is it the most beautiful Saturday since the fall, it is the peak of Cherry Blossom season. Now that my wife is working, Saturday is the only day we and many other Washingtonians can empty our PO boxes. Which means, I would spend the next, oh, 20 minutes, cosigned to the bureaucratic purgatory that is a post office line. Would the package be worth it? Unlike every other day of the week, Saturday is my time. Especially beautiful Saturdays during Cherry Blossom week.

As I waited, stack of mail in hand (which included good cheer wishing us a happy anniversary from my family - cheering me up quite a bit), I felt something gentle touch my heel. It was not creepy - it was gentle and, in a pleasant sense, without meaning. The heel toucher was a little girl, no more than three years old, who had decided to lay down on her back in the space directly behind my feet. I smiled at her, and she stared blankly at the ceiling. Evidently, she did not like to wait in line, either.

After the initial "what a cute child" thought passed through my mind, my next thought was, "my mother would never have let me lay on the ground like that." One look at her mother softened my judgmental attitude. She stood their, clearly exhausted, one more little girl (perhaps 5, but I'm a poor judge of ages sometimes) clutching her left hand. "She feels like I feel right now," she said to me. I smiled sympathetically. We do not have children, yet, but everyone I know who does is often tired as well. No question, they are a beautiful gift. Like marriage, they often make us better people, little reminders that life is not all about us anymore. But the things that make us better break through the kingdoms of comfort we build around ourselves. Perhaps this young woman, as she stared passed me, was missing Saturday mornings like the one I just had. The Saturday morning that this inconvenient post-office wait was cutting into. Saturday mornings where there is no job or child to get up for. Saturday mornings where coffee is not my crutch and companion to get me through the next hour, but where coffee is ground fresh and sipped with no haste or hurry. Saturday mornings where my wife makes pancakes with apples and cinnamon. Saturday mornings where I read things: online newspapers, sport pages, blogs, even books. Saturday mornings where I leave the door open, watch all the Capitol Hill people of different sizes and colors walk by, stretching in the spring's virgin sun.

One day, Lord willing, there will be a little version of me running around my house. He will wake me up on Saturday mornings around the unholy hour I need to get up for work. He will need to be fed, exercised, clothed, disciplined, taught and loved. He will come with me to the post-office, sprawl himself on the floor, and I might just be too tired to care about mini-me's social graces. But no question, as he tears down my kingdom of comfort, I will become something better, every Saturday.

An older black woman, short and stout, with large glasses, stood behind the mother in line. "What are you doing on the floor, child?" she called out. She probably was an experienced mother herself. The young mother, a beautiful woman who could have stood in for the Virgin Mary at a Christmas pageant, smiled weakly.