A Saturday with Nothing to Show

I wrote four things on a piece of paper this morning and had completed none of them by eleven. The paper was beside the kettle, under a small plastic cup our daughter had decided belonged there.

She will be two in December. This morning she was wearing one sock and carrying the other. I was trying to persuade her that the second sock had a purpose. She understood my argument and continued holding it.

My wife suggested going out for a walk before the day became hotter. I looked at the piece of paper and said I should probably finish something first. She asked which thing could not wait an hour. I examined the list with more seriousness than it deserved.

We went out. I took my phone, some water and a cloth, and left the list where it was. At the entrance our daughter stopped beside a drain cover. The walk was beginning well for one of us.

The list on the counter

I like the idea of an empty Saturday more than I like the experience of having one. An empty day arrives, and I begin filling it with things that will make it look well used by evening.

Some of those things genuinely need doing. Clothes don't wash themselves, and a small repair can become irritating if I ignore it for several weeks. Other tasks are there because I am uneasy about a day with nothing finished at the end.

When I lived in Cầu Giấy as a student, a free afternoon could disappear into conversation with Khoa without either of us asking where it had gone. We would make noodles, borrow something from a neighbour and talk about a film neither of us had properly understood. I remember those afternoons more clearly than some weeks in which I worked very hard.

Now I sometimes imagine that being older requires a more convincing account of my time. I try to use a Saturday well enough to excuse taking it off. By Sunday evening I can be tired of the weekend and still feel I have somehow failed to rest correctly.

This morning's list contained one small household job, two work-related things I had chosen to bring home, and a book I was treating as an obligation. I wanted to read it. I also wanted to be able to say I had read it, which is a different pressure to put on a quiet hour.

Looking at the list before we left, I could see that nothing on it required immediate attention. The household job could be done after lunch. The work would still be available on Monday. The book had been on the shelf for three months and was unlikely to object to another morning.

I folded the paper and put it aside. I didn't feel especially relaxed. I felt as though I had changed a plan without obtaining the proper permission, though the plan had been mine.

A very short walk

Our daughter examined the drain cover, then a leaf beside it, then the place where the leaf had been. She crouched down and stood up carefully. I waited for the inspection to end before learning that it was not the only inspection on her schedule.

A motorbike passed. She watched until it disappeared. Somebody came through the gate carrying a bag, which deserved another pause. When we reached the pavement she wanted to go back and look at the gate from the other side.

I could have carried her along the part of the route I had already decided mattered. Sometimes we need to get somewhere and that is what happens. Today we had said we were going for a walk, with no appointment at the end, and I kept forgetting that the route had no urgent purpose.

My wife was better at waiting. She pointed out a cat sitting well beyond reach and let our daughter study it. The cat offered no assistance. I checked the time, realised that checking the time was not moving anyone along, and put the phone away.

We made it to a small place where we could sit and get something to eat. I don't think we had covered a kilometre. It felt longer because I had been trying to turn every pause into the interval before the real walk resumed.

From the table I could see a man carefully fastening a box to his motorbike. He tested the straps, adjusted one and tested them again. Our daughter watched him with the same attention she had given the drain. I had a cup in front of me and nothing I needed to interrupt him about.

The box eventually left. Our food arrived. A spoon fell on the floor, was replaced, and became the most important event at our table. The morning continued without becoming the morning I had imagined, and nobody else appeared disappointed.

The photograph I didn't take

There were several moments I wanted to photograph. Our daughter held up the spoon as if she had found it herself. My wife laughed at something I said and leaned forward to stop a cup sliding toward the edge. For once I was in a good position to see both of them.

Usually the phone would have been out before I had considered whether I wanted the photograph. I would take several, examine them, notice a small problem and wait for another chance. By then the thing I wanted to keep might be over.

I do take photographs. I like looking through them, and my parents in Quảng Bình ask for more of their granddaughter. I don't want to invent a severe rule that will make a perfectly ordinary pleasure feel suspect.

But this morning I left the phone in my pocket for a while. I could remember the way our daughter was holding the spoon without making her hold it again. I could hear the rest of my wife's sentence rather than trying to fit her smile into a rectangle.

Later, outside, I took one photograph of them walking ahead of me. It is slightly crooked, and the second sock is still not where a sock is supposed to be. I sent it to my mother without trying to improve it.

My mother replied by asking whether the child was warm enough. I had expected a comment about the photograph. She had looked at it for information about the person in it.

I laughed and showed my wife. We both knew that if I sent a hundred different photographs, my mother would find a hundred practical questions to ask. I answered hers and put the phone away again.

Lunch and the cupboard door

Back home, the small household job on the list was still waiting. A cupboard door needed adjusting. It had not become more difficult during our walk, though I had spent some of the morning behaving as if it might.

I put the tools out while my wife prepared lunch. Our daughter wanted to know what each object was and was disappointed by how many of them I moved beyond her reach. The repair took longer with an audience. It also made me explain what I was doing in simpler language than I usually use.

When the door finally closed properly, I opened and closed it twice more. My wife heard the sound from the kitchen and asked whether it was fixed. I said I thought so. She asked me to put the tools away before celebrating too thoroughly.

There was an ordinary satisfaction in finishing the job. It didn't require the rest of the day to become a sequence of similar achievements. I cleaned up, washed my hands and helped put lunch on the table.

The two work-related items stayed folded inside the piece of paper. I knew I would return to them, and for a while that was enough. I wasn't trying to convince myself that work didn't matter. I had already given it most of the week.

After lunch we sat in the living room while our daughter moved objects between two places for reasons of her own. I asked my wife whether she wanted to go anywhere later. She said she would like half an hour to lie down first.

I took the next turn on the floor. We put blocks in a container and took them out again. I had nothing useful to add to the procedure, but my daughter kept handing me a block anyway. It was pleasant to be included without being expected to make the process more efficient.

An old afternoon with Khoa

While she was occupied, I thought again about those afternoons in the rented room. Khoa and I had very little space and no especially good furniture. The afternoon could be made comfortable by moving one chair and finding another packet of noodles.

I don't want to make those years sound better than they were. The room became hot, the neighbours were noisy, and we worried about exams and money. I spent a good deal of that time wanting to get to the next stage of life. It is convenient, now, to remember only the warm parts.

Still, there was something useful in how easily we could spend an hour without accounting for it. A conversation could wander. One of us could begin a story and forget why it had seemed worth telling. We didn't always have a better activity waiting in another window.

Khoa and I spoke recently. The call was interrupted by things happening in both our homes. We resumed several times, briefly lost the subject, and ended by making a vague promise to meet when one of us was in the other's city.

I used to think a friendship should be measured by how often we managed the proper visit. Lately I value the short call too, including the interruptions. I can hear the life around him while he talks. I don't have to ask him to put it away before the conversation counts.

"Nothing much," I said, when he asked what I had been doing that weekend.

Then I began telling him about a small event that had somehow occupied most of the afternoon. He understood immediately. We had both become people for whom a cupboard door could be a story.

I suspect that was true even in the rented room. The objects were different, but we were quite capable of talking about the kettle for a long time.

By the time the light changed

Late this afternoon I opened the book from my list. I read a few pages and stopped when our daughter brought another book over. Hers had much less text and required considerably more participation.

My wife came to sit with us. We read the smaller book several times. On each pass our daughter pointed to the same picture and waited for the same answer. She seemed pleased that we were finally learning it.

The light moved off the floor while we were sitting there. I noticed because the patch where she had been placing the book was suddenly in shade. It was the sort of change I would normally miss while moving between the kitchen and the desk.

When my mother called, I told her we had gone out, eaten lunch and stayed at home. She asked whether the cupboard was fixed. I had mentioned it to her earlier in the week and forgotten doing so.

I said yes. She wanted to know if I had remembered to put everything back after the repair. This is evidently a concern shared across the generations in my family.

Tonight the piece of paper is back beside the kettle. One item has a line through it. Two will wait until the workweek, and the book has a piece of clean paper marking where I stopped.

There are also crumbs to clear, a small sock to find and a photograph on my mother's phone. I put the cups in the kitchen and went to look under the sofa for the sock.

— John