Sunday Visits

Old-fashioned Sunday afternoons were for visiting. First there was church, then Sunday dinner — a heavy, midday repast (not brunch) — then chatting in the living room or parlor.

Even in memory, these childhood Sundays are interminable. Now I realize what they were for.

Yesterday I spent four hours on the phone. I talked with my mother, my sister, my daughter and my friend. The Sunday phone call is the modern equivalent of the Sunday visit. Because family and friends are far flung, the receiver (and now the smart phone) is the portal of togetherness. It is not ideal, but it is essential.

"A culture wise in love's ways would understand a relationship's demand for time," says Thomas Lewis, M.D., and coauthors in A General Theory of Love. "Americans have grown used to the efficiencies of modern life ... why should relationships be any different? Shouldn't we be able to compress them into less time than they took in the old days? ... The unequivocal limbic no takes our culture by surprise."

So even though I "didn't get much done" yesterday, I remind myself that there are no shortcuts to closeness. False starts, conversations that go nowhere, simply being available in case a conversation might happen — these are the currency of intimacy.

Sundays in Austria

Mass at the old church on the hill. A large lunch with a brass band. Strolling in the plaza in native dress. Visiting with friends. A typical Sunday for the residents of Hallstatt.

We partook of as many of these customs as we could, minus the dirndls and lederhosen! But I went to church, we heard the band at lunch, and we took a lovely walk through sun and rain and wind to the banks of a roaring stream.

To passersby we said "Gruss Gott," literally "Greet God," which is how most Austrians greet each other — rather than "Guten Tag" or "Good Day." I find this endearingly old-fashioned, and hearing this all Sunday seemed to make the day even more of a celebration. Stores are closed on Sundays in Austria, so you're forced to take a day off from your normal chores. Life moves more slowly in Europe.