As a nurse married to a firefighter, we work weekends. Lots of weekends. Weekends have never been predictable in our house.
For years, our family calendar looked more like a shift schedule, than the traditional weekend we saw everyone else enjoying. Someone was usually working. Someone was heading to a game. Someone needed a ride somewhere. Even now, one teenager has a job and the other is on a schedule of his own.
It can feel overwhelming for two homebodies like me and my husband.
When we do find ourselves all home at the same time, there is usually a long to-do list waiting for us. Grocery shopping. Yard work. Laundry. Hiking trails I’ve been wanting to explore. Projects around the house.
I love all of those things individually, but together they can leave me feeling like I’m spending my weekends managing life instead of living it.
But then a ray of sunshine (I’ll call it rain) arrives; plans are cancelled and I’m left with an open day for a different sort of weekend.
Suddenly expectations are different. Both from myself and those around me.
The errands can wait. Sports get cancelled. The trails will be there next week.
The pressure I feel to “make the most of the weekend” fades and a sense of calm settles in. And in this season, that feels surprisingly valuable.
Maybe that’s because so much of modern life tells us every free hour should be optimized.
See the sights.
Take the trip.
Finish the project.
Get ahead for next week.
Rain has a funny way of making all of that feel optional - rainy weekends feel like nature’s way of cancelling plans I didn’t really want to keep anyway.
Permission to Slow Down
The last rainy Sunday in our house turned out perfectly.
Kids slept in and we lingered in the kitchen chatting at the island longer than usual (you know the teens don’t chat for long!) over coffee.
My daughter and I were learning to play Mahjong recently, so we spread the tiles out in the afternoon and practiced our strategy together. There were plenty of mistakes, lots of laughing and more than once we had to stop and look up a rule.
Normally I would be glancing at the clock, thinking about the next thing on my to-do list.
Instead, there was nowhere else to be.
For a little while, all that mattered was the game in front of us and the conversation happening around it.
After we played several rounds, we caught up on a couple of episodes of The Office with my son, and then I had an extra cup of coffee in the afternoon with my Kindle, the cat and a blanket.
Somewhere along the way, in the busyness life, I forgot how much down time I needed to reset and that Sunday was PERFECT.
Did I get everything done on my list? Not even close. But I DID reset in a way I hadn’t anticipated.
What surprised me most was how quickly the day slowed down. Once the expectation for productivity disappeared, resting became easier and my endless to-do list suddenly felt much less important.
And the older I get, the more I appreciate weekends that ask so little of me.
The Things We Miss When We Are Busy
I’ve been talking a lot lately about slower, cozier living. It’s something I’m working toward in this midlife stage. Giving myself permission to slow my life down, so I don’t miss the important things.
Things like:
Reading for hours
Listening to the thunder and rain outside
Baking brownies and having treats with the kids
Tidying up something I’ve been meaning to get to without the pressure of a big project
Watching the rain from the couch with a coffee and a cat
Let me know in the comments what you see when you slow down enough to notice ;)
Maybe that’s what I love most about rainy weekends in New England.
The sound of rain on the deck.
The fog settling into the trees behind the house.
The way the mountains disappear and reappear throughout the day.
The smell that drifts in through an open window after a summer storm.
Everything feels quieter somehow.
The world doesn’t stop, but it does seem to exhale.
New England feels different in the rain... and I’m here for it.
Not every weekend ends with tired legs and a summit photo for me. Some end with a finished book and an extra cup of coffee.
The Reminder I Needed
I spend a lot of time encouraging people to get outside more, but sometimes the lesson isn’t to do more.
The lesson is in learning to stay still. To give yourself permission to just chill. Spend more time with family or whatever it is that recharges you.
Rainy weekends remind me that rest doesn’t have to be earned, but sometimes it takes a rainy day to interrupt our patterns enough for us to see clearly.
Maybe that’s why I love rainy weekends so much. They remind me that I don’t always need a goal, a project, a hike, or a checklist. Sometimes what I need most is an afternoon with nowhere to be, a cup of coffee, and the people I love under the same roof.
Love this. They are truly the best weekends - especially with a cat!!!