There are many wonderful things about The Precious Days of retirement. There is finally time to luxuriate in both discovery and rediscovery of what brings me joy. Since I’ve lived more of my life than I have left to live, not in quality perhaps, but without question in quantity, I am becoming reacquainted with practices that were pushed aside by “not enough time” or trying to please others. But now is the time of life during which I can reclaim my time in ways that bring me lots of joy. 

One of those ways has been to reintroduce some Sunday morning routines back into my life. When you are retired, the days of the week can blur together when they are no longer distinguished by the classic work week and weekend. So it’s been very important to me that my routines on Saturdays and Sundays take on a unique character. For much of my single-gal-thirties, I spent every Sunday morning, usually after church, with the Sunday New York Times spread out over the table or sometimes on the living room floor. I’d pore through each section, scanning each story and big city ad, stopping periodically for a bite of flaky croissant, or to warm my coffee a few ounces at a time from a French Press, or to sip some freshly squeezed orange juice. I loved that feeling of luxuriating in a slow morning breakfast, sun beams throwing light on the scattered pages of the Arts and Leisure section, and greedily saving the Times Book Review for later in the morning when I would lounge on the couch with another cup of coffee. Sometimes I’d clip interesting opinion pieces, saving them to read later in the work week. I loved looking at what was playing at certain theaters, remembering past trips to the city and hoping more trips would be planned for the future. For those few hours on a Sunday morning, I wasn’t a lone woman in my apartment in rural Vermont, I was part of a huge international community perusing the columns of the Sunday New York Times.

I don’t know what made me suddenly long for that Sunday morning ritual that I abandoned during my first marriage. I assume it’s the amount of reminiscing I do in this blog that triggered the thought of warm croissants and smudges of newsprint on my hands. I had been working on getting up earlier in the morning to have a more energetic grasp on my days, so I decided a few Sundays ago that I would check out my local grocery store to see what they had for papers on a Sunday morning. Strolling in at around 8:00 a.m., there they were, a huge stack of the Sunday New York Times where they’d always been, stacked alongside the local papers and the Boston Globe. I grabbed the paper, two extra large cinnamon buns from the bakery aisle, checked out, and headed back home to make a pot of coffee.

I set out the breakfast treats for my husband and I, and with my cup of coffee I settled in to read the paper, section by section. Commenting on the headlines to him, I still felt that something was missing. It occurred to me that the decade of Sundays I had lounged with the paper came with a soundtrack. It was the familiar opening of CBS Sunday Morning, trumpeting out Gottfried Reiche’s, “Abblasen.” I always had that morning news show on in the background when I read the Sunday paper. Charles Kuralt and then Charles Osgood kept me company as I half read and half listened to stories that often crossed over from the fourth estate to the fifth, and back again. So I turned on our local CBS television station just in time to hear, once again, that iconic trumpet solo and to see the giant sun medallion that’s been around the news show stage for 40 years, now the backdrop for Jane Pauley.

I’ve kept up the re-tradition for each Sunday since my first excursion to find my Sunday paper joy. Sometimes I buy my husband bagels at Feldman’s. Sometimes I get us muffins instead of cinnamon buns, sometimes glazed donuts, or the occasional croissant. Doesn’t matter…that treat, along with the Sunday New York Times and CBS Sunday Morning, are once again making the end-of-the-weekend morning something extra special.

On Wednesday of this week, I was checking out a book for a patron at the local library where I have begun volunteering. The sixty-something gentleman commented on the author’s recent passing. “Oh, yes, I read that in the Sunday Times,” I said. He commented that he had read the same article, and we chatted a bit more about the author and his books. There we were, a community of two, joined together in book love because of the Sunday New York Times.

It turns out, we’re not so alone. “‘Many boomers prefer to read the news the old-fashioned way, holding a paper in their hands,’ said Kraig Kleeman, CDO of The New Workforce. ‘There’s just something about the tangible feeling of paper and the ritual of reading it that they love,’” wrote Maddie Duley in 7 Things Boomers Still Spend Money on That Millennials and Gen Z Don’t.  

There is, indeed, just something about it that I and many others of my generation love. There is comfort and joy in reading, thinking, musing, wondering, and knowing, all wrapped up in the sections of that once-a-week giant newspaper. And, of course, there is the nostalgia of it all, making it feel, even for just a morning, that I have been successful at slowing down time.

What are your Sunday morning rituals? I’d love to have you share them in the Comments.