Sundays are for Morality Depicted with Doughnuts, Among Many Other Sublime things

Freakishly quiet. That’s what Sunday mornings are in my part of the world. All the tourists are just starting to roll out of bed at ten o’clock. All the locals are still at church.

Sundays are for rituals, and in the very least, time with family. There is no better possible way to accomplish both of these goals than to spend the morning finding freakishly good parking, stepping out onto old brick-lined roads in a cloud of Floridian humidity. Good, healthy humidity—nice moist air in the lungs; a good detoxifying sweat. Storm clouds grumbled somewhere, far off, scaring away a few more tourists. The old city and her humidity was all ours.

A little palm tree shade. Very little.

First stop, the bakery, because sweet things prettily decorated make the children and I very happy. Doughnuts are a Sunday school ritual from my childhood, which I’m happy to carry on in my own way. We stopped at a small bakery with a cruddy exterior, but on the interior frostings glistened in white, pink, and black. A good example of how it is what is on the inside that counts. Sundays are for morality depicted with doughnuts.

Prettily colored things.

Second stop, the koi pond, because things that swim and are prettily colored make the children and I very happy. Then, I scrounged around the purse for a quarter to feed the fish, and contemplated whether the children would ingest e.coli or salmonella after touching fish food, and then eating doughnuts. We found a restroom and shared a sink with a homeless person brushing her teeth with a very nice electronic toothbrush. Sundays are for irony.

A piece of a foot, a chunk of a stroller, and two halves of a road.

Third stop, a museum, because quiet hallways and random things to look at make the children and I very happy. But before arriving, the tot required us to stop at every fountain along the two blocks of brick road that had to be traversed. (Which for the record, was three times.) I should note here that the children aren’t normal. They like “exploring” museums - little pioneers they are. We found an interactive station that had some very creepy historical figures that told their stories. They didn't have any whites in their eyes. These freaky representations confirmed everything I already suspected about the conquistadors. Sundays are for playing tourist.

Freaky Priest.

Fourth stop, a random wondering through the streets, because exploring old carriage roads makes the children and I very happy. The boy had disposed of all of his good manners in the previous forty-five minutes. (Five-year-old boys only have about forty-five minutes of them every twenty-four hours.) He ran ahead of us on the empty streets with our doughnut box carefully strapped into the umbrella stroller, whirling the poor things around until I was sure there was a rainbow of frosting inside there. It was a wild dance—the only sort of dance that could be done properly on those uneven bricks. We left the continent and present day, wondering into old Europe: Moldering walls around shuttered houses of cracked stucco, antique glass, and courtyard gardens. All was eerily quiet; past and present all mixed up together. Sundays are for confused beauty that leaves no words.

Walk like an Egyptian...

Until, finally we wondered back to our parking space. Things were not so quiet. The rain hadn’t made good on its promise and the tourists had woken up. We pulled out of our parking spot and watched two cars do battle over it with their horns.

A love tree; a little romantic, a little obscene.

And then homeward, to evaluate the state of the doughnuts.