Beautiful Sunday

By Ahmet Abdulaziz ….

Listening to the famous “Beautiful Sunday”, sung by Daniel Boone, who is also its co-author with Rod Mcqueen, always give me a different pleasure.  In fact songs  with such beautiful tunes and words, always take me back to previous years.

Apart from the text of the song, it is just the repetition of the words “Beautiful Sunday”, that force me to look back towards the innumerable Sundays of my life.  I could  say “those beautiful Sundays”, but I would also like to refer to “these beautiful Sundays”.   Life goes on and on, and so do the Sundays.

Looking back, the first thing that instantly comes to my mind about Sunday, is school holidays.  Indeed back in the 1960s when I had just started going to primary school, we used to have both Saturday and Sunday off , but I cannot recollect any memory of Saturdays. In my mind it is just Sunday, which perhaps used to be more beautiful for me, than the Saturdays. In those days the house of my grandmother was not too far from our house, we used to visit them frequently, as they were in the same locality. However visiting them every Sunday was a must, a routine that never changed for many years that passed after that period.

I remember myself and my elder brother used to run to our grandparents house, early in the morning every Sunday. My mother had been forcing us to also take our school bags with us, so that our aunts and uncles would help us in our studies and homework, but we frequently (almost deliberately) used to forget them at home.  Our mother had  to bring our bags later in the day. The best thing of every Sunday for us was a cup of tea, made by our grandmother, specially for us. It used to have more of milk than tea itself. I remember I had been too eager to drink it hot, and my aunts used to take the cup from my hand, so that it become reasonably cool to drink. I used to have arguments with my aunt on this issue.

My youngest uncle was very good in English. (He was in his early 20s then), he used to write something and I would write its heading in bold letters with coloured pencils.

We would run around the house of our grandparents.  I had been naughty enough to be scolded by my grandmother, since I was in the habit of climbing the trees or roofs. So she always used to keep a strict eye on my movements.

For my father, a Sunday in those days used to be a sleeping day. So he would sleep at home. Our mother would come to our grandmother’s house around midday. The atmosphere of the house was mild to some extent, as she used to ask us to do our homework, with the help of our aunt, who was a high school student then. By end of the day, my father would also arrive.  A full family (9 people in total)  would be the last episode of the day, bringing my  “beautiful Sunday” to an end.

Returning back from the house of my grandmother on Sunday evening was the most disturbing moment of the day for me. Still I can feel that sentiment of mine. The end of Sunday at that time meant return home, go to bed, sleep, and go to school the next morning. Going to school, was one thing that I never reconciled myself with.

It is perhaps the memories and psychological effects of those “beautiful Sundays” of my life, that still disturb me when the evening of Sunday approaches.

More than 50 years have passed, but I am still the same. I am still the same primary school going boy. Every Sunday evening disturbs me even now.  Sunday evening means to me now, pack up everything, go to bed, sleep, wake up next morning and go to work.

Nothing has changed.

Life is going on, Daniel Boone is still singing “Beautiful Sunday”, and I feel being lost in it.