What’s your favourite day of the week? Mine is Sunday or, as I’ve become so well-known for online, Sundaze.
There’s just something about the inherent slowness and quietness of a Sunday that I just adore. It holds promise for a fresh beginning in the new week, it holds space for reflection and recuperation. For as long as I can remember, I’ve saved Sunday hours for a reset and for non-negotiable family time. When my family went through a big shift in my teenage years, we reserved Sunday late afternoon and evening for uninterrupted family time at my beloved Granny’s house, a sacred time to spend with her and with my cousins, family closer than close whom I grew up exploring parks, woods, gamescapes and Granny’s garden with. We’d gather for a homemade Cantonese feast and then cut fruit for dessert, and it was just as fun every single weekend.
My Sundaze series on Daisybutter pays homage to this feeling: it’s a big life catch-up that feels cosy and homely and like a safe space to return to time and time again – the same but different. I talk about something or the things that’ve happened since my last post, and it all feels incredibly wholesome and old school. I just adore it.
Monday, however, comes a close second for reasons just as nostalgic.
You see, I grew up as a British-born Chinese, takeaway kid in England. And this meant that my childhood revolved around my parents’ schedules at the Chinese takeaway shop that our family owned. Monday was Dad’s day off, the only day of the week when the shop closed and we could spend any meaningful time together as a family of five. Monday meant that Dad picked us up from school in the next town over, and we could detour past the stables and stop on the verge to feed the farmers’ horses star-shaped apple pieces and dream of having my own horse one day. Monday meant chattering away in my native Cantonese, since our parents decided Mum would speak English to us now we’d started school. Monday meant that Mum was less tired when we got home from school, and we could chase Dad ‘round the garden until he fell to the ground and scrambled as we tickled him. Monday meant that Dad would sit and listen to me read my newest library book loan before dinner. Monday meant that Dad cooked dinner and it was always my siblings and I’s favourite dishes – fish fragrant aubergine and pork mince, Hong Kong-style sweet and sour pork, steamed sea bass with ginger and spring onion, stir-fried gai lan (Chinese broccoli) with garlic and dollops of oyster sauce. Monday meant meaningful time sat at the dining table, chatting about our days and what we’d learned and loved, and what would we like for dinner tomorrow, and what would we like to do at the weekend.
In my mid- to late twenties, I found community online in fellow British-born Chinese people and Eldest Daughters, and it was nothing short of life-changing to candidly talk about experiences. From obvious topics like feeling othered to more niche ones like never quite getting quips and puns because we grew up learning our mother tongues, it was a safe space to reclaim the identity I once cherished so dearly. You see, a lot of my childlike curiosity, wonder and belief in the world around me chipped away once I started secondary school. I became shy, embarrassed that I hardly got to see my Dad, ashamed that we owned a takeaway shop and the slur that came with it, shameful that I ‘only had the uniform on my back because’ somebody’s parents ordered a takeaway the night before. I stopped speaking Cantonese. I stopped putting any effort into my Cantonese school classes. I desperately wanted to somehow pass as white.
Of course as I got older and raced towards adulthood, the glowing magic of a Monday further reduced to a dull shine. Monday signified the start of my 9-5, another cog in the corporate machine. Monday meant being on a train by 7.24am so I’d get to my desk for 9am. Monday meant long trade meetings and being properly dressed for such occasions in the Outlook diary. Monday meant being the only East Asian and non-white face in the office and not knowing whether to feel pride for making it or ashamed that I was at a company that didn’t prioritise any sort of diversity or being the ‘good’ sort of POC that made it professionally. Monday meant squeezing onto a train at 5.33pm so I could then squeeze into a packed gym; ‘wellness’. Monday meant fixing the quickest, semi-healthy dinner that I could before jam-packing in some sleep before doing it all over again.
Mondays get a bad rap but, in the interests of reclaiming small joys and badges of honour, I’m willing them to become a pool of goodness again and to recapture some of that childlike curiosity and wonder in me once more. While I’m absolutely a Sunday girl at heart, I miss feeling unbelievably excited for Monday and filling it with things to look forward to. Maybe I’m not five anymore, maybe I am the one that reads books with myself and makes my favourite dinner. But who’s to say I can’t recapture that childhood nostalgia of Mondays feeling great, not crappy. There’s a curious thing about Mondays that I’m looking forward to revisiting.