starý dobrý časy

I'm remembering the feeling of Sunday mornings at the end of a long weekend at the cottage, anybody's cottage, the comfortable stupor of a three-day weekend of eating and drinking and eating and drinking, playing cards or watching old Czech movies until late at night. How as the slivovice bottle got emptier the jokes got funnier; the warmth of shared laughter. Or in other places, waiting for the children to go to bed, the hushed conversations in the dim light, secrets. How in the morning we would start making gestures towards packing up, going back to city life, and the inevitable scrap of paper with the train and bus schedules would emerge, or one of the teenagers or more overly energetic kids would be sent down to the station to write down the upcoming connections, always different on Sundays, sometimes extra different on the long weekends. Stealing a few cold potato wedges from the pot, still on the stove from last night's dinner. The sway of the bus on the ride home, the feeling of having been away for years.