The First Weekend With Nothing to Look Forward To

Ten on a Saturday morning, curtain half drawn, one stripe of sun across the floor. The phone buzzes: his mother, asking what he's doing this weekend. He looks at the September calendar on the wall — the two holiday squares crossed out, the other twenty-eight blank. All of August he lived by counting down to those two squares. Now the counting is done, and he has no answer for her.

He says he doesn't know yet, and goes back to scrolling. Bored, not sad. Then her message appears: come home, I'm making sour soup. A tiny steaming bowl on a tiny screen. It turns out someone is waiting for him to come eat, on a day he thought had nothing worth waiting for. He gets up, changes his shirt, and heads home.

In the afternoon he takes the book he abandoned in June to his usual café. It sat closed on the shelf for three months, bookmark sticking out at the same page, because he kept telling himself he'd read it after the holiday. Afternoon sun falls across the page. He reads forty pages and laughs to himself at one part. Nothing big — but this kind of small joy, it turns out, is there every day. He'd just been saving it for some holiday.

Back home he scrolls his phone calendar to February: Tết is still five months away, a tiny red square in the corner. Without something to count down to, the days do feel empty. Then the screen lights up — a friend: football tomorrow? He replies: yes, what time? And sets his boots by the balcony door. The next milestone isn't Tết. It's tomorrow.

You don't need a big milestone to look forward to. Football tomorrow is enough.

The next holiday is exactly as far away as it was. It's just that today had a home-cooked meal, forty pages, and a match tomorrow. And you — is there something small in your ordinary week to look forward to?