Father Abraham

I don't observe weekends. I work in retail so I forfeit many of the quaint luxuries awarded to a typical consumer (like the satisfaction of being right). I describe my schedule as such "every day is a Tuesday." Please don't mistake my words as complaints despite the slightest shroud of sarcasm. I have subscribed to other cycles of life before and I will again. Presently, I am a weekday warrior.
I could view the last two days of my life as meeting a series of obligations. The perfect metaphor is Kafka's The Trial. I offer a summary interpretation, in most ways we choose to enslave ourselves or emancipate ourselves. This can take the form of physical occupation or figurative fetters, the difference between a room and a brain (all comparisons are odious sayeth the zen master!).
My Sunday looked a little like this...Meg and I started to purge our bedroom of stuff to make room for a crib. For me this means deciding which books stay on the shelf and which books go in a box. Oh the poor, poor scholarly man! My wife might protest, and fairly, I started our afternoon on the couch. It's true I spent an hour napping and watching baseball. I'm just a man (for whom the sabbath was made). A snooze and a couple of scoreless innings and I was ready...for a little wine. Swig. Look at all this crap. Swig. Peripheral world out of focus while Utley is up to bat. Ground out. Swig. Move some furniture. Move some boxes. Pull a muscle. Swig.
On to the next thing. We shared a very pleasant evening grilling and eating with friends. Chomp. Swig. Get the boy and so to bed. All week I had been meaning to watch Lincoln. Somehow a leisure activity found its way onto my "to do" list. I would watch Lincoln before I went to bed. The movie opens with a battle scene. Blue or Gray uniforms it is hard to say, they are all muddy, the uniforms and the battle lines. One soldier steps on the face of another while bayonets insert mercilessly into mounds of countrymen. I don't watch war movies. I wasn't expecting Lincoln to open like this. In a flash I was reminded how intimately the Civil War was fought. I was getting context. Mercifully, Spielberg shifts the movie to the pristine floor of the House of Representatives and the debate over the proposed 13th amendment, the abolition of slavery. Here we stay for a majority of the film. Though it can be said living with Mary Todd would not have been any picnic, and many history books have said as much, and Sally Fields (who plays Mary Todd) self-referentially acknowledges the remembered idiosyncrasies of her character with a twist. Her words suggest Mary Todd is a representation of the "normal" mother during the Civil War. I will Ulysses S. Grant her that.
Interestingly, one of the only times Lincoln loses his stuff is when he tells his wife he has afforded their oldest son the permission to fight. They have long grieved the loss of another of their sons and the paternal debate on the White House floor heightens to silent anguish versus writhe display. A. Lincoln offers this sage advice on the freedom within all men and women:

"I must make my decisions, Bob must make his, you yours and bear what we must, hold and carry what we must. What I carry within me - you must allow me to do it, alone, as I must - and you alone Mary, you alone may lighten this burden or render it intolerable as you choose."

There are some things I must carry alone. However, how I suffer my burdens impacts the weight of my wife's. Free to choose shackle or key. Weekday to weekend or sunrise to sunset. It starts within yourself.