Charlotte Latvala: Having leisure time almost feels scandalous

I perused the entertainment listings for the weekend.

“Oh look, there’s a Christmas light display,” I said to my husband. “And a holiday film festival.” I kept scrolling. “Wait — weren’t we just talking about going to that magic show downtown? That’s next weekend.”

“Let’s get tickets,” he said.

Sure, why not? After all, we had a free night. An evening with no plans or obligations whatsoever.

It’s a concept that still seems … almost scandalous.

Let me backtrack. With our two older kids launched, and the youngest one deeply embedded in her sophomore year of college, my husband and I have suddenly been granted a strange and wondrous gift: Time to ourselves.

As in, real, unaccounted-for time. Leisure time. Catching-up-on-all-the-things-we’ve-missed-over-the-years time.

And through a strange combination of circumstances, that free time is now — unprecedented in our world — on Saturday.

For years, when he was launching a business and I was at home, juggling freelance writing jobs and three kids and their complex schedules, doing fun stuff on the weekends never occurred to us. Or rather, it occurred to us. It just wasn’t an option.

Saturday was merely another day. Granted, it was a slightly different day. The kids didn’t go to school. There were no lunches to pack, no small people to walk to the bus stop. But Saturday was still a workday for the grownups. And when I wasn’t working, I was shuffling kids to various activities — musical rehearsals, soccer practice, church youth group outings.

Some Saturdays, we welcomed the obligatory sleepover guests (a phase of parenthood I was delighted to leave behind) which is about 1,000 times more work than — may I be bold enough to say it — literally anything in the world?

During those years, I would see headlines and links proclaiming: “10 Things to Do This Weekend!” and “Winter Blues Got You Down? Check out our list of January activities!” or “Five Can’t-Miss Movies Opening Friday!”

I would read those headlines and ask myself: “Who does this?” It seemed to reference an alien world, one that did not include hosting a gang of sixth-grade girls whose idea of a good time was mixing five different types of caffeinated soda they dubbed “Hyper Formula” and guzzling it down with a box of Cheez-Its at 10 p.m.

And now I know. It’s people like us: Empty nesters. People whose children are grown and flown. People who desperately want to catch up on what’s going on in the outside world, who are oldish but not so old that they want to sit home and rot.

A few years ago, I couldn’t have imagined myself looking to fill my weekend hours. They were filled for me. But now? Sure, I’ll take a ticket to your wine-tasting event. Bring on the symphony! Opera? Well, I’ve never been, but there’s no time like the present.

There’s just one problem.

We’re going to have to remortgage the house to afford our new lifestyle. Or exist on leftover Cheez-Its for the next decade.

Charlotte is a columnist for The Times. You can reach her at charlottelatvala@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Latvala: Having leisure time almost feels scandalous