How We Spend a Sunday

Where we go when we go nowhere

DO. SEE. EAT. DRINK. is our weekly take on what to do, see, eat, and drink, with monthly deep dives into places we love.

There’s a big trip coming up, which somehow makes this Sunday feel more important than it probably is. Not in a grand way, just in that quiet, practical sense of wanting to stay close to home before everything stretches out again. Before schedules tighten, suitcases appear in the hallway, and the days start feeling like something you have to move through instead of settle into.

So we start at the farmer’s market. The one in Atlanta with the tiny play area that shouldn’t work as well as it does. It’s barely bigger than most backyards, a slide made of other broken slides and one of those tree-line balance things hippies love, but our kids disappear into it for what feels like hours. They fold themselves into the swirl of other children immediately, and we fall into that familiar Sunday rhythm: standing nearby with coffee, tea, and paper bags, watching time loosen its grip.

We pick up pastries from the stand that carries our son’s favorite local bakery. I get a tahini cookie. At this point, it’s not even a treat. It’s just what Sundays are. A small, dependable joy. The kind you don’t talk about much because it’s so woven into the week, you’d only notice it if it were gone.

You always end up talking to other parents here. People from different corners of the city, different school districts, different versions of what family life looks like. Conversations start easily, how old, what grade, where do you live, and then drift into something more personal before you realize it’s happening. Sometimes you see these people again months later and nod like old friends. Sometimes you never see them again at all. A whole community of almost-friends that exists only in this narrow window between the sandbox and the coffee truck.

On the way back to the car, I stop for greens and peppers and, always, fresh flowers. The vegetables make sense. They’re practical. Dinner decisions. The flowers don’t make sense in the same way, and that’s exactly why they matter. They’re my way of marking the day as something other than efficient. A small, unnecessary beauty that says we slowed down long enough to carry something home just because it made the car feel warmer, the kitchen brighter, the week a little softer before it even begins. Plus, the little one gets to pick which ones are best and to announce they’re “for mom,” which seals the deal.

With Sunday traffic basically nonexistent, we decide to head out to one of the big playgrounds in the suburbs. The kind built around themes, pirate ships, castles, space stations, with enough room for kids to really run. This is our version of Sunday perfect.

Some days that means the playground at the Dunwoody Nature Center, where the spinning Christmas-tree structure and twisting slides are only the beginning. Afterward, we wander down to the creek, hopping from rock to rock, poking around in the water for tadpoles, letting the kids explore in that way that feels slightly wild and completely safe at the same time. Other Sundays it’s Peachtree Corners Town Center, with its outer-space playground designed for smaller kids, rockets to climb, just enough whimsy to make an ordinary afternoon feel like an adventure. And then there’s PlayTown Suwanee, with its massive 10,000-square-foot play area that somehow holds everyone’s attention for hours. These places aren’t just playgrounds to us. They’re little destinations that signal we have nowhere else to be.

Eventually hunger hits the way it always does, suddenly and without negotiation. Which means it’s time for H Mart. The kids love the seafood section, faces pressed to the glass, staring at the crabs and lobsters like it’s an aquarium. Every time feels like the first time. Then it’s straight to the food court for K-dogs, the perfect intersection of novelty and comfort food. Korean-style corn dogs, crispy and golden, sometimes rolled in sugar, sometimes filled with cheese or sweet potato or hot dog, sometimes all of the above. Always excessive in exactly the way a Sunday afternoon meal should be.

On the way out, we drift past the registers and into the candy aisle. They’ve officially graduated from the old standbys, Hi-Chews and Pocky, to things that feel a little more mysterious now: Yogu Time gummies shaped like tiny yogurt bottles, White Rabbit candies wrapped in edible paper, Botan Rice Candy with the cartoon tucked inside, Yan Yan cups that turn snacking into a game. It feels like a quiet marker of time passing, the way even their taste in sugar keeps growing up before I’m ready to admit it.

By the time we pull back into the driveway, we’re completely worn out, the good kind of tired. The kind that settles into your bones without complaint. The kind that comes from a day that didn’t try to be impressive or productive or Instagram-worthy. Just a Sunday that did exactly what Sundays are supposed to do: keep things close, keep things easy, and quietly remind you how much life fits into a few familiar miles.

—Daniel