"What Day Is It?"

 I am always amazed that so many of our American youth fail to recognize how good is the life they have. Is it perfect? Of course not. Is it fair to all? Again, of course not. Our nation is – and always has been – a work in progress. But we all have choices and opportunities, which many people in other nations do not have. And we all have responsibilities, to ourselves and to others. When we look back at the lives of our parents and grandparents, the ease and comfort of our lives is something they could not have foreseen. Innovation and progress are bi-products of those fortunate to live in a capitalistic society, in a nation of laws, governed by men and women chosen by the free people who live here. 

 

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Enough sermonizing, however. As I get older, I find myself increasingly interested in whimsy, thus the attached essay. The photograph is of a deer who recently visited our daughter and her family in Rye, New York. Lying next to a tombstone carved by my mother a hundred years ago for one of her dogs, the deer – perhaps Bambi’s mother? – is unconcerned as to what day it is.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“What Day Is It?”

July 18, 2026

 

“What day is it?” asked Pooh.

“It’s today.” squeaked Piglet.

“My favorite day.” Said Pooh.

A.A. Milne

                                                                                                        From the 1999 direct-to-DVD video

                                                                                                         “Sing a Song with Pooh Bear”

 

A few days ago I was speaking with an old high school classmate about the title of a whimsical essay I was pondering: “What Day Is It?” He told me that his wife, upon awakening on the first morning of her retirement as Chief Justice of Colorado’s Supreme Court, asked the same question. It is one many of us ask when relieved of the harness of an occupation.

 

Time is a funny thing. Retired, I can lounge in a chair, listen to birds sing as clouds float by, wondering what’s for dinner and thinking I have all the time in the world, which at 85 I do not. Yet there are atomic clocks, which are used with defense systems, and for bank payments and stock trades, etc., that must coordinate with other atomic clocks and must be accurate within 100 millionth of a second. And we retirees are indifferent as to what day it is!

 

Like Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, I am confused. The White Queen speaks to Alice on rules about jam – that we can have jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but not today: “It’s jam every other day; today isn’t any other day, you know.” It is confusing! Tomorrow, today will be yesterday! 

 

When working, I had a routine. The alarm would go off at 5:00am weekday mornings. After ablutions, I would drive to the station for the, roughly, forty-five-minute trip to the office. I always knew what day of the week it was. I had to. Monday was a fresh start, a day of infinite possibilities. Thursday was Friday in disguise – you could taste the oncoming weekend. On Saturday, I could sleep in. 

 

Now, in retirement, there is no need to sleep in, because I did so yesterday. One has time to consider momentous questions. For instance, why are there seven days to a week? Why is Monday called Monday and Wednesday, Wednesday? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, it was the Roman Emperor Constantine who established, in the 4^thCentury AD, the calendar we use, one based on the same seven celestial bodies used by the Babylonians 4300 years ago – the sun, the moon, and the five visible planets.

 

But do I really care that Sunday was named after the sun, or that Thursday was named after the Nordic god Thor, the counter-part to the Roman god Jupiter? No. When someone asks me, what day is it? I answer: it’s a day that ends in a “y.” 

 

“What day is it?” It isn’t yesterday, and it’s not tomorrow. I am reminded, once again, of Lewis Carroll and Father William: “Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?/ Be off, or I’ll kick you down-stairs!”