Friday I’m in Love

It’s Friday morning, and the house is full of the feeling that something good is just around the corner. Nothing is, of course: I have no plans for tonight, tomorrow brings no particular respite from the daily round, the weekend provides no special bookmark in the text of my life, these days. Well, there is the adults-only session of Stake Conference on Saturday night, I guess. Still, though, Friday tastes good, like movies and loud music and books and beds and restaurants and release. Yeah, you could say I’m in love.

When I was in elementary school, my mother would take us to the public library after school every Friday. I’d ransack the Nancy Drew shelf, then install myself in bed at home to binge on my plucky, perspicacious heroine. I’d usually finish off one book by bedtime. I think the particular Friday flavor I still love steeped in those long, nutritious afternoons. In high school, though, Fridays became treacherous: suddenly one had to acquire “plans” for the evening, or risk the indignity of a Friday night at home. Blessedly, I arranged a regular babysitting gig many Friday nights, thereby delivering me from domestic indignity. But on those Fridays when I did manage to secure a spot in a roaming covey of teenagers, my pride and pleasure was delicious indeed.

In college the regular cadence of the week loosened a bit, as the square bloc of 8:00-3:00 classes broke up into floating bits and pieces. But Friday still tasted like Friday—with the added delicacy of the Friday night date. To wake up on Friday morning, aware that one has the entire day to contemplate one’s outfit and drop casual references to “my date tonight,” is to know one of life’s sweeter satisfactions—particularly if one happens to have a dateless roommate with a well-stocked closet. By our junior year, my friends and I had developed a sacred weekend ritual—one night in the library until the midnight music sounded, one night out until the club closed–that only a date could disrupt. Or a mission, of course. In the mission field, a stern weekly rhythm reasserted itself—but now Wednesday (the day before p-day) became the new Friday. No matter which route we chose, the Wednesday night walk home took us through Elysium: fatigue, disappointment, ill-feeling all dissipated into the open space of tomorrow’s freedom.

My first daughter was born, five days overdue, on a Friday; “Friday’s child is loving and giving,” they say. That was, without question, the most desired and awaited Friday of my life–five days doesn’t sound like much, unless you’re having contractions every five minutes—and it was also, abruptly, the last. Infants are unacquainted with the flavors of the week, and, in truth, are pretty uninterested in any of the temporal rhythms that structure the universe. (Four years later, my daughter still wakes up four nights out of seven.) Friday is no different from Tuesday or Saturday for us, particularly now that my husband works on a ten-day cycle. I do make fish for dinner on Fridays, but I’m not sure my kids have picked up on this yet. And somehow the after-smell of salmon in the kitchen isn’t quite how I remember that Friday flavor.

But Friday mornings always smell sweet, and every Friday morning dawns a summer day. Friday, I’m still in love.

37 comments for “Friday I’m in Love

  1. That’s a really great post, Rosalynde. I would say it moved me to tears, but boys don’t cry.

  2. I’d try to continue the trend of responses to this post’s love song but I don’t think I’d want to be in the same deep water as y’all. Besides, even my best efforts are never enough.

  3. Oh Friday. I also miss the way I used to experience you. Today I am not tasting you, not anticipating you. But I am smiling as I contemplate Rosalynde’s charming pictures of you.

  4. But of course there are always those Fridays where you just end up staring at the sky, staring at the sun — feeling like, well, a stranger.

  5. Friday nights are indeed magical. Rosalynde, I remember this one Friday night we were together in the days of yore — you running soft through the night, you were bigger and brighter and wider than snow. Good times.

  6. Occasionally these threadjacks get a little distracting, but it’s the nature of an open forum: if you open your mouth, then I can’t be responsible for quite what goes in or to care what comes out.

  7. Let me publicly glory in a my Friday date tonight, a new tradition this year for Kimberly and me: our monthly attendance at the Knoxville Symphony, in a glorious newly renovated (though “intimate,” to euphemize) hall. We buy CDs in advance and try to get familiar with the music. We dress up. We show up early to listen to the conductor discuss the pieces, along with only a handful of others who take advantage of the opportunity. On the program tonight: Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 (Pathetique), and two pieces to showcase a violin soloist: Chausson’s Poeme, and Ravel’s Tzigane.

    Other Fridays are just like in between days.

  8. The counterpoint to the joys of Fridays in some cases is what a partner of mine used to call the “Sundays,” that tightening feeling you get in your chest that tells you you have to go back to work the next morning. Whether one experiences the Sundays is, I suspect, largely a function of how much she likes her job. I don’t experience the Sundays anymore, but I used to, so I know that feeling. But Fridays are always great.

  9. Oooh, next Friday I will be in love. I give my final thesis presentation next Thursday and will be working on it non-stop (except for a little blogging of course) until then. And then… Friday. I can’t wait.

  10. I’m confused. I thought Friday nights were made for watching re-runs of The Dukes of Hazzard. Where did I go wrong?

  11. I was instructed by my bishop that my wife and I should reserve Friday for dating to keep our marriage from becoming stale. But, frankly, having been married for over 5 years, I’m not even sure where I would find people to date at this stage of my life.

  12. I know, you guys are great, but Rosalynde put a lot of effort into writing this post. I hope her feelings aren’t hurt, and that she’s laughing at these comments.

  13. reader, you sure you don’t want to change your name to A Critic? Or perhaps A Killjoy? A Dork?

    Sorry in advance for breaking comment policies.

  14. Steve, are you sure you don’t want to change your name to A Hypocrite? I’m not the one quoting dorky lines from The Cure.

    And don’t say you are sorry unless you mean it.

  15. Nice, Rosalynde. Ever try to write words to songs, specifically, sacred songs? I know a composer who needs words…

  16. “Mm..Fridays.Freedom!” Until you have kids, of course. Then it’s “Mm..Fridays. Daddy will be home ALL DAY tomorrow!”

    Unless, of course, you’re married to a lawyer.

  17. True enough. I’m promiscuous when it comes to good writers who are beautiful, thoughtful women.

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