Fridays — a place in my heart

(I suggest you slip in Tracy Chapman’s CD with “The Promise” in your player or play its mp3 equivalent in the background — over and over. If you don’t have it, Jewel’s “Enter from the East” would do, I guess.)

We were a bunch of moms with kids and we used to meet Fridays. In the group, I was the only one uncommon to the rest. All of them went to the same high school together. But it wasn’t difficult blending in, for as moms we shared the same domestic concerns and dreamed the same future although in different levels of vagueness and with varied approaches to make them come true.

We used to go out a lot together, most of the times in separate groups but whenever Friday comes, we’d all be there, out somewhere, or in one of the houses pre-assigned to host our regular Friday gigs. We’d always be there during Fridays to make the other groups jealous in a fun way. Somehow it was a sisterhood of some sort, kind of the extended kind as there were more getting in.

I was the super laid-back one in the group and it would really take quite a few of them some time before they could get me on my feet to go out on a bash or binge. It was a time, a season I would say, when, through sharing, some started to learn of dependence and inter-dependence, taking back lost identities. While others learned of moderation, focus on what’s at hand, and stability, others considered getting livelihood education. When the “bared arms policy” evoked a lot of conundrum among the members of the G8 , we did bare our arms and shared a lot of cheap talks just to break the ice and things like that, that one won’t just get from simply being invited to a party or the regular family reunion.

Those Fridays would momentarily peak up and then dwindle but there was the core group, as in any team or organization, that would keep on and stay together no matter what. But, sadly, that, too, had to go. The kids are growing, moms need to work harder now. Or, mom is seeing someone else. Or, mom has to go abroad. There were a lot of other reasons that keeping Fridays only meant an added concern.

For a time, three of us tried to keep the Fridays through. Until there was none. I waited on the phone to get excited during Fridays but minutes had stretched to countless hours, until I had to go to bed wondering who it was who had been seeing someone else, or who it was who had to work harder now.

The kids are growing, their moms will surely find other ways to keep up with their Fridays. I hope they will find it as meaningful as mine. I hope that despite some of life’s misgivings, what we had shared and learned from each other before will still keep them — us — dreaming; not losing oneself but finding more reasons to fulfill those dreams.

Arms bared. These photos and that one above show what used to be the core of our Fridays. Taken way past midnight, the kids enjoying each other’s company, and with her low-res phone-camera (no smart phones yet then), Lotlot took these shots and sent them to my email that same night.