Farewell, Summer Fridays

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Even if you still work from home, or don’t work at all, you know summer Fridays are special. That’s because no one appears to work all that hard on summer Fridays. There’s a natural relaxation on the eve of everyone’s weekend that pushes big deadlines and really important meetings down the calendar. Freeway traffic is better Friday mornings; worse come Friday afternoons.

 

June’s a little tricky, despite ushering in summer. Some people take time off for vacations, but the bulk of us reserve rooms and plane seats for July or August. That slows things down all around. We just returned from a road trip, if you can call it that, to central Oregon. With me behind the wheel on the first leg, we made excellent time to our daughter’s new townhome in Marin County. I have not lost my preference for northern California, though I have stopped planning an eventual move there. 

 

The rest of the trip was driving through wildfires and competing for chain restaurant seats with far worthier firefighters. Even during our three days at an AirBnB outside Bend, the skies were apocalyptic and temps extreme. One day we’re moving storage units in 98-degree heat; the next, we’re shivering in our sandals talking to the lawn guy about landscaping options. 

 

It wasn’t as hard to leave this time, and not just because of the smoky skies and wonky weather. I can’t relax fully when it looks like the world’s falling apart. But I can get excited about more time to read and write and deep clean, especially with retailers rushing a faux fall with pumpkin-flavored everything and Halloween displays. I’m ready to put away summer tops and shorts. And I’m really ready for the start of school – full time and in person! – next week in San Diego.

 

For most of us, children and adults alike, September connotes "start over" (as opposed to January's "start fresh"). School's start is so deeply embedded in our culture and our psyche that we instinctively shift intentions once school buses abound – even if we remain in a cauldron of ashy air and summer-like heat for another two months here. 

 

I spent all but a handful of Fridays this year with my grandsons, helping their parents save money on child care while I bond in a way my parents never did with my own daughters. On summer Fridays, with my daughter still on parental leave, we took day trips to the beach, the zoo, the aquarium and the park. I’ll miss those once she returns to work and I try to keep up with a high-spirited, talkative toddler and an infant with a very good appetite. I may need to reinstitute Margarita Fridays, a tradition dropped once I left the toxic workplace that inspired it.

 

For now, let’s all enjoy the final vestiges of summer Fridays, even if technically we still have about a month of them to go. It may not have been the summer we planned, what with variants and vaccine hesitancy remaining big deals and distractions. But we made it through another bizarre period of the pandemic nonetheless. That’s worth celebrating, whether with a tequila-infused cocktail or sparkling kitchen.

 

Photo of a sea dragon taken during a summer Friday at the Birch Aquarium.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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