Carefree Timelessness

. . . a moment of.
Yesterday evening, a Friday. Well, let me start with what Friday afternoons have always been for me and H. My junior year of college (her senior year) is when they were first defined. It was spring, and I was done with basketball season. We were still training, but often had Fridays off. I also had a stress fracture at the time and was healing slowly. It was then that the first dilemma came up as to the conflicting Friday afternoon feelings. We were done with class by three in the afternoon -- aah, the entire weekend is in front of us. But what to do first? What does one do with the afternoon before any social events officially begin? There is no 5 o'clock happy hour for us - that has come in more recent years. And so we started going on long walks. I had long pictured H as an older sister rather than a mutual friend. I still see her as my older and wiser sister but also as a mutual friend. But these Friday afternoons was the first time I saw her as the later. Anyway, we still have Friday afternoon issues. What do I do after work but before we start going out to wherever it is you go after dark. In recent times we've met for an hour before I left for the weekend. I settled down and gain perspective from the week behind and the weekend ahead. Another recent meeting was also for a beer outside in the late summer. Also for an hour before my cousin came into town. I waited for him to call and drank a beer in the garden of a bar that reminded us both of our separate times spend in England during college.

The Friday that was yesterday, she drove up to my house and we went on a long Friday evening walk. The sun was setting over the mountains and fall settled in the valley. It was a cool night, a fall cool that would be cold in warmer seasons. Color and fading light settled in to walk with us. We walked out of my neighborhood on a path that leads to all other paths in this small city, and as we did we walked by a small park. The park was probably only the size of a block with new trees around the outside. We were talking about something or other. But I looked across the cold still verdant grass and wanted to run run RUN across it. "Hey, do you wanna run across that grass?" (We were wearing our running shoes anyway). "Yes." So we did - at a comfortable sprint. The kind that stretches your legs out and fills your lungs happily. And while we ran side by side I did two things. The first was laugh. I laughed purpose quick excited like Haha Ha ahahahaha HA Ha HA HA that made me out of breath faster than quiet would. And the second was think of the carefree timelessness that had come to invade these Friday afternoon times. I read by one of my favorite modern Catholic theologians about this concept. How it is often lost to adulthood. But we have created it in this short once a week time that doesn't come together for us every Friday afternoon. But when it does I forget time and settle into the space that our friendship has come to occupy. We got to the edge of the green and laughed a moment then continued on through the first of this weekend's evenings and one of many together in the middle of a long line of Friday afternoons.