Fridays at 3:13pm

Fridays at 3:13pm, I incrementally advanced through a carline snake that bordered the school: a seizing belt of adulthood squeezing childhood. I was stuck in this formation of iPhone-sucked, work-call-blaring, pushy parents. From a quarter mile, I could see them on the concrete island: one taller than the other, backpacks laden with notebooks, biding this waiting time together. When the car door popped ajar, they would shuffle in with lunch boxes, rolled poster projects and lunchtime stories. A burst of exuberance, curiosity, and fidgeting.

When they were in elementary school, on Fridays I would clean the car of goldfish snacks and markers. I’d place a small present, a Dollar Store token, on their car seats. Holiday patterned pencils, pens with the little sailboats that move when tilted, books. Or sometimes we would head straight to the bagel shop for an afternoon treat. A sweet reclamation of priorities: no matter how far we strayed during the work week, we pulled together on Fridays to exhale.

For the past two years, I’ve worked in a blind fury Monday through Friday, sometimes sleeping three hours a night. My father tells me this guttural need is inherited from his family. As a high school teacher, 52 minute bell-chimed measurements mark daytime. I pile, sort, fold to-do lists like laundry mounds. And I’m okay. Until Friday at 3:13pm.

Stepping from the doorframe of the art room, my colleague asks about the weekend. And I remember! A respite from the pace! The weekend! It is a trick I play on myself weekly. Instantaneously, my heart sinks. I feel it. Friday dinner plans and art openings come later, but I am alone at 3:13pm. I twirl my yellow pencil rhythmically. I stay late at school. No need to rush. No place to go.

Earlier tonight, this 16th of April, I was swinging on my friend’s hammock. A big cradle. Tempting earth’s equilibrium, I played with the moon sliding between two tree limbs and connect-the-dot stars. I thought about the dissolution of memory, the scattering of light. Of how the closest star is 4.24 light years away and yet, I could cup it in my palms along Baltimore’s milky horizon. As I toyed with this natural world shifting back and forth, back and forth, my body was like a metronome. I got dizzy. The swinging shook my soul to hover above this urban oasis, where I thought about time disintegrating like the image of a family standing in front of an infinity mirror.