Friday Magic

Friday’s are magic.

I am slower, more relaxed, time spreads out in front of me like an open winding mountain road, one you drive with the windows rolled down, your hand out the window, the wind moving it up and down. I walk slowly with Mabry out of the pre-school, I wait for her by the car. She dips her toes in the puddle of rainwater the week has left behind. “Don’t get your shoes wet,” I call out to her and she giggles and hops over the puddle.

We eat lunch in the kitchen at the kid’s table, my knees almost to my chest sitting in the small wooden chair next to Mabry who is taking bites out of the middle of her peanut butter and jelly sandwich, leaving jelly stains on either side of her lips. She wants a bite of my eggs, she wants her own eggs so I rinse out the pan and make her some. After her sandwich is gone, and one last sip of water, we head up stairs, Mabry on my back giggling again, then laying her head in the spot right between my shoulder blades.

It is these tiny moments I want to remember, the warmth of her head on my back going up the stairs. Her deep laugh when I count her ribs, one two three, me crouching over her, happy to comply when she says “again again.”

“You sing sunshine,” she says after we read a book in the tan rocker where I spent countless hours nursing both my babies night after night. She wants her blanket wrapped around her like a cape, her pink blanket Spencer’s cousin knitted for her when she was still in my belly, before we knew her hair color or eye color or the perfect pink of her cheeks. I hold her just like the baby she still sometimes is to me and I sing to her

You are my sunshine, my only sunshine

You make me happy when skies are grey

You’ll never know dear, how much I love you

Please don’t take my sunshine away

I sing it twice because we are in no rush. Because it’s Friday. And Friday’s are magic.