Katie Thursdays

A long time ago, there was a Thursday afternoon when I was in the school library, free from class but honorably employed. The day had gone well in my sixth-grade consciousness and, later, a friend of mine would come see me in the library. A friend who liked me and whom I liked. Katie was bright, outgoing and pretty. She was one of my best friends, because of her quick mind and friendliness, and she was going to come see me in the library, where I was independently exploring content for a presentation on the history of the American holiday Halloween.

It was a great Thursday, and I remember thinking then that, as a matter of fact, several of the previous Thursdays had been pretty good, too. Tomorrow is Friday. You are a successful and active 12-year-old with valuable friends and a library. Thursdays were good, and someone, subconsciously, I stuck to this perception, perhaps every Thursday since that one looking for the special and excellent qualities of the weekday, beneath my now-adult understanding that it is just like every other day.

But besides the sobering superficial comprehension of days of the week, there has also been a dulling of the joy of Thursday through the diminution of the factors that initially made it great. There is less success now in every week, it would seem. Or at least, less internal celebration of the success experienced. There are no such solid, immovable friends, on whose solicitude and admiration you could solidly count. And there is very little magical anymore about a library. I know, this latter is sad from any perspective.

The one thing Thursdays still hold is their iron relationship to Friday and to the weekend.

And yet, somehow, the fact that Friday is coming means very little of anything positive or suggesting freedom. At least to me. Certainly, I will get to sleep in. Or will I? Sometimes, I do not. Sometimes, I have social engagements like going to the farmer's market with friends or calling someone at 9 to arrange something for later in the day, that makes me, even if I don't set the alarm wake up earlier than I would have thought would have been necessary for my sleeplessness recuperation from the week prior.

Still, at least there is no alarm and I *am* free to do with my time as I wish.

But what is it about time that is yours that is somehow still filled with musts and shoulds and I'm-still-late-and-behind-with-these-projects? Almost exactly as if you were still at work. Except now the responsibility is to yourself. For some of us, though, responsibilities at work do feel as if they are for ourselves. For our peace of mind, for our sense of productivity, for our showing off to colleagues, for our purpose of advancement. Emotions that also dominate when you are taken up by ambition to rearrange the kitchen or to buy new mirrors and reshelf the bookshelf: Someone will see. You will be a tidier person. Your mother will like it. You will appreciate yourself as the good housekeeper and apartment-inhabitant that you always wanted to be.

So Thursdays aren't so very exciting any more. Not only is the sparkle of a day close to the end of a productive and invigorating week fizzled from childhood slowly, like the glow of your lovely skin, but the perennial elements that are supposed to be permanent throughout life, like taxes and your parents' love, do not mean as much. The fact that Friday follows Thursday and Saturday and Sunday follow Friday begins to feel like something you *should* be excited about. A notion of whose intellectual validity you are convinced but which does not stir you with the happiness that its recipe predicts.

And so, on this Thursday, when I came very close to not even writing, let alone populating the new bookshelf and sorting the old dresser for a re-make, I feel that I have once again disappointed those gods who count on the value of Thursdays to be able to spread happiness to humans. I have disappointed them in taking a promising day, staying up too late, making a mess instead of a clean-up and not being able to take the picture of Katie (of Katie's 6th-grade photo) that I wanted to attach to this entry. Tomorrow, or when I write next, if the theme permits the post, I will oblige.