Good Friday! Every Friday is good right? Just like everyday is Christmas! I’d be the first to dive into a giant plate of research to see how important any Friday is during these times of major change.
Although Corporate America would like to slim things down to a four day work week, those doing the work find themselves locked up in survival mode tossing down Red Bulls and fancy coffee to keep two to four part time jobs going.
Yesterday my good friend Chuck the producer stood strong in the way he’s able to balance several opportunities in a single life. He envisions it as an extreme positive to have so many options, gifting his fashion and style with the infamous “Never the same day twice.”
While growing up, the fifth of seven days earned a golden halo to which I raised high above that single twenty four hour period…The arrival of Friday meant tomorrow was the greatest day on earth…Saturday! Forget Scooby Doo, Speed Racer and H.R. Puffin Stuff, the first official day of the weekend gave birth to the only sport my parents allowed me to play...bowling. Thanks to the AJBC I learned early in life how to bust free of the blankets and get the day started.
It wasn’t until my teen years that Friday’s became important…both parents were out of the house until ten maybe eleven…time to spread the wings, soar across the Yellowstone valley and make waves on an ocean that existed only in the vivid depths of a growing imagination.
Before the World Wide Web, Face Book, Twitter and texting, secret hiding places were usually on Montana mountain tops, dark off the beaten path forests or in the center of corn fields with tassels so high you'd swear Shaquille O’Neil was the party animal standing next to you.
My neighbors have reinvented the passion for family Fridays. After forty long drawn out pressured filled hours of giving the bigger man what’s required, each week members of the block gather at a selected home to do nothing more than play games. I’ve never participated, mainly because I have no clue how to wind down. It seems like a horrible waste of valueable time. After all, my favorite day of the week is Saturday!!!!!
We’re trained like that…seriously! Ever notice your workday seems to drag at or around three or three thirty everyday. That’s when school let out. Look even closer, we hate Monday’s not because it’s another workday but waking up in kids shoes only to stand on the corner waiting for a bus was brutal and we continue to carry that spirit. How many Sunday nights did you spend on the sofa with your mother trying to rip the rats from your hair before bedtime? I’d love to be a fly on the wall watching to see how many people rub their hands through their hair because repetitive motion from the younger years still breathes inside the chapters we’re writing today.
Good Friday! Far out Saturday then Easter! It was the single most important day of my childhood life. No matter how many friends, neighbors and completely unknowns I convinced to visit Billings Baptist Temple, the one person I wanted to see there most was my stepfather. I dreamed every year that Easter would be the one time he’d feel just enough J. Love to hop in his beat up dingy red International pickup and surprise us kids at church. The bad news is he’d probably bust my brother Teddy trying to slam my fingers in the hymnal. A quick bop on the back of the head would’ve felt pretty good knowing he was there with us.
Now that I’m two thousand miles from his book of love, I still wait for the email from my sister Susan to write, “I got him there.”
It’s not that dad doesn’t believe…he just believes in something different and knowing that taught me how to respect every shape of spiritual growth. The dude is blessed with something because he can grow an outstanding garden and the flowers he plants for my mother every year are far greater than a nursery or fancy flower shop stuck in the middle of a rich person strip mall.
I’d say it was Joe who taught me the importance of animal speak. You’re supposed to grow up hating the men who marry your mother a second time but he spoke to me in ways that allowed animals to be heard. A pigeon was gunned down at work, rather than let him pass with the wind, he sheltered the feathered music maker, mending his broken wing then paying for the tremendous amount of food it would eat. One became many, then there were chickens, rabbits and anything else with a heart, lungs and a reason to be seen as well as heard.
Joe also taught me life after death. He’d take something once labeled unforgettably beautiful now busted in half by weather and time and allowed it to breathe inside the shapes of new beginnings. As kids we assumed he loved ripping down old houses. In reality, the wood from that once living tree was replanted on different soil offering a continuation to the protection a tree vows its entire journey to.
Joe didn’t stop then and doesn’t today. Through his odd ball way of teaching and my assumption of him never finding religion, one would be foolish not to think everyday is his Easter. He has no problem extending his open palm to give people, places and things so often ignored the opportunity to feel the joy of rebirth. His love for all living things can be seen in my mothers eyes.
Thank you Dad for letting me steal your art…
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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