Friday Nights

Some Friday nights we walk over to the local fast food place for dinner. It’s the “good” fast food place, so a treat for both of us. We celebrate another week of school and work and life in general. With onion rings and fries and the “mama burger” that she orders herself, though I have to repeat what she says because the cashier doesn’t always catch it.

This Friday night I watch the girl enter the restaurant with four of her friends. The girl who was in C’s class in grades 5 and 6 and 7. The girl who used to say hi to her whenever she saw us around the neighbourhood, until she stopped doing that so much and then never did again. I wave at her with a smile and then instantly want to take it back when I see her quickly glance at us and then refocus on her girlfriends. I realize in that moment that she doesn’t do that anymore, respond enthusiastically to a wave from the parent of the girl with the disability. She hasn’t for a long time.

Each Friday night when we find our booth and eat our food together it seems that C is able to stay seated a little bit longer than the time before. This time she is settled enough to have a good look at the patrons. She exclaims that she sees the girl and I watch her watch them for a while, wondering what she thinks about these girls and their gathering practices. I think about how this is one of the few places and maybe the only time that they will ever all be together, my girl and them, in the same place, on a Friday night.

This Friday night as we are walking home in the sunshine, then pausing at the traffic light where C wraps her arm around my neck (she’s tall enough now), the five girls walk past us, four on one side, one on the other, like we are a stone in the path of their rushing river. The girl’s hand is wrapped around a vape, perhaps trying to keep it a secret. I overhear them talking about the boy that invited the girl over but then something something something and it doesn’t matter, it’s none of my business.

We keep walking and when I see all the litter around our house from the kids walking back and forth to and from the high school across the street (where the girl attends, but not C), I suggest we do a litter pick up. I get the grabber, C holds the bucket. We do a once around the block trip and return home to dump the bucket in the garbage bin. I imagine the teens who eat the pizza and carelessly drop the greasy paper plates on the grass under the tree next to our house. They never think of us, but I have so many thoughts about them. Thoughts of teenagers and friends and what they’re all up to on Friday nights like this.

Some Friday afternoons she looks out the window in anticipation of her friend arriving. The teens are heading home from that high school across the street and her friend is not among them. Her friend comes from an hour away and it is hard to wait for her. C gets out some cups and says she will offer her friend a drink when she arrives. “Few more people coming” she says, though it will just be two, her friend and mine, the friend’s mom. They will hang out for a bit doing what they like to do, not the typical things that teen girls like to do because they are not typical, but they will hang out in their own atypical way together, and that’s friendship.

We’ll all walk to the good fast food place and it’s a lot easier to stay seated for the meal when she has a friend across the table. Maybe we’ll spend some time at the park afterwards to make sure rush hour traffic has cleared up before their long drive home. Her friend will say “I love it here” and C will beam in enjoyment throughout. We’ll make some plans to go to their house in a few weeks and I’ll be reminded again that this is what Friday nights can be. We have our crew and the teens at that high school across the street have theirs. They don’t intermingle anymore. It’s just how it is.

This Friday night I’m now remembering that time when the boy who was in her class in grade 5 and 6 and 7 was walking home from the high school and saw us in our yard. How he waved and said hello. The other girl who is a year ahead and always smiles and says hello when she sees us before or after her school day. And the one who went to daycare and elementary school with C and must be close to graduating by now. She has always been up for a little catch up conversation when we pass in the neighbourhood. They aren’t friends, but they are examples of how teens in the community are willing to continue to see her, to see us. And being seen occasionally helps me feel a slight reprieve from the growing isolation of raising a teen who doesn’t do standard teen things.

Then I go into the house with C, where she spontaneously grabs me for a big hug after her bath, and I help her get ready for bed. We talk about the day, and anticipate the next day, when she’ll go with her dad to a favourite place, like they always do on Saturdays. And that’s how things go on some Friday nights.