friday night club

it started with a dreadful music together class.

my friend lorna told me that she was taking her son william to a music class in the basement of an episcopal church in cole valley at 4 p.m. on fridays. parker was around two and i was desperate for friends in the neighborhood with kids. i had none, except lorna.

i needed community. but not just anyone. cool, interesting people. who aren't freaks about sugar and can who will throw back a few cocktails, and whose existence isn't completely defined by their precious cargo. people with jobs, and lives, and interests. people i would have hung out with before i had kids. people, i guess, like me.

so i joined the class. it was expensive. and awful.

ok, the kids liked it. but i was stifling yawns and clock watching. forty-five minutes had never felt so bloody long.

who has time to learn these damn obscure folk songs? pas moi!

and just as the kids would get start grooving into a jam session with the percussion instruments, the teacher would pull the plug on it and make everyone get up and dance with scarves (sans recorded music or even a strumming guitar).

it wasn't working for me.

fortunately, there were a few moms (and a dad or two) who felt the same way. and someone decided -- in retrospect it had to be allison -- to take our little party of malcontents back to the house for an impromptu dinner.

thus the tradition commenced.

a small community of like-minded parents of the upper haight/panhandle converged.

we come together on friday nights whenever someone decides to host a pot luck. the rules are simple: show up around five, bring wine, salad, fruit, or dessert, leave by eight, host cleans up.

the kids eat, exhaust themselves and each other, watch movies, often get naked. the parents drink wine, chat, gossip, laugh, eat, seek or dispense advice, drink wine.

these casual dinners of pasta, chili, lasagna, burgers, whatever, have helped keep me sane for two years. we've watched our kids grow up, dealt with getting into preschool (we're all at different ones), had more babies (or not), strategized about kindergarten, and have ultimately been there for each other along the way.

i found my neighborhood peeps, and they rock. praise Jah.