It is Friday, June 19, at 10:01 AM, and the folding chairs from last night’s Prince tribute are still on the garage floor where the Subaru Outback parent set them down at 9:34 PM. They will not be put away today, either. They will be put away Tuesday afternoon during the recon-staging cycle for Week 3 — which is Petty — and the garage knows this. The chairs know this. The Subaru knows this.
This is the day after. The day after concert day is its own thing in the Lamorinda summer calendar, and the fact that it happens to also be Juneteenth this year is a small extra wrinkle that the town is, as of 10:01 AM, half-noticing.
8:14 AM — The Mail Truck That Does Not Come
The first sign, around the Moraga Center loop, that Friday is different is the absence of the mail truck on its normal 8:10–8:25 AM run past the Rheem Shopping Center. The mail truck does not come. The mail truck will not come. Juneteenth is a federal holiday and USPS observes it, which means there is no mail delivery, no outgoing pickup at the blue boxes, and the Moraga Post Office out on Country Club Drive is closed.
The retired couple at the corner table at Town Bakery Cafe — the same retired couple at the same corner table doing the same crossword they were doing Thursday at 10 AM and Tuesday at 10 AM and the Tuesday before that — notices the missing mail truck around 8:18, exchanges a glance, and does not say anything about it. They have been together for forty-one years. They know what the other one is going to say about the mail. They are not going to say it.
The package waiting in the box for the Saturday party gift — the one the cousin in Walnut Creek mailed on Wednesday and that should have arrived this morning — will arrive Saturday instead. The booking parent will find out at the Saturday-morning Orinda Farmers Market around 9:40 when the tracking app pings. It will be fine. The cousin will text “oh right, Juneteenth” and somebody will laugh.
9:02 AM — The Bandshell Apron, Empty
A Park Foundation staff member walks the Moraga Commons bandshell apron at 9:02 AM, doing the day-after sweep. The lawn is in the condition a Park Foundation staff member can read instantly: 2,400 people sat on this grass last night for two hours and the grass looks fine. This is partly the Wednesday irrigation cycle doing its job, partly the dryness of the air, partly the fact that the blanket grid assembled itself on top of canvas-bottomed blankets rather than directly on the grass. The lawn will be ready for Week 3 (Petty, Thursday June 25) without intervention.
The staff member picks up: four flattened juice boxes, a single child’s flip-flop in size 11, an empty bottle of the Toscano-pairing sparkling water, a fleece-glove (in June), and a folded napkin with a phone number written on it in pen. The phone number does not belong to anyone the staff member can identify. The flip-flop goes in the lost-and-found bin at the Hacienda. The napkin goes in the recycling.
The bandshell stage has been struck. The speaker truck that lived on the cone-marked spot Thursday afternoon left at 9:48 PM last night. There is no evidence, at 9:02 AM, that anything happened here. This is partly Park Foundation discipline, partly the reverse procession’s quiet competence, partly the small-town agreement that nobody articulates: we leave it the way we found it. Year 42 of this series, and the morning-after lawn looks like Year 1.
9:48 AM — The Costco Pre-Run, Pleasant Hill
The Costco list pinned to the cabinet — the one the booking parent has been ignoring since Tuesday — comes off the cabinet at 9:30 AM and into the Honda Pilot at 9:42. The Pleasant Hill Costco opens at 10:00 AM on Fridays for executive members and 10:00 AM for everyone else; the booking parent is an executive member and uses this fact roughly once a year, today. The drive from Moraga down through Lafayette and out 680 to Pleasant Hill takes nineteen minutes when the Caldecott reverse pattern is in effect, which today it sort of is — Friday morning eastbound is light because some federal workers are off and some private offices took the long weekend.
The booking parent is at the Costco entrance at 9:58 AM. Three other Lamorinda parents are at the Costco entrance at 9:58 AM. They do not, technically, know each other. They recognize each other in the way Lamorinda parents recognize each other in a Pleasant Hill parking lot: the car, the hat, the kind of canvas bag, and the unmistakable Saturday-party staging energy. All four families are doing the same run. All four families will hit the cheese wall at 10:04 AM and the rotisserie-chicken case at 10:11 AM. All four families will, by 10:38 AM, have a flatbed cart containing some version of the same configuration:
- The case of LaCroix (variety pack; the strawberry-pineapple is the one the in-laws will actually drink).
- The bag of mini-Babybel for the Saturday party kids’ grazing table (separate from the Thursday Toscano, which is for adults).
- The flat of strawberries (the Costco strawberries are the farmers-market strawberries’ cheaper, larger, less concentrated cousin and they have their own job to do on the party table).
- The 24-pack of bottled water (the in-laws want bottles, not the filtered pitcher).
- The Kirkland brioche buns (always; even at parties that are not having burgers).
- The rotisserie chicken (today’s lunch; not tomorrow’s party).
- The thing the booking parent did not put on the list but bought anyway because it was on the end-cap (this year it is a planter; last year it was an inflatable kayak; the year before, a panini press that is now in the garage near the chairs).
Check-out at 10:54 AM. The line for the receipt-checker is six carts long. The receipt-checker draws the smiley face on the receipt with the green marker because today is Juneteenth and the supervisor said the green marker is appropriate. The booking parent does not know what this means but appreciates it.
11:32 AM — The Refrigerator Wars
Back in Moraga at 11:32 AM, the booking parent stages the Costco haul into the kitchen and runs into the refrigerator wars. The Thursday-night La Finestra leftover container is still on the middle shelf taking the exact spot the Saturday party cheese platter needs. The cherry-tomato containers from the Tuesday recon shop are still half-full from the concert. The bottle of Penninis red sauce the kids barely touched on Wednesday is taking up the entire door shelf because it is too tall to lay down.
The booking parent does the triage. The agnolotti leftover gets reheated for lunch (the booking parent stands at the counter, eats it cold, finishes it standing up, washes the container, takes thirty seconds of credit). The cherry tomatoes go into a glass bowl and migrate to the front of the produce drawer where they will be eaten by the children tonight as a stalling tactic before bed. The Penninis sauce gets poured into a smaller container — the small-Tupperware move — and the original jar goes in the recycling. The refrigerator now has roughly the volume of a flat of Costco strawberries and a bag of Babybel waiting to enter. They enter at 11:51.
This is, structurally, the most domestic the booking parent will be all weekend. Tomorrow at this hour they will be at the Orinda market. Sunday at this hour they will be at the party.
12:40 PM — The Camp Pickup Is Different on Friday
Camp pickup at the Hacienda runs the same time every weekday — 12:30 to 12:45 for the morning-only sessions — but the Friday pickup is slightly different than the Monday–Thursday pickup. On Fridays, the kids come out with the week’s pile: the painted thing from Tuesday, the lanyard from Wednesday, the very damp T-shirt from Thursday water day that did not fully dry in the cubby overnight. The Friday pickup parent is the one carrying a wet T-shirt to the car at 12:42 PM. There is no avoiding this. Every Friday pickup parent in June has, on the floor of the back seat, a small archaeological layer of damp camp T-shirts that will be moved to the laundry tonight or tomorrow or possibly Monday.
The Hacienda camp counselors say “have a great weekend” to every family. The Hacienda camp counselors say it warmly. The Hacienda camp counselors mean it. This is one of the small-town things that does not happen in the city and that Lamorinda parents do not think about consciously but register, subconsciously, as part of why they live here.
The camp closes at 12:45. It reopens at 8:30 AM Monday. The wet T-shirt is in the laundry by 1:08 PM. The kid is on the kitchen floor eating Babybel by 1:12.
2:00 PM — The Lafayette Reservoir, Soft Wave
The Lafayette Reservoir lot, at 2:00 PM on a normal Friday in June, is at its early-afternoon midpoint — maybe sixty percent full, the lap-walkers winding down, the stroller-loop parents winding up. On this Friday, with Juneteenth in effect, the lot is at maybe seventy-five percent. The extra fifteen percent are the federal workers and the lawyers whose firm closed for the day and the parents who decided around 11 AM to make today a we-go-to-the-reservoir-day instead of a regular Friday. The Tilden-side parking lot has been full since 1:30. The Briones lot is half-full.
The reservoir walkers at 2:00 PM on a holiday Friday include a small number of people who do not normally walk the reservoir on a Friday at 2:00 PM, and the regulars can tell. The regulars do not mind. The regulars nod and step aside on the narrow stretches and accept that today the loop is going to take an extra eight minutes. The dogs do not notice. The redwoods at the south end do not notice.
3:30 PM — The Saturday Forecast Lock
At 3:30 PM the booking parent’s phone shows the Saturday forecast in final form: high 78°F, sunset at 8:36 PM (the latest of the year), light westerly breeze in the afternoon, no marine push, no inland heat advisory. This is the solstice forecast in its cleanest possible delivery. Sunset is at 8:36 PM. The actual solstice — the moment of solstice, the precise astronomical instant the Earth’s axial tilt hits maximum — is at 9:24 AM Sunday morning, which is during the Moraga Farmers Market and which approximately three people in Lamorinda will notice. (Two of them are at Saint Mary’s.) The practical solstice, the longest-light Saturday, is tomorrow. The forecast is clean.
The booking parent forwards the screenshot to the cousin group chat with the message: “Costco done. Backyard tomorrow.” This is all that needs to be said. The cousins know what backyard tomorrow means. They will be there by 4 PM, the chairs they borrowed last weekend will come back with them, and the Saturday party will start somewhere between 4:15 and 4:30 depending on which cousin gets there first.
5:48 PM — The Garage Door Audit
At 5:48 PM the Subaru Outback parent finally walks into the garage, ostensibly to get a beer from the second fridge but actually to count the chairs one more time. They are still on the garage floor. They are still in the rough position they were set down in last night. There are still five. The blanket is folded — somewhat — and slung over the workbench. The cooler is open and air-drying with the lid propped against the wall. The bottom of the cooler has a small puddle that will, by Saturday morning, be gone.
This is the equipment in its in-between state. Not packed, not unpacked. Not ready, not done. The Subaru parent considers, for approximately eleven seconds, putting the chairs away. The Subaru parent does not put the chairs away. The chairs will be reloaded into the Subaru at 3:45 PM Saturday for the party drive across town, and Friday-night-self has correctly assessed that Friday-night-self is the wrong self to be solving this problem. The beer comes out of the second fridge. The garage door goes back down. The chairs win.
7:42 PM — The Quiet Friday
The Friday-after-concert night is, in most concert-going households, deliberately quiet. No restaurant reservation. No errand. The Town Bakery Cafe closes at 4 PM Fridays. La Finestra has a wait. Loard’s is open until 9 and is the only thing most Lamorinda families would consider going out for at 7:42 PM on a recovery Friday, and several do — the post-camp Babybel kid is, at this hour, getting a small mint chip in a cone at the Loard’s counter and the Subaru parent is reading the Lamorinda Weekly off the counter rack. The Loard’s counter person knows the family. The kid says thank you without being reminded. The counter person says have a good weekend, you too.
Sunset behind the western ridge is at 8:36 PM tomorrow. Tonight it is one minute earlier — 8:35. Functional difference to the eye: zero. Calendar difference: the solstice is twenty-two hours away. The kid does not notice. The kid is on the mint chip.
For the Record
It is 9:14 PM. The chairs are in the garage. The cooler is dry. The Costco strawberries are in the second drawer. The Babybel bag is open. The Juneteenth-quiet held all day in Lamorinda the way it usually does — without ceremony, with the federal-mail-not-delivering wrinkle, with the Pleasant Hill Costco green-marker smiley face nobody asked about — and the day is, by 9:14 PM, indistinguishable from any other recovery Friday in June.
Tomorrow is the Orinda Farmers Market at 9:00 sharp, the solstice-day party at 4:30 PM, and the year’s latest sunset at 8:36 PM. Sunday is the Moraga Farmers Market and the slow morning. Thursday is Petty and the chairs are coming out of the garage Tuesday afternoon to start the cycle again.
The mail truck will come Monday.
The Moraga Commons summer concert series continues Thursday, June 25 (Refugees — Tom Petty tribute, 6:30–8:30 PM, free). The solstice lands tomorrow, Saturday June 20 (technically Sunday morning at 9:24 AM PDT, but the longest-daylight Saturday is tomorrow) — sunset at 8:36 PM, coinciding with the Orinda Farmers Market wrap. For the day-of payoff to this week’s concert staging, see Thursday: The Purple Ones, The Long Dusk, and the Blanket Grid. For the Saturday-evening party this Costco run was staging, see Saturday: The Party.
