Friday

“Some traditions are inevitable passed down from mother to daughter and set in stone, never to be altered.”

Living in Utah “Good Friday” isn’t much of a religious holiday; the thought of what this day is all about is forgotten as people shuffle off to work. Sunday seems to be the day they celebrate with truck loads of chocolate Easter eggs.

Sweden, on the other hand, a country usually considered full of heathens and pillaging Vikings, regards this day as one of the holiest. Nobody works and the entire land shuts down for the three day weekend. On the whole most Swedes are not even remotely religious and generally consider these old places of worship to be center pieces in the town square next to the state controlled liquor store. But nevertheless twice a year it’s standing room only as the entire population packs into the church for Easter and Christmas Eve.

And as with my wife’s mother, certain procedures are a must. The most important is the traditional cleaning of the house and I am not talking about what most guys think, just a quick once over with the vacuum cleaner. No, we are talking about the deepest of cleanings, the white glove cleaning, and the toothbrush in the corner cleaning. My excuse that the garage needed to be picked up didn’t work. I was enlisted to help with systematically removing all objects from the selves, so that the surface could be first cleaned and then oiled in the case of wood; which we seem to have a lot of. When each room was fully dusted from top to bottom it was time to vacuum and wash the floors. I once again reminded my wife that maybe the garage should be attended to, but she shot me a look that would kill. I grabbed the wet rag and started to dust off the piano.

“Easter weekend can’t possible start until the house is cleaned”, she would explain, “so clean that one could eat off the floors.”

So now “Good Friday” has arrived and we can both go to work…….actually in our case just for half a day, but at least the house is clean!

I started this 30x40 for Ron at the May Gallery; he wanted another Provence piece with flowers. Last year I did a smaller version of this one and felt it might just work as a larger piece.

Richard Boyer