Keep the Coffee Comimg

Winter is sitting on the doorstep. Every day is in the 40’s and the nights are chillier. Most go down to the 30’s. Right now the sun itself is hidden by clouds so it is giving us only a bit of light, a muted light. It is 43°. I have to admit I have given in and turned on the heat. When I visited my mother, her house was often so hot I used to wear a short sleeve shirt. She was bundled. I always complained as did my sister. Now I get it. I’ve realized the older you are the less tolerable the cold is inside the house, especially when you are a sloth sitting on the couch. I wear a sweatshirt.

I need a few groceries so I may also go to the dump. My car is almost fully loaded with trash, only one more bag to go; however, I am not looking forward to either errand. I’m just not in the mood. I need a factotum.

Saturday has always been my favorite day. When I was a kid, I was seldom home all day. In the warm weather, I rode my bike. I was a traveler. I went from town to town. First, I stopped at the special places to visit around my town like the horse barn, the zoo, the library and the store windows uptown where I could watch the lobsters swimming in their tank, check out Woolworth’s window, always decorated for the season, and stand in front of Hank’s Bakery wishing for that chocolate cupcake. After uptown I sometimes went further abroad. I’d sit on a bench at one of the train stations and hope for a train. I remember my hair blowing in the wind of a passing train. I remember the clicking sound of the trains on the tracks. I remember wishing I could be on that train. Where it was going didn’t matter. It was the going which mattered.

Saturday supper was never a surprise, hot dogs, baked beans and brown bread. I never like the beans. I liked my brown bread toasted and slathered with butter. My hot dogs were always in rolls, top loading rolls with mustard and piccalilli. Now, all these years later, I am still a hot dog fan and I still don’t like beans. Not long ago I bought a can of brown bread, B&M brown bread, the same one we had back then. It had can ridges like cranberry sauce does. I toasted it and slathered it with butter. I didn’t like the flavor at all. I was surprised because I remembered eating a couple of slices every Saturday night or did I? Memory can be tricky. I ended up tossing the bread out for the birds.

I don’t know what today will bring. I vacuumed yesterday. I do need to water my plants so that may be enough to make me feel productive. I’m toying with maybe baking something. My psyche needs chocolate. Brownies? Fudge? A candy bar? The possibilities are almost beyond comprehension.

The morning is dark, damp. It rained most of yesterday into the late night. We had thunder and lightning. It is 45°, but with the wind, it feels colder. More rain is expected this afternoon. I have no reason to leave the house. I have no reason to get dressed. It is that sort of day.

This morning I had coffee and toast. I wondered why toast is eaten mostly in the morning. Who decided that? BLT sandwiches are always toasted but not bologna sandwiches, at least not generally. Again, why?  In Ghana making toast wasn’t easy, but I couldn’t imagine my morning eggs without toast. A small round wood charcoal burning sort of hibachi was where all my meals were cooked. While the eggs were frying, the bread was leaned against the side of the burner and was turned half-way so both sides would toast. You had to keep watch, but toast with eggs was worth the effort.

When I was a kid, all the holidays had rituals repeated year after year. My mother was the ritual keeper. Some probably came from her family. The rest were hers. Halloween you know about. My mother was the costume designer. She was the decorator who bought cardboard Halloween decorations for the windows. She oversaw their hanging. As Thanksgiving  neared, my mother started preparing. She’d make her grocery list. It was always a long one. She’d make an apple pie, a pumpkin pie and sometimes a custard pie. She always made her own crust. Sometimes she’d make sugar cookies, turkeys. What I remember most is Thanksgiving morning. We watched the parade. We had tangerines. I think that was the only time of year we had tangerines. I liked that they were easy to peel. We had mixed nuts in their shells. Walnuts were difficult to open and sometimes the meat flew. I bought a wooden bowl with nut crackers exactly the same as the one my mother had. I fill it with mixed nuts and put it on my table every Thanksgiving. As for dinner, I’m saving that story for later in the month.

I have continued many of the rituals. They are a part of who I am. Even in Ghana I honored my mother and what she had given me. My friends and I celebrated Thanksgiving. For the Ghanaians it was just a regular Thursday. For us, it was a family day, a celebration. I made two pawpaw pies, papaya in the US. They baked in a clay beehive oven heated with wood. It was where the school bread was baked. They baked by the inside wall of the oven and took only minutes. They were my first pies ever. I made my own crust and rolled it with a beer bottle. They tasted just like apple pies. We found a turkey. They were uncommon back then in Ghana. We bought a couple of chickens to supplement the turkey. I’ll never forget after the fowls were dispatched guillotine style and put into a bin, they jumped out, sort of anyway. Chickens do run around without their heads.

I could go on and on, but I’ll leave you with the vision of the chickens. More to come!