Today is ugly, cloudy and cold. The high will be 50° while the low will fall to the 30’s. It is spring yet it isn’t spring. The house was chilly this morning. I grabbed my fleece. Just a few days ago my windows were open to the warm air. I could smell spring, the flowers and cut grass. Now my house is closed again, fresh air gone. Mother Nature is still toying with us.

When I was a kid, Sunday was a quiet day. Churches were filled. Most stores were closed. Families had a Sunday dinner, always the special meal of the week. The whole family was there. It was a command performance. In the afternoons, lots of families visited relatives. My mother’s side of the family was huge. She had four brothers and three sisters. Only the younger two weren’t married. I was the oldest grandchild.

My grandparents lived in East Boston. I loved visiting the city. There was a corner store right up the street. I’d take my dime, the one my grandfather would give me, and walk up to the store to buy candy. In the summer, people sold Italian ice, slush, out their windows, the windows facing the street. I loved the lemon. We’d play stick ball on the street with a stick, of course, and a half pink rubber ball. The bases were cars, sewer covers and random spots in the sidewalk gutters. We’d play a sort of baseball game against the steps with an uncut pink rubber ball. You’d throw the ball at the steps, and it would sail into the air. Hits were determined by distance. Home runs were always over the heads of the outfielders. You had to keep track of the hits, the imaginary runners on bases and the outs. Arguments were common. East Boston was the first place I ate bakery pizza. The pieces were square and room temperature. Once we walked all the way to Logan Airport and wandered around. The terminals were interconnected flat buildings. You could go up on the roofs and watch the planes coming and going. My mother was angry. I was thrilled.

Sunday night came quickly. My mother would send us to bed early always reminding us Monday was a school day.

The morning is cloudy and damp. Light rain is predicted for most of the day though the sun seems to belie that. It broke through a short while ago. It is 53°. Yesterday I got registered for the dump. Give me an amen!! I went there and emptied my car of boxes and papers. Today I’ll load the car with trash bags and make another dump run. It will take more than a few trips to get rid of all the bags especially the really heavy bags I can’t lift. Those I’ll drag, a technique I’ve used often.

When I was a kid, I never cooked or baked. My mother did it all. I made sandwiches, my culinary delights. My favorite sandwiches were bologna sandwiches. My mother bought bologna in a roll which had to be cut into slices. My knife skills weren’t so great so my slices were odd, thin at one end and thick at the other. Luckily, the white bread was so pliable it molded itself around each end. I added mustard, plain old yellow mustard. My second favorite sandwich was a flutternutter. I made it with smooth peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff. The brand of peanut butter didn’t matter. The Marshmallow Fluff did. It could only be fluff, never Marshmallow Cream. The difficult part of eating that sandwich was it oozed out of the sides. I never did find the perfect proportions.

My grandfather always ate his toast burned on purpose. I later found out the reason. My grandfather’s family had little money. His father had been murdered. His mother had to work. He and his sisters used to walk the train tracks to collect coal pieces which had fallen off the train. One of his sisters took care of them while his mother worked. There were no pop up toasters. On the toasters back then, the bread was loaded on two sides of the toaster where the coils were. Once one side was browned, you had to turn the bread to toast the other side. If you didn’t watch it for even the shortest time, the bread burned on one side. For my grandfather it was his usual breakfast, burned toast. It became comfort food.

Every morning in Ghana, I had the same breakfast, two eggs, coffee and toast. The food was cooked on a charcoal burner. My stove had no gas. The burner resembled a hibachi. A lot of fan action was necessary to get the coal burning exactly right. The eggs were cooked in peanut oil. They were delicious. The bread was toasted by putting it on the sides of the burner. You had to remember to turn the bread or it burned. My grandfather would have been delighted.