The sunny day today and the pretty day today are wrapped by the cold day today. Right now it is 46°, but it’s a cold 46° driven by the wind. I had to close the backdoor as the wind was coming through the dog door. Today is what passes for early spring on Cape Cod.

When I was a kid, we used to cross the field below my street as a shortcut to school. I’m not sure it was much of a shortcut, but it was a straighter route. I remember crossing the field on windy days. The wind went up the cuffs of my coat and billowed my sleeves. We’d spread out our arms and let the wind take us. It felt like flying. We giggled the whole time.

The best of the early spring was the morning. The darkness had disappeared. We walked in the light. The air was crisp and smelled of grass and flowers. The birds sang. We always talked in whispers. We’d get to school and wait in the schoolyard. We stood in small groups. Girls were on one side, and boys were on the other. The bell would ring, and we’d all quietly get in line then walk into the building. In the Harry Potter film The Deadly Hallows Part 2, there is a scene where all the students walked in lines to the hall and stood there quietly while they were confronted by Snape in his hunt for Harry. The first time I saw that scene, I was reminded of our lines and the quiet and the nuns in their Snape roles. They even wore black.

The desks in my first few grades didn’t have tops to be lifted. Everything was stored in the opening at the end of the desk facing me. To find anything, I had to bend my head down so I could see into the hole. Often I had to move a book or two to get the book I needed. Speed was of the essence. We were being watched.

Our lunch boxes were stored under our seats. In the early grades I had lunch boxes with TV characters on them. I still have my Mickey Mouse Club lunch box. In the fourth grade, I went to patterns. It was a linear change governed by age. I remember my fourth grade lunch box looked like a tartan. In the sixth grade I started carrying a brown paper lunch bag, the ultimate in lunch time sophistication. I used the brown bags until I graduated from the eighth grade.

Today is a bit of a nothing day, a prime sloth day. I haven’t anywhere I need to be. I have nothing needing doing. I’ll stay in my cozies. I’m hankering for a cup of hot chocolate though I always still think of it as cocoa.

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This entry was posted on April 3, 2023 at 12:49 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.