Yesterday it rained all day. Today is a lovely day, a gift after the rain. The high will be 75°, that’s summer weather. Looking out my den window, I can see the leaves are ruffling a bit in the breeze, a slight breeze. The sun is ever so bright and is warming the cool morning air.

Last night the air was redolent with the scent of burning wood. It reminded me of fall when I was a kid and the Saturday ritual of burning piles of leaves. I have a picture in my memory drawer of my father wearing his red wool jacket standing with rake in hand in the gutter below the curb minding the fire in the pile of leaves. I can see the flames in the air and the smoke rising. I can smell the aroma of those leaves. If I stood close, my clothes took on the sweet air. That is a favorite memory.

My mother didn’t work until long after we were grown and on our own which meant she was always home when I was a kid. She made us hot breakfasts before school on cold days. The oatmeal was palatable because it had milk and sugar on top. She made soft boiled eggs and served them in chicken egg cups with strips of toast for dunking. We always had a pot of tea on the table. She’d make the cocoa in individual mugs. I was a cocoa drinker.

During the day while we were in school my mother did the laundry, made the beds and cleaned the house. My brother was the only one with a chore, emptying the basket into the barrel, and he whined about it. I never gave much thought about not having a chore. It was just the way it was.

When I was in the first grade, Sister Redemptor asked my mother where I had gone to kindergarten. I hadn’t. Few of us did back then. The schools neither offered nor required it. Sister Redempta asked that question because I knew all my letters and numbers and some words, compliments of my mother who cultivate in me a love of reading. She always read to me when I was little. She told me my favorite book was Chicken Little. That makes perfect sense as I think it is really science fiction, a hoax about the world ending. I always have figured that’s why I love science fiction, even hoky science fiction.

I had heroes when I was a kid. I wanted to fly the world like Amelia Earhart. I tried to write poetry fancying myself the next Emily Dickinson. I thought her poem “I Never Saw a Purple Cow” was a masterpiece. I wanted to be Lois Lane writing for a newspaper. After I read Little Women and all of its sequels, being a writer topped the list, but when I grew up, I never became one of them. I ended up with pieces of all of them.

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