“I used to trouble about what life was for — now being alive seems sufficient reason.”
Fall weather is upon us. The days are in the 40’s, and the nights are in the 30’s though every now and then a day in the 60’s sneaks in and reminds us what we’ll be missing. Today is cloudy, dark. Rain is a possibility. I should have known, I washed the kitchen floor.
I had nuns for most of my school years. They wore black and white habits. Around their waists, they wore large rosary beads. I always thought of those beads as an early warning system: nun closing in. On their heads were wimples, and they had veils down their backs. I used to wonder what they looked like under their habits. Every now and then I could see a hairline under the wimple across their foreheads, and when I did, it was all I could look at, sort of like a peek behind the curtain. My grammar school nuns had a change in their habits which surprised all of us when we got back to school one September. The blinders their wimples had had were gone. The nuns could now see everything and all of us. We were doomed.
I was a busy kid. My time was filled during the day when I was young and sometimes even the nights when I was older. I was a brownie then a Girl Scout. I was in the drill team starting in fifth grade. When I was older, seventh and eighth grades, I played CYO basketball and was an officer in my parish CYO. Weekends were always busy. I remember pajama parties. They were the rage for a while. We ate snacks and didn’t fall asleep until the wee hours or until the parents couldn’t take it anymore. I used to ice skate in the winter, always outside. I roller skated on sidewalks and the parking lot up the street from my house, but when I was older, I roller skated inside at the Bal-A-Roue in Medford. I fell a lot.
Life now is pretty quiet. My dance card has plenty of empty spaces. My uke events are prominent. The rest of the time I entertain myself at home watching movies, reading and even cleaning, that last one is my least favorite.
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November 14, 2023 at 3:29 pm
Hi Kat,
Today the sun is shining brightly and the high temperature is predicted to hit 69°. Right now it’s already 69° and I think we will get it to the 70s as the afternoon progresses.
When I was a kid I always wondered what Catholic nuns and priests wore under their habits. Of course being a boy I was more interested in what any woman was wearing as under their dresses. I never figured out that woman at the beach when wearing swimsuits were more revealing than their underwear. I didn’t expect nuns to appear at the beach without their uniforms if they ever went to the beach. I guess the next mystery was do Scotsman wear anything under their kilts.
When I was a kid I was in the Cub Scouts followed by the Boy Scouts. After a couple of overnights at the lake, I quit scouting because I determined that Motel Six was my type of roughing it. 🙂 I was not athletic and I wound up playing right field in the Jewish Community Center Little League.
As a teenager I hung out with my very small group of friends, four of us, who enjoyed listening to Jazz and Classical music while smoking our pipes. We were the nerds before being nerdy was cool.
BTW what is CYO?
November 14, 2023 at 8:14 pm
Hi Bob,
Today was a pretty fall day. The sun shined all day. I went down cape on the highway then took the long way home.
Priests wore black suits. The only indication of them being priests was the white stiff collar. Nuns, on the other hand, were far more interesting. They are actually called habits, not uniforms. Each order of nuns wore a different habit. Some even wore brown habits.
I think you’ll find this interesting: https://www.realmenrealstyle.com/going-commando/
I was a good athlete. CYO is Catholic Youth Organization.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Catholic-Youth-Organization
November 14, 2023 at 8:52 pm
My maternal grandmother’s house in Brooklyn was down the street from a Catholic school. The Church was on the next block. Both nuns and Catholic men walked by the house. The men wore some kind of brown robes tied at the waist with what looked like a rope. I knew that the priests wore black suits with white collars. What were those men dressed in robes?
November 14, 2023 at 9:13 pm
They are Franciscan friars. That is a three knotted rope. They usually also have a hood.