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.

The morning is fall at its finest. The sun is shining though the leaves still hanging on the trees in the backyard. The temperature is in the high 40’s. A slight breeze comes and goes. My deck and front yard are covered in brown, mostly oak leaves. The dogs bring pieces of the leaves in on their paws. I keep a broom close at hand.

When I was a kid, I watched The Creature from the Black Lagoon. He walked upright, looked like an amphibian, had webbed hands and quite the ugly face with eyes which never moved. Many years later I found out he was a piscine and amphibian humanoid, a creature of myth and legend. He scared the boat load of scientists and crew, even killed a couple after they attacked them. There was, of course, a woman who screamed and screamed and was captured by the Creature. I never questioned the effects. He looked like a gill man. He could breathe underwater. My nephew, who is now forty, saw the movie when he was a kid. He laughed most of the way through. He thought the movie was silly. His comments cut me to the quick. He said you can see the scuba tank the creature is wearing under his fake skin. I never noticed.

Phones were once a wonder. The first telephone I remember when I was young was the phone you picked up to get to the operator who connected your call. Next we got a rotary phone with a party line. The rotary phone made a clicking noise after you entered each number. I loved that sound. I used to listen to Mrs. McGafffigan, but she knew when we on the line and used to yell at us to hang up the phone. We did get our own line. Our first phones were black. All phones were black.

I used to be amazed at all the changes and historical events my grandmother lived through. She was born in 1898. I suspect my niece and nephews think about me in the same way. When I have to indicate my year of birth by scrolling through years, it takes a while to get to 1947. I have seen the plots of the science fiction books I read as a kid become reality, but I am still amazed by the world. I hold close my sense of wonder. I still don’t notice the scuba tank.