Late last night it rained. The drops were quiet. The air smelled damp, earthy and had gotten chilly, down to 61°. It was a beautiful night. It was a harbinger of fall.

When I was a kid, I loved the fall. The mornings were cool, the days warm. I walked to school on a sidewalk with a mantle of leafy, tall trees whose branches I could almost touch. I didn’t need a coat, just a jacket. I carried my school bag and my lunch box. It was a walk of only a couple of blocks to school. We waited in the schoolyard for the nuns to ring the bell, a handbell they rang from the steps of the school. We got into lines and walked into the building. I always wished I could stay outside to enjoy the morning.

When I bought my house, my mother brought down treasures she had saved for me from my childhood. She brought books. The earliest books were about The Bobbsey Twins, two sets of them: Bert and Nan and Freddie and Flossie. My grandmother had written Happy Birthday in two of those books. I had several Nancy Drew books. I also read the classics. Heidi has yellow pages and is close to falling apart. The binding of Treasure Island is loose. I bought a small bookcase just for those books. I have eggs cups, yellow chicks from Fannie Farmer. My mother often made soft boiled eggs for our breakfasts. She’d toast some bread and cut it to fit the top of the eggs. Most of the chicks have lost their beaks. A child’s wooden chair painted white was made by my grandmother’s brother as a gift for me. My sisters also used it. The chair is still so sturdy I stood on it a while back to get at boxes on the shelf in my closet. I love those pieces of my childhood and my mother’s thoughtfulness.

I used to love to color. Every Christmas my stocking always had a coloring book and crayons. I remember the year I got a box of 24 crayons. It seemed so big until the year I got a box of 64. That box even had a sharpener. Crayons had a long life. As they got shorter, I’d tear off the paper and sharpen the ends. I used to keep the stubs in a cigar box. Last Christmas my sister gave me a box of 96 crayons and a coloring book of scenes from Ghana. I colored a few. I used all bright colors. That’s how I see Ghana.

This entry was posted on August 16, 2024 at 11:23 am 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.