This has been a morning. First off I finished all the puzzles in the paper. That should have been a warning. In the jumble, I usually don’t get the final jumble if it is one word, but not today. I got it. I also got the cryptoquip, and I finished the crossword puzzle, a banner day. My next task was one which took nearly an hour and a half. I called about a medication. I needed one refilled and had several questions about others. I talked to two places and finally got answers I needed. The parade with bands and banners took a while.

We are still in the cold zone. It is only 27° and cloudy. Tonight we’ll go down to the teens. I have no reason to leave the house for which I am grateful. I am cozy and warm.

When I was a kid, my mother always dressed us in layers on the coldest days. She’d add a hat and mittens. I hated the hat. I liked that the mittens kept my fingers warm stuck together as they were, but mittens made my hands just about useless. I could hold my lunch box but wouldn’t have been able to open it, too delicate a task in mittens. What’s funny now is I still wear mittens though I do have a couple of pairs of gloves. I don’t wear hats, but I have a few. The only one I’d wear is 62 years old. It is a pink knit hat with a pompon. A friend’s grandmother made it for me when she saw I didn’t wear one. It is actually still fashionable.

My mother played Christmas records on her hifi. The favorite was always Bing Crosby’s Merry Christmas album, the one with a cover of him wearing a Santa hat and a holly bow. We always sang along. The other album we played was my album, Guy Lombard and the Royal Canadians Sing the Songs of Christmas with a Chorus of Children’s Voices. It was released in 1960. I am one of those children’s voices. I also had a solo, a one note solo which I consider my debut. I came in one note early on Winter Wonderland, and, because we had sung several takes, they kept it. We were there, in the town hall, all day. Kenny Gardner led us through the songs. The orchestra was in the pit under the stage. We only saw Guy Lombardo at the beginning and at the end when he thanked us. We got Hoodsies.

I still have the original album but the cover is in tough shape. All the lyrics were listed on the inside of the album jacket. It was, after all, a song-a long. My sisters loved to play that album so it got a lot of use. One year I hunted down copies of the album and gave each of my sisters a copy for one of their Christmas presents. I didn’t know if they had record players. It didn’t matter. I was giving them a memory.

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