The morning is the same as the last few mornings, but we are slowly inching to warmer weather. The high today will be 49°. Tonight will be in the low 40’s, finally out of the 30’s at least for one night. The dogs are my barometers. They have been staying outside longer since the days got warmer.

Sunday has always been the quiet day. When I was a kid, we went to church. We always wore our church clothes which meant I wore a dress or a skirt and blouse, never pants. I wore good shoes. I even wore a hat. My father was an usher at an early mass. He always brought home the paper and some donuts. His donuts choices left something to be desired. He bought plain, jelly and lemon. His favorite was a plain donut slathered with butter. We hung around the house until after Sunday dinner. I’d read the Sunday comics. The news didn’t interest me. We’d watch a movie.

Sunday dinner was special. We had a roast, sometimes chicken and sometimes beef. My mother used to put onion slices on the top of the beef. They got crispy and were delicious. I always tried to steal one. Sometimes I did before my mother could catch me. The chicken was usually stuffed. I loved my mother’s stuffing. It was sage. Mashed potatoes and gravy were a given. The vegetables varied. They were all canned back then. I still laugh at my father and his asparagus. My mother bought a small can and served them on a plate just for my father. None of us ate it. He’d pick one spear up with his fork and the asparagus was always limp.

I’ve mentioned before how on Sunday afternoons we often went to my grandparents’ house in East Boston. The kitchen is where my mother, my grandmother and my aunts sat around the table all afternoon. My grandmother always made pasta. It stayed on the stove and was help yourself. The grater and the Parmesan cheese were on the table. That was the first time I grated cheese. My mother used to buy the already grated Parmesan cheese in the jar.

On the way home in the late afternoon, I sometimes fell asleep. The trip wasn’t long, but the car on the road lulled me to sleep. At home, we had a few hours before my mother announced, “Time for bed, school tomorrow.”

This entry was posted on April 12, 2026 at 11:44 am and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.