The paper isn’t published on Saturdays. My morning routine is discombobulated. I wander the house. I wonder what is happening in the world. I long for my puzzles and the comics. I know I can read the paper on-line, but that just doesn’t feel right. I need ink on my fingers. My day has gone awry.

The morning is beautiful, a little chilly but chilly is spring on Cape Cod. My den window gives me a small view of the world, my world anyway. I see clouds and I see sun. Everything is still. It is in the high 40’s where it will stay all day. The dogs have been out longer than usual. They are late for their morning naps. Their day has gone awry.

I was daydreaming this morning. What if I had three wishes? What would they be? Wishing for money would be easy, but I wouldn’t waste a wish on it. I’d wish to go back in time to relive a day or a night, not something huge but something shiny in my memory drawers. One of them would be a Saturday night in my parents’ kitchen. We’d all be at the table playing cards. My Uncle Jack is there, as he was so many Saturday nights. The air is smoky and the back door is open hoping to draw the smoke. On the counter is a temporary bar. Whoever gets up is the bartender. We’re playing high-low Jack. My father won the bid. He was a bid fiend. Toward the end of the game someone dropped a trump card, and he lost the hand, one he needed desperately. He started foaming at the mouth. He fell off the bench on his back. He was on the floor still holding his cards and yelling. We were all laughing so hard he stayed on the floor for a bit. Every time I remember I laugh.

My second wish would be to relive the trip to Belgium and the Netherlands with my parents and my sister Sheila. We laughed so many times. We stopped in a restaurant for lunch or dinner. I don’t remember. My mother and sister went to the bathroom. My father and I were reading the map figuring our next route. All of a sudden flames came through the middle of the map from the candle on the table we had paid no attention to. The crowd roared laughing. My mother and sister came back to the table and wanted to know why everyone was laughing. My father held up the map. That trip was filled with laughter.

My last wish would any evening in Bolga with my friends Bill and Peg. We ate dinner together every night. We laughed and chatted about our day, about going to the market or the meat store or about something one of our students said. We never tired of each other. After dinner we played games. We did the alphabet game with initials to which we had to attach a person’s name. We challenged each other with paddle ball, the wooden paddle with the red ball attached to the paddle with an elastic. It had come in one of the packages from my mother. We played so many times until the elastic broke. We played Password, another gift from my mother, so many times we had the cards memorized. When we challenged other people, we never lost, except on purpose.

This is the longest Coffee I have ever written, but I couldn’t stop. My muse was frenzied. My fingers flew. I was caught in my own memories. My day has no longer gone awry. It is a special day!

This entry was posted on April 25, 2026 at 11:55 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.