The air is so thick, as the saying goes, you can cut it with a knife. It is damp, wet. The sky is cloudy. It is breezy, a constant breeze. The temperature is only 69°, a chilly morning. It might rain. Today is dump day, and the weather is perfect for a trip to the dump. I’d hate to waste sunshine on trash.

Henry has become suspicious of me. When I let him in, I sometimes spray his infection and rub his eyes with an anti-itch medication. This morning I did neither. I figured it would keep him off-balance and make him less suspicious.

Sunday has always been my least favorite day of the week. When I was a kid, if it weren’t for Sunday dinners, it would have been a completely wasted day. Sunday mornings meant mass, enough said about that. Some afternoons we’d visit my grandparents. My sisters loved to go to East Boston to visit as they had cousins to play with. I was too old for play. My aunt, five months younger than I, was unpleasant. She hated that so many of her siblings and their families visited. She usually stayed in her room, out of bounds for everybody. What I did love was the pasta. My grandmother always had a giant pot of pasta on the stove, sometimes shells, my favorite. It had that day after taste when the pasta and the sauce have melded perfectly. She kept Parmesan cheese and a grater on the table. I covered my pasta with a layer of that cheese then mixed the heavenly concoction. Sometimes there was Italian bread, and I’d cut a slice, an imperfect slice. I’d sit at the kitchen table between the aunts to eat.

During the school year, on Sunday nights, we had to go to bed early. “School tomorrow,” was always my mother’s reason as if Saturday and Sunday had so discombobulated our usual routines we had to be retrained. I’d usually read a little before my mother would yell up the stairs for me to turn off my light. I’d sometimes keep reading with a flashlight or my headboard lamp, hidden under covers.

The week began when my mother woke us up on Monday mornings. Every weekday had the same pattern between waking up and going to bed. It was a groove.

This entry was posted on July 26, 2026 at 12:42 pm 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.