Keep the Coffee Comimg

My house is cold, a lingering cold from last night. I have turned on the heat, but once the house is warm, I’ll turn it off again. The dogs love this weather. They stay outside for the longest time coming in only for a treat, especially Henry, the chow hound.

I still have to change the gauze on my finger. Because my hand was painful yesterday, I decided to wait until today. The new technique will be to unwind the old gauze then wind the new gauze.

When I was a kid, every Sunday, I usually walked to church, but if it was raining, I’d go early with my father who was an usher at the eight o’clock mass upstairs. His job was to walk to the front of the church with his basket, go from row to row to collect the money then count it in the back vestibule of the church. I remember he always smiled at me when he collected my dime.

If I didn’t go with my father, I walked to church. Mostly I went to the mass downstairs because it was shorter than the mass upstairs. There either was no sermon or a very short one. The downstairs pews were old. They made all sorts of creaking sounds when people moved or shifted. They were usually the only sounds, other than the priest, I heard during the mass.

Every Sunday at my school in Ghana there was a service of sorts. My students wore their Sunday clothes. Each class had a separate pattern of Ghanaian cloth for their dresses which were three pieces, a top, skirt and a wraparound cloth. The service was in the cafeteria. Sometimes it was the white father from the Catholic church in town. Other times it was a minister from one of the other churches in town. Once it was me. I was a nervous wreck as sermons were outside my knowledge base. I regretted saying yes to my principal. It took me a while to come up with the theme. I ended up with one of Aesop’s fables. I don’t remember which one I used. I just remember it was a unique take on the Sunday sermon.

The morning is damp. It rained during the night. The sky is a bit cloudy, but the sun is breaking through here and there. It will be a cool day, only in the high 50’s.

When I was a kid, today, a rainy Saturday, would have been a disappointment. Saturday was for roaming, not staying home looking wistfully out the window. With everybody stuck in the house, it was loud and felt filled with people. Saturday TV would have been a bit of a distraction for a while, and I’d have been glad for a book.

I heard something being dragged out the dog door earlier. I was too late to catch her, but I did go out and see Nala had a huge bag from Jack’s room. I ran upstairs, sort of. Yup, she had gotten into Jack’s room, eaten all his food and rummaged through the trash. I fed Jack and readjusted the gate to keep Nala out, maybe, then I went outside and collected the trash, a dangerous proposition as the bannister on the stairs to the yard is on the wrong side, my bad hand side, and the stairs were wet, but I navigated safely up and down.

My dance card is empty by choice. My finger still pains me. I am supposed to change the gauze, and that is a bit scary. I have to snip it off with my left hand then wrap the new gauze around my damaged finger and a bit on the finger beside it. I know there are a couple of pieces of gauze from the surgery stuck to the wound. The doctor left them as they were so painful to remove. He told me to soak the gauze to make it easy to remove. I’d cross my fingers, but that would hurt.

My father always had his food preferences. Garlic belonged only on garlic bread and scampi. Strawberry shortcake had to be made with cream of tartar biscuits, not the spongy stuff. He loved canned green beans and canned asparagus. Meat was always well done. He loved ice cream covered in Hershey’s syrup, not hot fudge. He was a man who loved his chocolate. My mother always bought him Hershey’s miniatures which he kept either on the table beside him in a bowl or hidden under the couch. Milk Crackers were a favorite snack. He’d put raspberry jam on them then carry his plate covered in crackers to the living room, settle in his couch corner, where he always sat, and watch TV. My father was such a creature of habit.

Today I am taking the day off. Don’t worry, my finger is getting better. The pain is less acute as long as I use my hand not so much. When typing, I have to take breaks to put my hand up. I don’t see the surgeon for another couple of weeks.

Today is a beautiful day. My friends are bringing lunch. We’ll sit on the deck and enjoy the day.

I will give you a Nala story. Last night around 1 am, Henry and Nala went out but only Henry came back inside the house. I knew something was going on so I went out on the deck. I saw Nala run across the yard below the deck with something grey in her mouth so I knew she had a critter of sorts, and I knew she’d be outside for a while.

She tried to bring her animal inside about a half hour later, but I shooed her back outside. In a while, she came in without the creature, took a biscuit and ran right back outside. I looked later and saw the creature on the deck outside the door. It was a small possum. Nala ran and grabbed it before I could toss it outside the yard. I went back to my reading.

Around 3 am Nala came inside and jumped on the couch. She was done. I went to bed.

Today is day three of rain. Sometimes it is heavy enough to be heard on the roof and windows, but this morning it is a quiet rain. The wind has stopped. Last night we had thunder and lightning. First the thunder boomed then it became a rolling thunder. Usually both dogs ignore thunder, but this time Nala raised her head each time the thunder was over the house. The lightning flashed outside the back windows. It was quick. It was bright.

When I was younger, I kept the house colder. I wore a long sleeved shirt, and that was enough. I remember my mother used to keep her house so warm we complained when we visited, and we aways wore tee-shirts. I get it now. I wear a sweatshirt. I hate to be cold. The heat gets turned on earlier each year as I get older. I hibernate each winter.

One year I got a Slinky in my Christmas stocking. It was metal. I used to go to the top of the stairs and let it walk down. I’d follow. I thought it an amazing toy. The only drawback to the metal was it would twist and get caught in the other round parts. It didn’t work any more then.

I used to play jacks. My mother taught me to play. I remember moving from onesies to tensies. You never said one to ten. You aways said onesies to tensies. There were other levels after that. My mother usually beat me.

We were a game playing family. When I was a younger kid, it was board games. I remember playing Go to the Head of the Class where the game board was filled with desks, and you were promoted up the board if you answer questions correctly. I have that game, the original.

We played dominoes, double six dominoes. The game actually helped me to be better at arithmetic

When I got older, we played card games. I remember learning whist. It was aways my mother and me against my father and brother. We usually won. My father hated to lose, and he would yell at my brother when he made a wrong play. I was glad for my mother as my partner. We played Casino and Hi-Low Jack. The whole family would sit around the kitchen table playing Hi-Low Jack. It was almost a Friday ritual.

We played Uno, and my father almost always forgot to say uno. He got so frustrated he once put a match book on the table and said it was his Uno so he didn’t have to say to anymore. We laughed and told him no.

When I was an adult, my parents and I travel together to Europe almost every year. My mother packed snacks, crossword puzzle books for her and cards and a cribbage board for my father and me. We played every night until tragedy struck. Somehow we had lost the cribbage board. We were in Dublin. We raced to the department store. They had only one board. We bought it. That night when we played, we found out the board wasn’t level. It tilted every time we pegged, but we didn’t care. That became our official traveling board.

Some days are just ugly by nature. Today is one of those days. Light showers are predicted, and it will stay in the 50’s. I will be cozy and warm at home.

My finger still hurts. I figure it will hurt for a while. Right now it is a useless limb which objects to my hand being used at all. I have to keep stopping because typing is a problem.

When I was a kid, clothes were divided by function. I had school clothes, my uniform, and school shoes. The rule was I had to change as soon as I got home into my play clothes and my sneakers. I had church clothes, usually a skirt and blouse. I never wore that outfit anywhere else. It was a once a week outfit. My school shoes, though, were for Sundays as well. I had special outfits like a new Easter dress every year and usually new clothes, in wrapped presents under the Christmas tree.

In college, I had to wear skirts or dresses, no pants, until the winter of my sophomore year. That was about the coldest winter in a long while. We had fierce winds and snow. Walking to class between buildings was like taking your life into your hands. The winds buffeted you. Your legs and feet froze. That was when the rule changed. We were allowed to wear pants. The dress code disappeared forever.

In Ghana, I had to wear a dress every day. Only yama yama girls wore pants. They did their business mostly in the cities, proverbially on street corners. I brought with me several dresses, skirts and blouses,, but in a short time I had dresses made with Ghanaian cloth. They were all I wore. Ghanaian women wore beautiful dresses, often two piece dresses, made with local cloth in vibrant colors. Their more formal outfit was three pieces, a top, a long skirt and a matching cloth wrap around them about the middle. They were beautiful.

When I went back to Ghana after so many years, acceptable clothing for women had changed. I saw far fewer women wearing traditional cloth. The ones who did were mostly older women. I was sorry for the change though I understood it. Pants were now acceptable, but I knew that ahead of time so I had brought pants to wear, but while I was there, I had blouses and dresses made from the beautiful cloth I had bought in the market. They were my connection to my memories of that earlier time in Ghana. I love those clothes.

Today is another cold, windy, cloudy day with rain expected. It is currently 54°. My house was chilly enough this morning that I turned on the heat for a while. I need cozy today. It is a sweatshirt day, a flannel day.

I don’t even have a dance card. My uke still has to wait for my finger to settle down. The good news is it’s my strumming finger, not my chord finger, so I’ll be back soon. I really miss my uke.

When I was a kid, I was never really into dolls except for a brief dalliance with my Ginny doll. She was small. Her legs could be moved, and she could walk. I used to comb her hair. My Ginny was well dressed. She had fantastic outfits. She had furniture, pink furniture. One Christmas, under the tree, were new clothes and new furniture. Ginny got a bed and a wardrobe which was filled with clothes on small, red plastic hangers. My mother and my aunt had made the clothes. Ginny looked spiffy that Christmas. Amazingly enough, that same Ginny doll of mine is kept on a high shelf in my bedroom safe from Nala. Her outfit is yellowed and her hair needs combing, but she is still beautiful despite her years.

I always envied my mother’s coloring talents. She was delicate with her colors. I was blunt. She stayed inside the lines. I sort of meandered in and outside the lines. Using only one crayon she could shade the color so it looked like many colors. Her blue was a light blue, a dark blue and a sort of middle of each blue. Mine was just blue. She and I used to sit at the kitchen table and color. In the middle of the table were the crayons from the cigar box where they were kept. The crayons were all different sizes. Some had no paper wrapped around them so we had to guess the colors. I tended to be a traditionalist. I even colored the clouds white though you couldn’t tell unless you rubbed your hand across them. We tended not to talk too much as we concentrated on our masterpieces, but those times with my mother were among my favorites of all.

Today is cold. The rain has stopped but the dampness remains. The sky is cloudy. The wind is strong and cuts through my light jacket. It is an ugly day all around.

I met with my surgeon this morning. He unwrapped my finger. Though it is still swollen, he was pleased as the swelling has gone down, and the finger is not infected. I thought it looked ugly. There are two yellow pins holding my bone together. He said the finger had been quite bad. He had to repair the tendon and stitch the bottom of the finger back together. He finished his inspection, rewrapped it and said he’d see me in three weeks and would arrange for finger therapy, not physical therapy but finger therapy.

When I was a kid, this was the quiet day. The only place we ever went on Sundays was my grandparents’ house which was always filled with relatives. It was the Sunday gathering spot. I can still close my eyes and see the house. From the front door to the backdoor was a long narrow walkway. The small backyard had grass and its back wall was brick which was actually a wall of the church on the next street down. A small cave-like addition led to the backdoor and the kitchen. The addition had the refrigerator. The kitchen was small. On the stove was always the biggest pot filled with pasta. People ate when they got hungry. My mother and my aunts aways sat at the kitchen table. The air was filled with smoke from their cigarettes. Beyond the kitchen was another room, dark with only small windows. Up the stairs was another floor and beyond that was one more floor with two bedrooms and the bathroom.

I used to wander the city when I was older. It was so different from where I lived. On every corner there seemed to be a small store. People sold slices of pizza and cups of Italian ice. I remember just down the street from my grandparents’ house a woman sold the pizza out her window. That’s when I developed a taste for cold pizza like the bakeries sold.

Later on, when I started traveling, I loved to wander cities with no destinations in mind. I’d stop at small stores and get something to eat. Sometimes it was a sandwich on fresh, just baked bread. Other times it was pastry. Sometimes I’d sit, drink a cup of coffee and watch the world go by.

All those wanderings always reminded me of my grandparents’ city. That where my wandering was born.

When I woke up, far too early, I heard the rain. I groaned but got up anyway as I had an early appointment with the surgeon. I had coffee then struggled to get dressed from the inside, the foundation, out. When I got to Hyannis, the building was dark and the parking lot empty. Perplexed, I called. Come to find out, my surgeon uses the building on the weekends but not today. He was in surgery. I went back home and undressed from the outside in.

Last night wasn’t a good night. I woke up several times from the pain of my hand. One episode lasted for what seemed hours and hours when all of a sudden the pain disappeared. It was a miracle. I looked around for a heavenly figure but saw nothing, not a vision, not a light.

When I was growing up, I got bumps and scratches and one broken bone. I had stitches on my chin from a fall down the stairs. That’s it, the total from my childhood. In Ghana I got a burn from the exhaust pipe of my motorcycle. I had stopped to let a herd of goats pass by me. One goat veered and the others followed. They hit my “moto” unexpectedly, and it fell whacking my leg on the way down. The burn was odd looking, basically the shape of the pipe. I had an infected mosquito bite caused by my scratching it and wearing sandals. The Peace Corps doctor lanced it. I got a really bad sunburn one Easter Sunday spent by the ocean. It stopped hurting after a while. That is the entire list of my Peace Corps maladies.

I have fallen down stairs. On the first fall I broke my cheekbone and some teeth, injured one leg and my hand. On the second fall, all I did was knock myself unconscious. It was a fall from my deck stairs, sort of a long way down. The next fall was off a ladder I was using to get at the windows I was washing. I knocked myself out again and was lucky I missed the concrete wall and landed in my herb garden on the lemon verbena. It was that wonderful aroma I smelled when I woke up. I had broken my wrist, but I didn’t know it and just soldiered on and finished the window.

I’ve had other falls, but they only resulted in only a few welts, a black eye and some swollen body parts. I’ve been lucky.

My most recent injuries, both resulting in hospital stays, were caused by the dogs: one fell on me and the other bit me during the frenzy of a dog fight.

I figure the list isn’t all that long for 75 years worth of living though I do admit to more caution now.

Today I am taking a break. It seems the activities of the last few days have my finger and hand complaining, loudly complaining, so I am going to spend the day reading and elevating my hand. Saturday is the appointment with my surgeon for the celebratory unveiling of my finger. That afternoon friends are coming for lunch. They are even bringing it, can’t get better guests than that. Saturday will be a big day.

I hope to be back tomorrow!

Little is happening of late, after the mayhem of course. The dogs are enjoying their morning naps. I think I’ll join them in a bit. As for my hand, it still hurts, and it still makes life complicated. My left hand just doesn’t do. In order to bring my coffee to the den I rested the cup on my right hand and held it with my left. It jiggled. I was careful.

When I was a young kid, all of four, I broke my right wrist jumping off a fence backwards. I used my hands to brace my fall and ended up with a buckle fracture. I thought the cast was a badge of honor. Oddly enough, not more than a few years ago, I broke my wrist, the same wrist as before, but no badge of honor this time, no cast. My finger fracture is hidden by the wrap. I see the surgeon Saturday. I’ll also get to see my finger with all its gory details.

When I was growing up, I was an active kid. I was a brownie first then a girl scout. I even got my ten year pin. From the time I was ten until I left for the cape, I marched with St. Pat’s Shamrocks drill team. In the winter, we practiced at the armory, a really neat building. I used to bring index cards with French vocabulary and whatever else I had to memorize. At every break I studied my cards. We were learning our summer routine. In the summer, it seems my whole life revolved around drill. All my friends were in drill. We practiced a couple of times a week and competed on the weekends, sometimes both Saturday and Sunday. When we didn’t have a contest, we’d go to one to watch. I remember when we won our first championship. We got off the bus in the square and matched pass the fire station and the town hall to the schoolyard. They firemen blew the fire whistle as we marched pass their station. We were giddy.

I also remember the first time we ever placed at a contest. It was in Lawrence, and we came in second. I was so proud when I got home and told my parents. What I didn’t tell then was there were only two drill teams in the competition.