Keep the Coffee Comimg

The first sounds I heard when I woke up were the drops of rain. By the time I rousted myself out of bed, the rain was heavier, no more drops. I went downstairs and started my morning rituals: I made coffee, fed Henry and raced to get my newspaper. I settled in and started reading. My day had officially begun.

Henry is gnawing on a marrow bone. It keeps dropping off the couch. On the floor below the couch are indentations in the wood from the bone. I hid the bone. He went looking for it. I felt sorry and gave it back. There are three more indentations.

When I was a kid, we lined up for baths on Saturday nights. My two sisters took one together, and my mother used to stay in the bathroom to monitor them. She also did all their hair washing. After my sisters were finished, my mother combed their hair. The problem was their hair was filled with snarls, and No More Tears didn’t exist yet. My sisters screamed, and they cried. It was torture listening. I used to block my ears so I didn’t have to hear their pleas.

Around this time of year, my town used to string Christmas decorations across Main Street. The whole string was covered in greenery. Bells were in the middle. They were white with specks of gold and were lit up every night. The fire station was outlined in lights, and Santa was poised to go down the chimney. He was atop a small ladder, befitting for a fire station.

I loved to go uptown and look in the windows. There was a Grant’s, a Woolworth’s, three drug stores, a biscuit and cheese shop, a small diner like restaurant, a men’s store, the Stoneham Spa, a bakery and a fish market. A police box was in the street where the roads met. The square was a delight at Christmas.

Today is dark and dank, a raw, chilly day. Rain is predicted. I have to go out and do a couple of errands. I’m going to the library and the bank. I may also get my flu shot, late for me this year. I do need go to the dump, but I’m saving that for tomorrow. Today can’t have all the fun.

Yesterday I got my first Christmas cards. Both are photo cards. Now I’m thinking I ought to get my own cards ready. I’ve had them a few weeks. I don’t get any where near the cards I used to, and that makes me a bit sad. I love picking out and sending cards but receiving them is even better. One of the cards I got is from my niece, nice to know the next generation of my family is following tradition, but I admit I’m not really surprised. My family’s Christmas is filled with traditions.

Today I get to open number 1 of my Advent calendar. It is filled with chocolates. I remember I gave one to my nephew years ago. He figured out how to get all the chocolates from the bottom of the calendar.

My holly bush has turned into a holly tree. It is almost as tall as the pine tree beside it. Originally the bush, as it was back then, was planted in the front beside another holly bush. When I came home from school one day, I noticed someone had dug up and stolen the better looking bush so I moved this one for safe keeping though it was a bit stringy and far less appealing than the stolen bush. The tree has lots of berries so I’ll be cutting some branches to decorate the house.

My father and his sister, my favorite aunt, used to have a Christmas tree thing going. My parent’s tree was always tall and beautiful so every year my aunt wanted to know how much the tree had cost him. My father only knew what my mother had told him, and she shaved off a few dollars, okay a little more than a few, because her trees were so expensive. My aunt scoffed at the price my father quoted, but he swore that’s what it cost not suspecting my mother’s trickery.

My father would have been 92 today.  The first thing I did was wish him a happy birthday!

This morning my car windows are glistening in the sun. They are covered with thick frost. I am so glad I don’t have to go anywhere. The sun will do the defrosting.

My lights had been eaten by a spawn of Satan. A wire was chewed through so all 100 lights got tossed. I have only one set left which I suspect won’t be enough. I’m thinking the spawn will be back so I’m going to buy a few more sets. I wish, contrary to the season, that I could make the wire give a small jolt to the spawn.

When I was a kid, all our Christmas tree lights were big, colored bulbs which got really hot. We used to have to turn them on and off by crawling under the tree to get at the outlet to push in or pull out the plugs. In our windows were candles with orange bulbs. In the picture window was a five bulb candelabra. We had to twist all the bulbs on and off. Turning on was easy but turning off hurt because of the heat of the bulbs. We used to wet our fingers before we turned those bulbs off. I remember we raced to the windows wanting to be first at turning on those windows lights. We never raced to turn them off.

When I watch all the Christmas baking shows, I always wish I could be as talented as the bakers are in decorating cakes and cookies. We used to frost our sugar cookies but they were all red or green. Santa had no beard. We did add jimmies, either red, green or multi-colored to the tops, but that needed no talent. All we had to do was shake the bottles and try not to be too heavy handed.

One year I bought a decorating set with an icing bag for the frosting and a variety of icing tips for the bag. I lined up my sugar cookies and filled the bag with white icing so I could outline each cookie before I frosted it. It was a total mess. I squeezed the bag so much the icing came out the top and not through the tip. My clothes were covered in icing. The counter was covered in icing. The cookies had blogs of white icing.

I scraped off the icing and frosted the cookies in not only the traditional green and red but also gold, really yellow but gold sounds so much classier. Santa was all red. The trees were all green. The reindeer were brown. Brown? The box of food coloring told me how: 2 red, 2 yellow and 1 blue. I had become a maestro of colors!

From my den window I can see a deep blue sky and branches from the tallest pine being tossed by the wind. Today is warmish at 40˚ but the wind is making it feel just a bit chillier. I have no plans for today. Peapod, my cleaning couple and Skip, my factotum, are all coming today. One panel of the fence has fallen so Skip needs to pick it up and try to reconnect it to the rest of the fence. Henry didn’t notice. Gracie would have jumped over the fallen fence and taken off. She was cunning. He is still a bit nervous.

Looking at some foods, I figure the first person to taste them was either foolish or brave or forced at the point of a weapon. The artichoke, for example, is ugly and almost looks lethal. One of those leaves might have done some damage yet some brave fool took the time to figure out how to eat the thing. I’m not an artichoke fan so if it had been me facing the artichoke, I wouldn’t have made the attempt: today, no artichokes. The same thing with lychees. I just wonder how many brave souls lost their lives trying to extend our palates.

One of the vegetables I really enjoyed when I was in Ghana was called the garden egg. It had the same shape as an egg and was only slightly bigger. I mostly had it in stews, and it was delicious. Come to find out, it is related to the eggplant, sort of a little sister, but it is white or yellow.

I used to feed my cat in Ghana tins of mackerels in tomato sauce. It was gross looking and smelled too fishy, but that was about as close as I could get to cat food, and he, my cat, loved it. My students were a bit taken aback that I would buy food for my cat. Their cats were not pets and mostly ate whatever was left over. When I brought my cat home, it took a while before he would eat cat food. I think he missed the tomato sauce.

Henry still jumps up and barks when a bell rings on TV. He howls at the sound of car doors closing. He barks at the UPS man but sticks his nose out the door when I open it to take the package. Sometimes I can’t find the reason for his barking. I have told him about the boy who cried wolf, but he doesn’t seem impressed.

Today is the fall day I would choose if I had a menu of days. The sun is shining and glints through the naked branches. My dad would have said there’s a nip in the air, but it’s still warmish for late November. Earlier, I went on the deck to fill the feeders and stayed outside, reluctant to leave the sun. The ground in the backyard is covered in yellow leaves. The tall weeds are wilted. I can see through to the back neighbor’s house, and last night I could see all the way to the end of the street to my friends’ deck and their lit Christmas tree. After I filled the bird feeders, I sat for a bit. It’s a lovely day.

My outside Christmas lights were lit for the first time last night. The deck rail, the front fence and the backyard gate are decked out for the season. The back gate is white lights, and there’s a giant white star. The front fence and deck are multi-colored lights. There’s a small tree with giant ornaments all lit by a spotlight. I kept going to the windows last night to look at the lights.

Sadly, the sun is now gone, my perfect day is ended. It is cloudy and getting darker. We had rain all last night, and I think we’ll have rain again.

When I was in college, I had to go to the Trailways bus terminal in Boston to get the bus to Hyannis. The terminal was behind a western bar which had a giant wagon wheel as a front decoration, and it was alongside an alley walkway. Around the corner was Jack’s Joke Shop and a flower shop. The terminal was small. It had lockers all along the sides, wooden benches and ashtrays with sand. A magazine stand was beside a tiny tobacco kiosk. The terminal also had a lunch counter, the sort with pies in glass containers and old, weary looking waitresses. It served every meal but was still a lunch counter. The ticket counter was along the right back wall. When it was cold, bums, as we called them back then, would wander through the terminal to get a little warmth before they were escorted outside again. I smoked in those days, and I remember once, after they called my bus, I put my cigarette in the sand and one of the bums walked over, took it out and smoked it. I was more astonished than appalled.

I usually fell asleep not long after we’d leave the terminal, and I generally slept until Plymouth. Crossing the Sagamore Bridge made me feel as if I were already home. In Hyannis, I’d call my dad who would come and get me. It was always good to be home.

Last night it was mostly misty rain, but sometime during the late night the rain got heavier. Right now it is still damp and cloudy and showers are forecast; however, there is a plus as it is warm, near 50˚.

Henry is now known as the dog who peed on the floor while signing up to see Santa. He didn’t mind the dogs, but all the people made him nervous so he peed. Despite that he did get quite a few compliments. Handsome dog was the most common.

Early this morning Henry and I both jumped when the alarm clock sounded because neither one of us is accustomed to hearing it. Every other morning I sleep until I wake up and Henry is right there with me. This morning it was 6:30, the middle of the night to me. I know a nap is coming.

My factotum is here putting up the Christmas lights. A couple of my neighbors have theirs already lit each night so I thought I’d join them. I’m also thinking of bringing up a bit of Christmas every day a box at a time.

When I was a kid, everyone had real Christmas trees. The tree lights were big, colored bulbs which quickly got hot to the touch. Those lights went on first. They were my father’s only contribution and his worst nightmare, his bête noire. They were tangled and didn’t always light because of a single burned out bulb. I remember he cursed a lot. The garlands were next, and my mother always put them on the tree. She draped them just so. Finally we got to put the ornaments on the tree. Most were glass. I always liked the colored ornaments, the blues, the purples and the reds. I have some of those old ornaments for my tree, a gift from my mother. She also gave each of us one of the big ornaments, the ones we couldn’t touch, which she always put on branches close to the top of the tree to keep them safe. Last to go on were the icicles. They were made of lead, and if carefully and individually put on the tree they’d hang down like real icicles.
The icicles around now are mostly plastic and float in the breeze of anyone walking by the tree. I don’t put any on my tree. If the tree had holes, my mother would put a cardboard Santa or a Rudolph card in the space. I do the same thing.

The traditions from my childhood are a part of my Christmas every year. I know it is the same for my sisters. We always thank my parents for that.

Last night it rained. It was a gentle rain at first as Henry’s wet fur was how I knew it was raining. Later it poured. I was lying in bed and could hear it on the roof. Today is dark and damp. The clouds are rain clouds so more is coming. I have one errand today. Henry is having his picture taken with Santa.

When I was really young, Santa came to our apartment in South Boston. I have a picture of me on Santa’s knee. The look on my face is pure wonder. My brother was too afraid to leave the bedroom so there are no pictures of him with Santa. It is probably a good thing as I suspect he was always on the naughty list.

Going to Boston at Christmas time was wonderful. The Common was filled with lights, and reindeer were in a fenced-in pen. That was the first time I was ever so close to reindeer. I remember their antlers and the color of their fur. I also remember the clouds in the air from them breathing out their noses.

We went to Jordan Marsh to see Santa and the Enchanted Village. The line to get to Santa was long, but we didn’t care. We were enthralled by the Enchanted Village. It was all along the route to Santa, sometimes on both sides. There were houses filled with people, toy shops, animals, people skating and shopping and so much more. All of the characters moved. Their heads swiveled or bowed, their hands worked on toys, and the shoemaker fixed a shoe. I was so excited. I had never seen anything like that before. Jordan Marsh, according to my mother, always had the best looking Santas. I don’t remember what any of them looked like. I just remember being in awe. He was the real Santa to me.

Today will be on and off cloudy. It is 40˚ which is warm enough. The sun will make an appearance, but I don’t care one way or the other. I’ll adjust. Besides, the sun isn’t warm anymore. It is mostly a backdrop.

The moon last night was huge and beautiful, and I could easily see the face of the man in the moon. He was smiling.

I don’t know if kids read nursery rhymes anymore. I know my mother read them to me all the time so when I wrote about last night’s moon Hey Diddle Diddle jumped into my head. I never questioned how a cow could jump over the moon or whether a cat could really play a fiddle or a dog laugh, but I did wonder why the dish ran away with spoon.

When I was a kid, my mother read Treasure Island to my brother and me at bedtime. I remember not wanting to go to bed and wanting more of Long John Silver. I hated when  bedtime seemed to come far too quickly. We always begged for more, just a chapter or two, and once in a while my mother gave in and kept reading. When I could read by myself, I right away read Treasure Island. When I was 8 or 9, a TV program called Treasure Island, The Adventures of Long John Silver started. Long John was more likeable than not. He was no rogue, no traitor. I remember he had a gravelly voice and said pirate things like swabs, slimy squids and mutinous maggots. I loved that show.

I read all the classics when I was a kid and still have a few of the books I got for Christmas. Even back then I treasured books and took great care of mine. They are in wonderful condition except the paste on their bindings has dried so the bindings are loose. Also, the pages have yellowed. I was ten when I got Little Woman. My school bussed us to the next town that year, my fifth grade year, while they were building a new school so I read Little Women on the bus.

I read before I go to sleep. Some nights I read for an hour or more. When I know I’m tired, I check how many pages until the chapter ends. I swear that’s a hold over from when my mother read to us. She always finished the chapter before she turned off the light.

Today is a cold day. I’m staying home, doing laundry and finishing the book I’m reading. I’m not at all tempted to leave my warm house. I’ll do that tomorrow.

I am a pet person from a family of pet people. All of my memories seems to include one pet or another. We had two Woolworth’s painted turtles which lived for years in a bowl on the counter in the kitchen. The bowl had a fake plastic palm tree on a small island where the turtles used to sit or lie or whatever it is turtles do. Whenever we killed or wounded a fly, we gave it to the turtles. When the last turtle passed away at the advanced age of four or five, it was given a solemn funeral and buried in the woods in a tobacco tin lined with cloth. Lots of goldfish came and went. They lasted a short while before taking their final journeys through bathroom pipes to that great ocean in the sky. Duke, the Boxer, who died when he was fifteen, was the pet we had the longest. He was also the best pet we ever had. When I was a junior in high school, we got Gideon the cat. He used to love the car and would sit on the back of the front seat with part of him resting on my dad’s shoulders. Once he bit my father on the nose. We almost had an accident. Gideon was the first in what became a long line of cats.

I am without a cat for the first time in I don’t remember how long. In Ghana, my students gave me one, and he, Tas, came back with me. Maddie and Fern were both rescues. I picked them because they were dog friendly. Both were five when they came home. I know Henry is cat friendly. He paid no attention to Maddie except to try to eat her food. A cat is in my future plans, but I want to spend more time with Henry by himself. He is still a work in progress.

Most of my siblings and their families have pets. None of us can imagine our lives without one or usually many. They ignore peculiarities and offer unconditional love. You can’t ask more than that.

Happy Thanksgiving! I wish you a day filled with love in the company of family and good friends. As you gather around a bountiful table, give thanks for all we have been given.

It is really cold, and the wind doesn’t help. The sun is just a prop, but I am comfy and warm. I’m watching the parade and having my coffee with the Danish I bought yesterday, an apple Danish. Henry is eating a decorated turkey biscuit. He licks off the frosting first. He is now ready for a nap. I am going out later for dinner at my favorite restaurant, The Ocean House.

Thanksgiving seems to be the one holiday almost all of us celebrate and turkey is universal. Eating meat, though, is not a prerequisite. Celebrating and feasting with friends and family are the only givens. Of all the holidays, I think Thanksgiving carries the most traditions from generation to generation. The food seldom changes. Some dishes are added, but family favorites reappear year after year. No one dares to leave one off the menu.

When I was a kid, my mother was always up early, when it was still dark. She was getting the turkey and the stuffing ready for the oven. The turkeys were always huge. She used a blue enamel roasting pan with little white dots. The turkey just about fit. My mother periodically basted the turkey and always pulled off the crisp end of the stuffing to eat. The windows fogged in the kitchen. The house smelled divine. It smelled of turkey.

For summer rains, and winter’s sun,
For autumn breezes crisp and sweet;
For labors doing, to be done,
And labors all complete;
For April, May, and lovely June,
For bud, and bird, and berried vine;
For joys of morning, night, and noon,
My thanks, dear Lord, are Thine!

For loving friends on every side;
For children full of joyous glee;
For all the blessed Heavens wide,
And for the sounding sea;
For mountains, valleys, forests deep;
For maple, oak, and lofty pine;
For rivers on their seaward sweep,
My thanks, dear Lord, are Thine!

For light and air, for sun and shade,
For merry laughter and for cheer;
For music and the glad parade
Of blessings through the year;
For all the fruitful earth’s increase,
For home and life, and love divine,
For hope, and faith, and perfect peace,
My thanks, dear Lord, are Thine!

~~John Kendrick Bangs 1862-1922

I want to give my thanks to all of you who have made Coffee a community.