Gee, just what we want, another cloudy, damp day. It is 61°, but I feel chilly. It is definitely inside sweatshirt weather, and I think I might need socks. The dogs are napping on the couch, Henry to my left and Nala behind me. She is keeping my backside warm. I’m going to get another cup of coffee.

When I was a kid, I thought my parents were sort of old, being parents and all. Actually, they were just about the youngest of all my friends’ parents. It was my grandparents who defined for me what old was. They set the standard. They looked old, walked old and dressed old. One grandmother even sounded old. I never thought about how it felt to be old. I was a kid. I just didn’t think about stuff like growing old, but now I know. What I leaned through time and find amazing is your inside belies your outside. When I look in the mirror, I see an old lady. I don’t need platitudes here about how I don’t look my age. My face is wrinkled. Those are not laugh lines. They have been etched by time. Through, my eyes, though, my view has not changed. It doesn’t age. It still gives me the same joy it did when I was young. I see bright color and dazzling light. I see the changes in seasons. I sit in the living room just to look at my Christmas tree all lit. What I see is what I have always seen. For that I am thankful.

I have never been one for dressing up, for fancy or frilly clothes. Besides, I have seldom gone anywhere where there is even an unspoken dress code. When I was a kid, I wore dungarees in winter and blouses all year long. I wore skirts and blouses to church. When I was a bit older, my dungarees gave way to pants. That was dressy to me. In Ghana I had to wear a dress every day. All women did. What made it easier was I had dresses made from colorful, beautiful Ghanaian cloth. Those I exclusively wore after my first 6 months or so. I loved shopping in the cloth market and the cloth stalls. In Lomé, Togo, I shopped at the Grand Marche for cloth. I remember I had to climb to the top floor, but the climb was worth it as the cloth was so different from Ghana’s. That was the only time in my life when I cared beyond what my clothes looked like. I chose so carefully the cloth they were made from.

I have my usual uke events but I have something exciting. My sister and brother-in-law from Colorado and my sister from Stoneham are coming tomorrow through Thursday. I can barely wait.

The nor’easter has moved away. We will get more rain today keeping the flood warning active, but the wind is gone. The day is still and warm. It is 68°. My yard and deck are covered in debris, small branches and so many leaves I went looking for naked oak trees.

I remember my father always wore a sort of cranberry colored jacket when he did his Saturday yard work. This time of year he’d mow for the last time and use a bamboo rake to clear the yard. He always mowed in the same pattern and raked almost in a circle around him. The rake made a scratching noise while the mower clicked. He’d rake the leaves and sticks down the small grassy hill in the front of our house to the gutter. He’d pile everything and set it on fire. He’d lean on the rake beside the fire to watch it. That is the image in my memory drawers. I’ve probably mentioned too many times that the smell of burning leaves is one of my favorite smells. I’d stand close to the smoke, and it would permeate my clothes. Even a few days later I could smell that smoke.

When I was a kid, we always bought pumpkins to carve. I loved pulling out the guts. I’d grab handfuls and hold them up and threaten to throw them. My mother watched. That was enough to keep it a threat. I think my pumpkin looked the same every year when I was finished. I remember trying to carve teeth and failing miserably. My knife skills were still raw and undeveloped. My pumpkin had the usual pumpkin grin, eyes and nose. We’d put in a candle in each pumpkin and put the pumpkins on the front step. We’d light the candles every night. I remember going outside to look at the pumpkins. The candles flicked. My pumpkin was beautiful, even with a toothless grin.

I used to eat candy corn. I liked the kind with a sort of gold color in the middle and a brown color at the end. That the corn was so sweet was the best part. I’d grab a handful and throw a few pieces into my mouth. The idea of eating them now makes my teeth rot with just the thoughts of it. I do buy bags of candy corn now but use them for decoration then toss them.

This week I have my usual uke practice and lesson. I also have two concerts. It is grocery shopping week, and I have a list.

The nor’easter is almost done. It is not raining now, and the wind has become a breeze. The sun has returned, and it is warm at 67°. Mother Nature has had her fun. We’re left with light rain and maybe a drizzle; however, the flood warnings do continue for tonight and tomorrow. The waves today could get as high as 17 feet. The wind tomorrow will only be 5 miles MPH, probably having worn itself out from all that blowing. It feels a bit like the end of a sci-fi movie about nature having decimated much of the Earth. The survivors have come out of hiding to find a ruined world, but the sun will shine again. My neighbors are on their deck. They are Jamaican. I can hear singing and conversing in Patois. She’ll cook later, and with the deck doors open I’ll be tantalized by the aroma of her food cooking. I can hear birds. The dogs are out despite this being their morning nap time.

When I was a kid, this was just about my favorite time of year. I loved the mornings. I loved walking to school and watching the leaves change color. The afternoons were still warm enough for playing outside. Halloween, a highlight of the season, was on the horizon. I remember lamenting, though I didn’t realize that was what I was doing, that the afternoons were getting shorter and shorter. It seemed as if we were outside for only a minute before the street lights came on, and every mother yelled out the door at what seemed like the same time. All of a sudden the yards and streets were empty.

The only person I knew who had been to Europe was my father, compliments of the navy during World War II. During one of our trips to Europe we went looking for places he had been. He didn’t remember much. He was only 17 when he went into the navy. He remembered Plymouth, England the most as he had been hospitalized there for quite a while after his ship had been sunk. On another trip, the one where my sister had joined us, we followed the World War II trail through Belgium and stayed in Bastogne. He was thrilled. He kept up a running commentary. Every time we passed Malmedy he spoke about the massacre. He wanted a picture of tank traps we coud see in the woods so I got sent. Little did we know how muddy it was. I got stuck in the mud, and when I pulled out my feet, my shoes stayed. I carried them to the car.

I vacuumed upstairs as soon as I woke up. I was tired of the dust balls in my bedroom, the bathroom and the hall. After I had vacuumed the hall rug, I was surprised to see it was plaid. I have a couple of chores more, but because of my leg, I can’t haul bags and filled litter boxes to the car for the dump. That stays on my to do list until at least Thursday. I can see a lazy late afternoon on my list.

The day is dark. The nor’easter is already underway with a high wind warning which continues through Sunday. Right now we have gusts up to 26 miles per hour but gusts up to 60 miles per hour are predicted. Even the biggest, the topmost branches are bending. The leaves are curling. The rain should begin around one and will dump around three inches of rain through Sunday. Saturday alone will get an inch. I need to get a few things at the store. I expect the stores to be crowded just as they are before giant snowstorms or hurricane predictions so I may wait until the rain starts hoping that will keep the less intrepid indoors.

Henry will go out in the rain, but Nala will look out the door then back into the kitchen. None of my boxers have been lovers of rain. Now I wish I had put the storms in the door so I could leave the inside doors open. The dogs and I love to watch the rain.

The morning has been a good one. The coffee was delicious. I get my coffee from Atlas Coffee so it comes from a different place each month. I am now enjoying coffee from Guatemala. I ran out of light cream, but I still have vanilla ice cream I am using instead. It is so delicious I find myself drinking more coffee than usual. My sister gave me some lemon curd, just about my favorite way to eat lemons. This morning I put it on my toast. It was sweet and tasty. Both were a glorious way to start the day. Next, I finished all three puzzles in the newspaper. I felt triumphant.

My upstairs is in dire need of attention. My bedroom has clumps of dust and fur everywhere. The surfaces need to be dusted or polished. The bed needs changing. I have bags of laundry. I find my inner sloth has total control.

When I was a kid, my favorite place to spend a rainy afternoon was in my bedroom nestled under the covers. One window was close to the foot of my bed, and I’d watch the rain hit that window and roll down the panes. I’d have my over the headboard light on and I’d spend the afternoon reading. My room was always quiet, but I could hear the TV playing in the living room. My mother would be in the kitchen making supper. I could smell the food cooking. I’d stay reading until my mother called me down to supper. She’d fill my plate, hand it to me, and I’d sit at the table and eat. She didn’t sit with us, but she’d often stand at the counter to eat. I’d watch TV until bedtime then I’d read until my mother yelled up the stairs for me to turn off the light and go to sleep. Joys of life stay with us. I find it amazing that even now on rainy days I love to nestle under the covers and read.

The nights are chilly. In the morning the house is cold. It holds the night air. I have had to keep the back door shut because of the breeze, because the cool air is being blown down the hall to the den. Fall is in full swing.

The sunshine is sharper today. The breeze is so heavy everything constantly blows, turns, bends. We have a high wind warning and a coastal flooding warning. The nor’easter is close.

When I was a kid, I made memories without realizing they were being tucked away, saved in my memory drawers. Some have stayed hidden, but many have abruptly jumped into my head triggered by a smell or sight or sound. Yesterday we drove through the square of my hometown. My friend pointed at the shop where she got the best subs. We remembered Hank’s Bakery, and the smell of bread baking in Hank’s ovens which wafted through the square. I still see Hank’s though it has been gone a while. Woolworth’s and Grants disappeared a long time ago. I still lament the loss of Woolworth’s. Many of the old buildings, especially the banks, look the same but haven’t been banks for the longest time. I miss the old square with all its shops, with what seemed to be hundreds of pharmacies lining the street and with the people in stores and on the sidewalks carrying bags from their shopping. Every day the square lived.

Yesterday’s reunion was amazing. I hadn’t seen my old friends for decades, but we fit together as if we last saw each other yesterday. I think it is always that way with old friends with whom you have so many memories of growing up together, memories of events and places and things shared. We told funny stories. We laughed. We weren’t old for a while. We were back to then. We were retelling funny experiences and remembering people we haven’t seen for so long. One memory of when I was first in the drill team I found out one of my friends has the same memory. We were maybe around twelve and went to a party after a contest. It was my mention of the duplex where the party was, the one over fifty years ago, which triggered the memory of my friend from at the same party. Everyone else there was old, at least in our eyes. The guys shaved. The girls seemed so sophisticated, many in their late teens. Treva said she was so scared she stayed on the porch. I stayed in a corner, protected on three sides. I didn’t realize this memory stayed. I find it amazing, even strange, which memories, which happenings, get stored away for safe keeping in our memory drawers.

We have sun. It has become a lovely day, but a fall day at 64°. My house is even a bit chillier. The nights have all been in the 50’s, not cold enough yet for the leaves to change. The weatherman is predicting a nor’easter at the end of the week. Those storms bring strong winds, heavy rain and a wild surf. We on the coast get hit the hardest with the strongest winds and a higher tide. Sand is carried by the wind and beaches erode. They are terrific storms.

I have always been mesmerized by storms. I remember the hurricanes when I was a kid. I’d watch out the window. The wind was so strong the trees and bushes bent. The wind was loud, frightening. The old wooden windows rattled. The rain pelted against the glass. I remember the giant elm which stood across the street went down in the 1954 hurricane, Hurricane Carol. I heard it fall. Branches from other trees littered the grass and the streets. Yards were a mess. I remember my father got to work right away cleaning the yard. We helped by piling the branches we could carry. The best part was the small bonfire when my father burned the debris. It filled the air with that wonderful smoky smell, and the firelight shined in the late afternoon.

I remember the start of the rainy season in Ghana. It hadn’t rained for months. The ground was sand. The fields were empty. We knew it was coming when the days started to get humid. The nights got warmer. I remember one day when the sky got dark with grey-black, angry looking clouds, which darkened the day. When the rain started, it was torrential. I saw a lightning bolt strike the ground in front of my house. It looked like a kid’s drawing of lightning with crooked lines of light. It was so unexpected I jumped a bit. I had been watching from my small porch in the front of the house. I decided to go inside prompted by the lightning bolt and the metal roof of the porch.

I didn’t write any lists or chores for today. I seem to ignore them anyway. I’ll end up doing something impromptu, something which catches my eye. I do have my uke practice tonight. That’s it for sure.

Yesterday with all its rain has made for an ugly today, a damp, dark day. It is only 61°. The breeze is at times a wind. Being inside in my comfy clothes is cozy and warm. The dogs are napping beside me. The coffee is great. I like my morning.

This week I am attending a special event, a drill team reunion, a reunion of St. Patrick’s Shamrocks. I joined the junior drill team when I was ten. We never competed. We just learned how to march. We did that at the armory on Main Street, a brick building with a pool table, a hall filled with unit flags, offices and a wide empty room upstairs. It is now a hardware store. When I was part of the senior drill team, we practiced upstairs. Every Tuesday we learned our maneuver for the summer competitions. We were all friends. We went to St. Pat’s together. We grew up together. We stayed friends though we didn’t see other often though I do keep in touch with my friend Maria. She is the one who took the lead to get us all together. She and I started in the junior drill together. We have some fun memories. The best one is when we were fooling around while someone was getting help in marching and no one was watching us. Maria hit the floor and made enough noise to get yelled at while I just stood and looked innocent. I do that well, the innocent thing. She still blames me. I deny it and will always deny it. This denial drives her crazy so I do it often.

When I was a kid, I never wanted to learn things like sewing, crocheting or cooking. My mother tried to teach me, but I just wasn’t interested. It was in Ghana when I first baked cookies and sewed anything. I had a wall of windows in my bedroom, louvered windows. I wanted more privacy so I bought some cloth in the market, measured the length of the windows and cut the cloth. I used string underneath a sort of top hem which I sewed by hand with giant stitches. I then strung the curtain by the string across all the windows and attached each end to a part of the window. I thought it looked great as long as you looked from the outside or not too closely inside. I remember the curtain cloth was brown with decorative sections on the top and bottom and a plain light tan middle.

I baked sugar cookies for my first Christmas away. I had to make a 200 mile round trip for gas so I could use my oven. I hauled my gas cylinder by bus. The cylinder was bulky and oh so heavy when filled. I had cookie cutters from home my mother had sent me. I used a beer bottle as a roller. It took me a while to make the cookies and bake them, but it was all worth it. They were delicious. They were the start of my love for cooking and baking; however, the curtain wasn’t enough for me to want to sew anything beyond buttons.

Today is chilly at 64°. It is supposed to rain most of the day, and the darkness of the day and the color of the clouds have me waiting for the first drops. I’ve decided to put the storm door on the back door as cold air comes in at night because I have to leave the door open for the dogs to go out. I can feel the chill all the way down the hall. Summer is truly gone.

My father used to spend a whole Saturday taking down the screens and putting on the storms which had been stored in the cellar. He needed a ladder. That, of course, scared us all. First he would climb the ladder and take the screens off the windows one by one. Next he’d carry a storm up the ladder. He had to hook it at the top of the window. That was the dangerous step because he needed both hands. The storms were heavy as the frames were wooden so we watched and waited. He never fell, so unlike my father. He moved from window to window then to both doors. Once the storms were on, we seldom opened a window as we had to hook it at the bottom so it would stay open just a bit. Besides, the inside windows were drafty even with the storms so we had air, cold air, and sometimes even frost on the inside window glass. I used to use my nails and write a message in the ice.

My dad was a football fan. Every week he watched the Giants, his favorite team as there were no Patriots back then. He was a screamer. If there was a fumble or an interception, he’d let the players know his dissatisfaction. He used to carry in dinner or snacks and eat while watching. His spot was on the side of the couch at the arm rest. It was beside a table on which he had a program guide, a holder for his glasses, an ashtray, a book he was reading and a filled candy dish, usually with Hershey’s miniatures. Sometimes he’d hide special candy under the couch. It was always right below where he sat so not so great a hiding spot. We all raided his candy. He’d eat his Hydrox cookies with milk. My father was a snacker.

I’m watching the Patriots mostly, but I’ll sneak looks at the Sox game. It is amazing that baseball’s regular season is coming to an end. I was standing on the deck the other day, and the air felt like autumn. No trees have changed yet, but that is coming. Summer is riding off into the sunset to mix a metaphor. Fall will soon hold sway.

The morning is fall at 63°. We have a bright sun and a mostly blue sky. I have chores. Mainly I have to vacuum. I can’t walk down the hall without hair balls flying into the air. This is a dusty house.

I found one of my political buttons, one I hadn’t added to the framed collection of buttons hanging in the hall. Those buttons are for democratic candidates going as far back as Kennedy. The one I found in the drawer was one I had picked up just to collect, never to wear. The button is huge, round, sort of the size of a small pancake. In the middle is a smiling Richard Nixon. That alone is scary enough. Around the button it says at the top, “Nixon’s The One.” At the bottom it says, “Nixon For President.” It is from the 1960 election. I remember getting the button at the Nixon political headquarters, a store front, in my town. I was in the eighth grade. It was the first election to which I not only paid attention but also favored a candidate.

In the eighth grade, we had a field trip to the Museum of Science. That was a big event as it was the first and only field trip we ever had. We were given a worksheet with several questions relating to the exhibits. It seemed daunting. I had the idea that my friends and I would divide the questions and then share our answers. Because the answers were right out in the open for the finding, we had no qualms. We completed the entire sheet. We even saved enough time we watch some of the events. I remember sitting on the floor and watching Spooky the Owl. I was amazed when he could spin his head and flap his wings on command.

When I was in high school, a few of my friends and I went to Boston to see the movie Cleopatra. I remember we all got dressed up for our trip to the city. We were chauffeured in town by the bus and the subway. We walked from the subway stop to the Music Hall, now the Wang, to see the movie. I was awed by how beautiful and fancy the theater was. It had chandeliers and murals on the walls and ceiling and private balcony seating along the sides. The ladies’ room even had regal red velvet covered lounges. I sat on one for a while luxuriating in the elegance. I’ve never been to a more beautiful ladies’ room.

Such a lovely day! It is 72° and sunny. Last night it rained for a bit, little enough the dogs didn’t mind. I didn’t hear the rain. It was only Nala’s wet coat which let me know. This has been a slow morning. My TV keeps losing the Wi-Fi network, and it constantly buffers. I spent a while trying to figure out how to fix it. I was all over the place following suggestions. I hope I found the answer. If I haven’t, you’ll hear me screaming, even a few obscenities.

I just don’t want to do anything today, but I have to go out. My trunk already has some trash, and I need to add more then I’ll be off to the dump. I have no bread and Jack needs canned food. That means a stop at the grocery store. I’m not happy, but each is necessary. I miss my morning toast and Jack loves his canned food.

I have moments that fill my memory drawers. Some I could label surprises, happenings I didn’t expect or imagine. Others had always been wishes, some even expectations. I have images, pictures saved in their own drawers. They make me smile. They help me remember.

I think every Christmas of my childhood is in those drawers. I don’t remember ever being disappointed. I remember when I got my bike. I took it out on Christmas morning. We have a picture of me standing with it by the steps. My grin is almost too wide for the picture. I remember my first transistor radio. I can still see it in my mind’s eye. One Christmas, when I was maybe ten, I got this great new outfit of a skirt and fluffy sweater. I also got a gold medallion on a gold chain. I put everything on as soon as I opened it. I wore it to church that Christmas morning. I wanted everyone to notice. So many more Christmases are crammed into those drawers. Some are from when I was older. One of my favorites is my first Christmas in Ghana. I thought being away from home at Christmas would be the worst. It wasn’t.

My dad drove up Mount Washington. I remember looking over the side at how far up we were. I remember taking pause and being nervous when a car driving by our car on the inside of the road passed us. I remember how cold it was on top of the mountain. The hairpin turn on the Mohawk Trail was amazing. I kept looking out the back window to see where we’d been. The Eisenhower Locks are in one memory drawer. I watched as a ship went through. Later, the Panama Canal reminded me of that lock. My own travels fill drawer after drawer. First was Africa. I never thought I’d travel to Africa. I hold on so tightly to those years, to all the memories. I did Europe. That seemed a rite of passage for my generation. You had to include a backpack.

I have to stop here or I’ll go on forever.