Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
April 11, 2015
When I woke up, I noticed the sun, subdued and wan. I figured it had been so long since the sun last shined it had forgotten how to wow us, to make us squint in the light. The streets were still wet and were waiting for a bit of warmth to dry three days of rain, and I was hopeful the sun could finally hold sway. After getting the papers, I stood outside to check my garden. Green shoots are everywhere. They are the start of my spring bulbs finally growing and budding. Gracie has been in the yard most of the morning. She is my barometer. The warmer the weather the longer she is out.
When I was a kid, this was a bicycle day, a spring jacket sort of day. It was freedom from layers of clothing and from looking wistfully out the picture window. It was time to fly my bike down the hill with my hair blowing and my arms raised in a funny sort of triumph. It was time to pedal as fast as I could hoping to leave winter behind me.
I loved riding all over town on a sunny Saturday. Sometimes I’d bring lunch and put it in my bike’s big front basket. Once in a while I’d hit a bump and my lunch bag would bounce in the basket. Sometimes it bounced out. I usually brought Oreos for dessert. They were the cookies of choice for all of us. I remember my sisters would eat the middle and give the dog the rest. My method was a bit different. I’d open the Oreo, eat the plain side then the filling then the other side with streaks of filling still left.
Last night I watched the Sox beat the Yankees in a game which seemed interminable. It lasted 19 innings, 6 hours and 49 minutes, and is now the longest game in Red Sox history. I’d tell myself I’m going to bed after this inning, but I just couldn’t bring myself to turn off the TV. What if I miss the winning run after all this time? Both teams were horrible last year. The Yanks didn’t make the playoffs and the Sox were last, but they seem to play each other as if a championship is on the line. During extra innings, when a Sox player got on base, I’d beg for someone to hit him in so I could go to bed. Finally a Mookie Betts sacrifice fly knocked in the winning run. I cheered then held my breath during the bottom half of the inning. The Yanks didn’t score so I let the dog out, waited for her to come in, turned off the lights and went to bed.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 19 innings, 6 hours, barometer, dry air, green shoots front garden, longest game, lunch bag, oreos, Red Sox, riding all over town, sandwich, spring bulbs, spring jacket day, sun, three days of rain, wet streets, Yankees
Comments: 25 Comments
April 10, 2015
This morning I noticed webbing between my toes. It appears I am beginning to adapt to a wet world where it rains every day. The sun is supposed to return, but I have become a skeptic worn down by snow and cold and rain.
In elementary school my day was chock full of subjects, some every day and some once a week. Many of them have since disappeared.
Back then no school room was complete without those green writing alphabet cards running atop the blackboards. On each was a single letter in both small and capital cursive forms. I always liked the capital Z and the capital Q. They were odd-looking and uncommon to use. We had penmanship a couple of times a week when we practiced the Palmer method. I remember the circles and the lines. I also remember mine were usually messy and didn’t resemble the examples we were following. The nun always stopped at my desk to show me how my hand should be moving up and down as I practiced. Many schools don’t teach writing any more. Cursive is disappearing.
Geography was always one of my favorite subjects. I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about knowing that Columbia produced coffee or that Costa Rica led the world in bananas, but I loved the pictures and the articles. I used to dream about visiting some of the countries in my book, but I never really believed I would see so many of them. When I was sixteen, we went to Niagara Falls and saw the falls from the Canadian side. I was visiting my first foreign country, and I was thrilled. They don’t teach stand alone geography any more either.
We had music a couple of times a week. We learned the fundamentals. I still remember every good boy does fine and face: the mnemonics for the names of the scale’s lines and spaces. We sang songs. I remember every nun had a mouth tuner like a round harmonica. She’d blow the note, and we were supposed to start singing the song on that note. I doubt we ever did. I was in the rhythm band in the first and second grades. I remember first year I did sticks and second year I did triangle. I always wanted tambourine.
Reading was a subject unto its self. We had reading books with stories then questions and new vocabulary at the end of each story. I always liked those books. Each year the stories shared a theme. My favorite was American folk heroes. I loved Pecos Bill and his riding the tornado. It was the only time he was “throwed” in his whole career as a cowboy. I learned about Paul Bunyan and Babe the blue ox, John Henry and Sally Ann Thunder who helped Davy Crockett and wore a real beehive as a hat and wrestled alligators in her spare time. There was even a sketch of her and the alligator. I got my love of reading from those books and those stories.
I was never bored in school. We went from one lesson to another quickly enough to stave off ennui. I looked forward to most of them but only tolerated the rest. I still don’t like arithmetic no matter what you call it.
Categories: Musings
Tags: alphabet letters, Amercian folk heroes, Columbia and coffee, Cursive, EGBDF, Elementary school, FACE, geography, math, music., Pecos Bill, penmanship, rain, reading, rhythm band, Sally Ann Thunder, skeptic, sticks and triangle, sun, webbing between the toes
Comments: 12 Comments
April 9, 2015
“Rain, rain go away. Come again another day. Rain, rain go away. Little Johnny wants to play.” I suspect saying this over and over won’t have any affect. This is the second day of cold, chilling rain. Last night the rain was heavy, and I fell asleep to the plinking of drops on the roof. Last night was also cold again, in the 30’s. I watched the Sox play Philly (they lost their perfect record), and when the camera followed the pitcher ‘s wind-up, I was distracted by seeing the pitcher’s breath and watching him trying to keep his hands warm. The players were bundled as much as they could be. Long sleeves were part of the uniform of the night. It was football weather.
When I was really young, I learned all the nursery rhymes from listening to my mother. She’d say them in a sing-song voice which my ears loved hearing. I remember seeing a ladybug outside on a leaf and telling her to fly away home, her house was on fire and her children were gone. All the Littles were friends of mine. I felt bad for Little Bo Peep and Little Boy Blue but really bad for Little Miss Muffet and her new founded fear of hungry spiders. I am a child born on the Sabbath, fair and wise and good in every way. I liked quoting that one. Some of them I could sing, badly, but it didn’t matter. They were fun. Old MacDonald’s was the best with all the animals sounds. Row, Row, Row your Boat was a round but somehow we always ended up finishing on the same lines no matter when we started.
Thinking about these rhymes got me to look them up, and I was surprised to find out how old some of them are. Little Bo Peep lost her sheep in 1805 and Little Boy Blue fell asleep in 1744. Miss Muffet has had her spider phobia since 1805. Ding Dong Bell is the oldest dating from 1580, that poor kitty.
I don’t know if nursery rhymes are still popular, but I really hope they are though it would be okay with me if the kitty finally came out of the well.
Categories: Musings
Tags: cold, Ding Dong Bell, football weather, Little Bo Peep, Little Boy Blue, Little Miss Muffet, nursery rhymes, rainy, Red Sox, Row Row Row Your Boat
Comments: 12 Comments
April 7, 2015
The sounds of spring fill the air: the songs of birds, the chattering of squirrels, aka the spawns of Satan, and the annoying hum of leaf blowers and saws. Yesterday the landscaper’s crew was at my house for several hours clearing between my house and the rental. The tree which had fallen this winter was sawed into manageable pieces, all the branches on the ground were cleared and the underbrush was cut. The wild space looks as clean as it ever has. My front yard too is cleared of debris as is the driveway area and the dividing space beside my house and Sebastian’s, my neighbor. Today the men were working at a house down the road. I could hear them long before I saw them.
My dad never bought a power mower. He used his old cutting mower. Every spring he’d bring it to the hardware store to have the blades sharpened. His only lawn was in front and between his house and the neighbor’s. He mowed that lawn every week. I used to sit on the front step and watch. He had a technique which never varied the whole of his life. He used a wide pattern to cut the grass and moved from one side of the lawn to the other slightly overlapping the cutting lines as he went. He always raked when he was finished. He always raked everything to the middle then picked it all up and put it in a leaf bag. I still love hearing the scratching sound of the rake.
My visual memory of my dad raking is a fall memory. He’s wearing a maroon jacket, one with a zipper that used to be his father’s. He constantly moves the rake. He starts on one side of the lawn and begins raking the grass which becomes a small pile. He keeps raking and moving that same pile, adding to it as he rakes. Finally the small pile becomes part of the big pile in the middle of the lawn. Every now and then my dad stopped to neaten the big pile before moving to another side of the lawn.
When my dad was done with his raking and the leaves were bagged, he’d put his rake and mower back into the cellar until the next week. His grass, raked and cleared of fall debris, always looked a bit beaten low to the ground and headed in one direction from the raking.
My dad was proud of his summer lawn. When I visited my parents during grass season, my dad would always ask if I had noticed how good his lawn looked. I always did and told him so. He’d just nod. That was always the answer he expected.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bird song, fall cleaning, grass raked, hand mower, hum of leaf blowers, leaf bags, nice lawn, raking, scratching of the rake, sharpened blades, sounds of spring, visual memory
Comments: 2 Comments
April 6, 2015
A howling wind, falling snow or icy sleet battering the house and yard wouldn’t matter. Today would still be spring. Today the Red Sox play their first game of the season. I dream about today on the worst winter days when I need dreams the most. On the coldest of days I let baseball give me hope. I see in my mind’s eye the Green Monster and the fresh grass of Fenway. I think about cheering for the home team, eating hot dogs and popcorn, watching games on warm summer nights and throwing my arms into the air as I scream at a home run or moan at an error. The Sox have stumbled of late. Two out of the last three seasons my Sox were in last place. In the middle of those two seasons they won the World Series. Today they are perfect.
Sometimes Easter was at the start of spring vacation while other years, like this one, Easter was early and Monday was back to school. That was always the worst of Mondays. Our energy had been spent over the three-day weekend. By Sunday night we were exhausted from the excitement of wearing new clothes, finding our baskets filled with chocolate and small gifts and spending all afternoon with the cousins. Getting up, eating breakfast, putting on our uniforms and then walking to school were arduous tasks. It was a day of lethargy when turning the pages of a text-book took far too much energy. The classroom was unusually quiet. No rustling sounds broke the silence. The only signs of Easter were the jelly beans, the big ones where every color tasted the same, wrapped in wax paper in our lunch boxes. We’d finish our sandwiches then put the jelly beans in our coat pockets to eat outside during recess. I remember they all had a bit of lint from my pocket. I didn’t care.
Easter was the best. Dinner was spectacular. We were given the same table by the window we’ve had for three years in a row. Our blinking bunny, from an Easter basket three years ago, joined us for his third time at the table. That he still blinks we find amazing. Outside the window the view was beautiful. The sky and the ocean were different blues. The water, the deepest of blues, had a greenish tint while the sky was light blue along the horizon and darker blue above. Small white caps tapped the shoreline. The beach grass was brown, its winter color. We toasted the day and sat for a bit savoring the moment before ordering dinner. My drink had blackberries. It was delicious. I had lamb, mashed potatoes and onions infused with soy sauce. Little was left on my plate at the end of dinner, but I managed to squeeze in a chocolate dessert, the perfect ending for the best Easter ever until next year’s.
Categories: Musings
Tags: chocolate desserts, Easter dinner, jelly beans, lamb, mashed potatoes, Monday school, ocean and sky, onions, opening season game, Red Sox, spring, waves and wind
Comments: 16 Comments
April 5, 2015
Happy Easter and Happy Passover!
This morning my alarm jolted me awake at 6:15. I went down to my friends’ house to decorate the tree by their deck, an Easter custom. I hung a cardboard tiled banner with Peep in the middle and a chick on each side, several colored eggs and a small glass flower pot with a hyacinth. It was cold, only 34˚, and quiet until I heard the loud gobbles of wild turkeys. Four huge toms appeared on the front lawn across the street. Their tails were fanned. They strutted across the lawn, gobbled again, together as if they practiced, and went around back. I watched until they disappeared. Wild turkeys are common here, but these were the biggest I’ve seen.
After I finished decorating, Gracie and I went to the ATM and then to Dunkin’ Donuts. I didn’t see another car until the main road. It is quiet in neighborhoods on Easter morning. At Dunkin’ Donuts I was third in line.
The day is sunny and bright.
This afternoon we’ll get gussied up and go to our Easter dinner at the Ocean House. I think it is the only day I voluntarily wear a dress and fancy shoes. We always wait for a window table as the restaurant looks right onto the rocks and the ocean; hence its name. Out the windows you can see and hear the gulls circling over the water. If there is wind, there are whitecaps.
It doesn’t matter how many times I see the ocean or the gulls or the rocks because every time is mesmerizing. The waves slap the rocks and water flies into the air. Gulls walk on the wet sand and leave their footprints. They always seem to look proud as they walk.
During dinner we chat, laugh, take pictures, all sorts of pictures, and often look out the window. We always say how beautiful it is and how lovely the view. We also always say how lucky we are.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 34˚, decorating the tree, dinner, Easter dinner, Eggs, fancy clothes, fun dinner, gulls, Happy Easter, ocean, Ocean House, rocks, sunny and bright, whitecaps, wild tom turkeys
Comments: 14 Comments
April 4, 2015
We had more rain this morning then the sun came out for a while then it disappeared behind the clouds and the sky got darker. The sun made an attempt to reappeared but in a poof was gone again but only for a bit. The sun is now brightly shining in all its glory. The sky is blue and the clouds are gone. The sun has won the day in a spectacular fashion. It is even warm outside. My heat hasn’t come on all morning. Today I’m doing Easter things. I have a few eggs I’m going to color and a couple of baskets to fill.
At Christmas time we had Santa Claus to keep us on the straight and narrow. We didn’t dare cross the line for fear of getting coal in our stockings. The days before Christmas always felt interminable. Christmas Eve was really three days long. Falling asleep on Christmas Eve took forever, but then we woke to Christmas morning, the best morning of the year.
Easter didn’t have the giddy anticipation we gave to Christmas. We had nothing to lose being bad because Easter didn’t have the watchful eyes of Santa Claus or the dire consequences of being bad. The Easter Bunny didn’t seem to care so my mother had no threats to hold over us. We fought like usual and got yelled at the same as we always did.
Easter egg hunts were one of the fun parts of Easter. I remember a giant egg hunt in the field below our houses. All the kids in the neighborhood took part. We carried little baskets to hold our eggs. I remember finding a few here and there and one golden egg, but I gave it no mind and kept looking. At the end of the hunt I found out it was the prize egg. Inside was a dollar bill. This was when a penny had value and a nickel or a dime was wealth. A dollar was a king’s ransom.
The night before Easter was for egg coloring. My mother hard-boiled them, put newspapers on the table and filled paper cups with colored water from packets of dye. We used spoons to put the eggs in the colors and we’d roll the eggs all around so they’d get darker. My mother would display them on the table during Easter dinner. The week after Easter we’d always get colored eggs in our lunch boxes.
My mother would lay out our new Easter clothes on Saturday night. I loved getting new shoes for Easter because usually I only got new ones when the old ones gave up the ghost. We took baths, it was after all Saturday night, watched a little TV, went to bed and fell asleep. In the morning the baskets were on the kitchen table or on our bureaus or even in the living room. We’d eat some chocolate as we’d look through our baskets. That was always our Easter morning breakfast.
We’d go to church where every kid was dressed in new Easter clothes. The colors were light like a spring morning. I swear every Easter was warm and lovely. In the afternoon, after dinner, we’d go to my grandparents’ house in the city. My million or so cousins were also there. My grandmother had chocolate rabbits for us all.
On the way home, I always fell asleep.
Categories: Musings
Tags: Christmas, coloring eggs, dark sky, Easter, Easter clothes, Easter egg hunts, new shoes, rain, Santa Claus, sun, warm day
Comments: 10 Comments
April 3, 2015
Last night the wind was ferocious. I went to bed early to read, but the sound of the wind grabbed my attention so many times I stopped to listen. It was easy to imagine myself in a house on a cliff overlooking the ocean while the wind whistled and howled around me. The house would be a huge old Victorian filled with dusty rooms and mystery. The French doors in my bedroom, with the prerequisite long white, billowing curtains, would face the ocean. When the doors blew open, as they usually do in mysterious houses, I’d stand on the small balcony looking out at the water while the curtains blew around me. I’d see the huge white caps pummeling the rocky shore. That was about as far as my imagination took me before I turned off the light and went to sleep. Later I was awakened by the sound of the rain.
The day is a dismal one, cloudy and damp, but it is warm, in the mid 40’s. Much of the snow disappeared with the rain except in my neighbor’s front yard. Underneath their trees a tract of snow remains. The huge plowed piles on the corner are just about gone, but my neighbor’s snow, still white, resists the warmth and the rain. I guess it is winter’s last gasp.
The morning birds are the first sounds of spring. The leaf blowers are the second. My neighbor’s deck is now being cleared of winter debris. It won’t take long. My deck, on the other hand, has leaves and branches fallen and blown from the pine trees which overhang it. Cleaning all that debris will take much longer. My backyard has some huge branches which broke off during the winter. In the no man’s land between my house and the next, a pine tree trunk has split in half. One half, leaning on the branches of other trees, will be sawed into pieces and hauled away. The other half will be left in the ground.
Good Friday has always been a no school day, but starting around the sixth grade, I had to sign up for an hour vigil at the church. I used to sneak in a book and would read the hour away. It always went fast.
Categories: Musings
Tags: broken branches, church', cloudy, dismal day, Good Friday, howling wind, Leaf blower, no school, snow disappearing, split tree trunk, spring clean-up, Victorian mansion, vigil, white caps, Wind, winter's last gasp
Comments: 10 Comments
April 2, 2015
Today started out cloudy, but the sun is peeking through and chasing away the clouds. The sky is getting bluer and bluer. It is my sloth day, the only day this week with no appointment. I have a chore, an odd one. I need to put the new flag holder outside on the tree. That’s it for the day.
Today is Holy Thursday, Maundy Thursday, a Christian holiday celebrating the Last Supper so the service is always at night. Part of the service is the ritual of the washing of feet meant to symbolize how Christ humbled Himself and washed the feet of the disciples. I never went to church on Holy Thursday. I always figured Sunday was more than enough for the week except for one special year, the year my grandfather was having his feet washed by the priest in a re-creation of what happened at the Last Supper. No way was I going to miss that. My grandfather was a short, gruff man filled with self-importance. He wasn’t a warm man. He wasn’t one of my favorites. My mother and I sat together in the church. I assume my father was there but he didn’t sit with us. One of my favorite parts of that service was the waving of the incense. The altar boy filled the gold incense burner and the priest sort of waved the burner to each section of the church. The incense smelled exotic. I still love that smell. The highlight of the evening, of course, was when the men walked barefoot onto the altar and sat on stiff chairs with red leather on the back and on the seat. I have no idea why I remember that. All of the men wore suits and sort of looked a bit silly being barefooted. My mother and I watched quietly until it came to my grandfather’s turn. He gave the priest one foot which was washed then dried and then gave the priest the other foot. My mother and I started laughing quietly. We couldn’t help it. My pompous grandfather looked so solemn. That made us laugh even harder. Our shoulders were shaking and the pew was shaking, but we didn’t utter a sound the whole time. We tried to stop but couldn’t. We didn’t dare look at each other. I can’t imagine what the people around us thought.
When the service was over, we hurried outside and started laughing again. It was hysterically funny to both of us. We never did tell my father. We didn’t think he’d appreciate the humor of it all.
Categories: Musings
Tags: barefooted men, blue sky, chairs on the altar, flag holder, giggling, Holy Thursday, humorous, laughing, Maundy Thursday, roaring laughing, shaking the pew, silly ritual, sloth day, sunny day, washing of the feet
Comments: 10 Comments
March 31, 2015
Today is bright and lovely, a bit chilly but that’s okay. It feels like spring; it doesn’t smell like a spring morning yet, but I think we’re close. Two bright, beautiful yellow crocus (croci) have flowered in my front garden. My eyes, hungry for color after the winter, saw them as soon as I walked outside to get the papers. It seemed as if they sprang from the earth overnight, maybe as a gift from much maligned Mother Nature.
I keep watching the birds flying in and out of the feeders, and I keep checking to see if I will again be plagued by the red spawn. I thought I caught a glimpse of the beastie on a tree limb, but he didn’t go to the feeders. I wonder if they have red spawn tasers.
I have decided winter is over even though it will be 28˚ tonight. You will read no more complaining about this extended season from me. Every day I see or hear a new sign of spring. The mornings are now filled with the songs of birds. No longer does that single bird sing. The sun is so bright coming through the storm door that all three animals vie for a sunny spot. Maddie’s fur was hot this morning when she came for a pat. The plowed snow is still on the corners of the street but the piles are tinier every day. I no longer pay them any mind. When I look out my window here in the den, I see the deep blue sky and I see trees no longer seeming shadowy, no longer silhouettes in the darkness of a cloudy day.
The last few days have been busy ones for me. I think the winter sloth has moved on. All the chores I kept putting off are done. I don’t even have any laundry in the drier. Today I have PT and some errands. I’m excited about going outside in the sun. Today is a sweatshirt day. I think I’ve seen the last of a winter coat day.
Categories: Musings
Tags: bird song, bright day, color, Crocus, end of winter, happy, hot fur, Laundry, snow piles, songs of birds, spring, sunny door, winter slotgh
Comments: 6 Comments
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