Keep the Coffee Comimg

The morning is rainy. I can smell the dead wet leaves on the ground. It will rain on and off all day though the sun will peek through every now and then. The sky is a light grey. I can see the oak tree branches in the back yard being tossed by the wind. The temperature is in the low 60’s where it will sit all day. Tonight, though, will be more seasonal, in the 30’s.

Fall and winter rain make for dreary days, perfect for comfy clothes and a good book. The dogs, who appreciate cozy, are asleep on the couch. Nala is resting her head on my hip. I can feel her warmth.

When I was a kid, my grammar school was old. It was a brick building across from the convent and beside the rectory. Out front there was a big statue of an angel with a child. The first floor was up a set of stairs. Outside each classroom was the cloak room. There were never enough hooks for all our coats as each classroom had large classes. My first grade had over forty kids. The desks were the sort where you didn’t lift the top. Your books were in the desk, below the stationary top. You had to bend over to find the right book. The top had a groove for my pencils and a hole for an ink bottle. It was an old desk. I remember it was dark wood. The bathrooms were downstairs in the cellar.

I don’t like bulky winter coats despite the coldest weather. I have a couple, but I don’t think I wore one all last winter. I wore a hoodie and once in a while added a vest, my interpretation of layering. I have boots but not rubber boots. One pair is ankle high leather boots from Timberland. The other pair is waterproof outside and fleece inside but also ankle height. I always hope for a light snowstorm.

I think my aversion to bulky coats was because of my childhood. My mother made sure I was dressed for the Arctic. I wore a sweater under a heavy winter coat. I wore pink longish thermal underwear which went to just above my knees. My knee socks went to just below my knees. Neither of them met in the middle. I wore boots over my shoes. I always had to wear a hat and mittens though I often ditched the hat when I was out of sight.

This week my dance card is filled with uke: tonight’s practice, a lesson and concert tomorrow and a concert on Thursday. My fingers will get a workout.

The morning is windy, raw and cloudy. Sun is only a possibility. The high will be 49°. Today is an inside day. I’ll be an observer looking at the world through my den window.

When I was in the first few years of grammar school, the nuns used to pass out coloring book pages with holiday designs. We’d pull out our crayons and spend an intense afternoon coloring. I remember the turkey. The big part to color was the tail. Not ever having seen a real turkey, I multi-colored the tail feathers. I think the NBC peacock and my turkey were related. My mother always gushed at my masterpiece. She was quite believable. It was refrigerator art.

Thanksgiving is sandwiched between the two big days, Halloween and Christmas. I never counted the days until Thanksgiving. There was nothing surprising about it. My mother was always up really early, like 5 or 6 ish to stuff the turkey and get it in the oven. My sisters and I still wonder why she needed to be up that early. We watched the parade and munched on M&M’s, tangerines and mixed nuts in the shell. The bowl for the nuts was wooden and had silver picks in holes around the edge. The crackers too were silver. I actually found and bought an old bowl just like it. I fill it with mixed nuts more as a decoration and a memory.

When I think back to those Thanksgivings, images jump into my head. I can see my father carving the turkey. He always started with the legs. We had paper turkey napkins and a paper tablecloth with cornucopias. I always thought the table looked special, festive. There was a huge bowl of mashed potatoes and the gravy was in a boat. The boat name made perfect sense to me. It really did have the body of a canoe but one with a spout. Dinner was always around two.

The pies were on the kitchen table. One was always lemon meringue. That was my favorite. My father was an apple pie with cheese fan. I preferred custard pie over pumpkin.

My dance card this week is uke loaded. I have the usual Tuesday night practice and Wednesday morning lesson. There are two concerts. Wednesday is Hyannis and Thursday is Brewster. I’ll have to keep my fingers limber!

What a delightful day! It is warm and sunny. A breeze is swaying only the tallest pine tree branches. In my backyard, there are still oak leaves dangling from the ends of branches but already piles of fallen leaves cover the backyard, the front grass and the driveway. I like to kick through the piles.

When I was teen, I didn’t have a whole lot of dressy clothes. I didn’t need them. I wore a uniform to school. I had a few skirts and blouses, church clothes. I remember my stylish skirts were tight and had slits in the back. I couldn’t take big steps. I had a pair of saddle shoes and wore ankle socks with them. Even though I was older, I still called the rest of my wardrobe play clothes. One of my favorite outfits was a gift from Christmas, black ski pants with a loop at the bottom to go across and under my foot and a fuzzy pink sweater. I was stylin’.

Now, I only have a few dresses just taking up space in my closet. I bought the first one for my trip to Ghana. It is blue with flowers. The other dress is red with white flowers as the main motif. I also have a couple of dresses made for me when I was in Ghana. The cloth is beautiful. I can’t remember the last time I wore dress.

I am wearing my winter around the house ensemble, a sweatshirt, a Red Sox sweatshirt, flannel pants and slipper socks. It is a cozy outfit.

Our Sunday dinners were special, always a roast, mashed potatoes, gravy and a couple of veggies. My favorite was roast beef. It was always medium to well done so that is how we all still prefer our beef. I love mashed potatoes and adding gravy raises the potatoes to near perfection. Corn and baby peas top my list of favorite veggies. My mother never served spinach, cauliflower or broccoli so they are not on my list of acceptable vegetables.

Today is dump day. My car is just about filled with recyclables and trash bags. After the trash stop, I need a few groceries, coffee filters and bread are one and two on that list. They are life affirming.

Today is sunny and warm. It is 60°. It is the first weekend in a while that it isn’t raining. I have a couple of household chores I choose to ignore. The sloth in me is holding sway.

When I was a kid, Saturday was the best day of all. The morning was dedicated to sitting in front of the TV watching all the kid shows, munching cereal and slurping milk. The rest of the day was set aside for roaming. Sometimes I even biked to one of the towns around mine. I loved the railroad station one town over and would sit on a bench for a while hoping for a train. Supper on Saturday was always the same, but I never minded. I was and am a fan of hot dogs. The Saturday bath after supper was a ritual. I remember my sisters crying when my mother combed the snarls out of their newly shampooed hair. That too was a Saturday ritual. We got to stay up later. TV back then was filled with westerns like Sugarfoot, for which I can still sing the theme, The Roy Rogers Show with Happy Trails to You as the closing song which I can play on my uke, and my favorites like Maverick and Have Gun, Will Travel. I used to read in bed until my mother yelled up the stairs for me to turn off the light. Saturday was the perfect day.

When I lived in Ghana, Saturday was the day to go to town to pick up essentials in the market. I had my favorite egg man and my favorite vegetable lady from whom I bought onions and tomatoes. I used to roam the market hoping to find surprises like that watermelon, the only one I ever saw. From the kiosks lining the street, I’d buy canned goods like margarine and evaporated milk. From small girls carrying their goods on their heads I’d buy bread and bofrot aka puff puff which looked like donut holes only a little bigger and better tasting.

Saturday night was entertainment night at my school. There was tribal dancing and once in a while a movie. I remember Great Expectations and my students having no idea what was happening with the quick dialogue. My favorite was a cartoon about keeping flies off food. The movies and cartoons came from a USAID guy who occasionally dropped into town but whom I seldom saw.

I have an entirely empty dance card this weekend for which I am grateful. I’m going to loll.

Sorry for the lateness of the hour, but it was a busy morning. The plumber came back to check the water pressure in the kitchen. It was the faucet, my old faucet without the water on and off knobs.The actual faucet part was gunky. After that I had a uke concert, the last of the cowboys songs. What was amazing was they gave us a standing ovation, the first standing O!

This is time of year when the days stay warmish while the nights get cold. It is in the mid 50’s today and sunny. Fallen leaves cover everything. My driveway and deck are hidden. Most of the leaves are brown, their color gone. I figure winter has a hand in all of it, the leaves and the cold nights, warnings as to what is coming.

When I was growing up, walking to school was chilly this time of year. Sometimes I could see my breath. I wouldn’t wear my winter coat yet, but I always bundled in a few layers. I wore knee socks. I didn’t wear a hat. It wasn’t cold enough.

We went out for recess except when it rained. In the winter few of us took time for layering or even zipping or buttoning our coats. Recess time was too precious, but coats sometimes flew opened in the wind. If we jumped roped, the coats came off. They hindered red hot pepper and jumping and out of the swinging jump rope. Our cheeks were always rosy.

I feel like a character in some doomsday movie who’s being given signs of the apocalypse but doesn’t notice. The first sign was the death of my washing machine which still sits silent in the cellar. Second was the flood, a Biblical event. Next was the water heater. Last night it was the computer. There I was happily typing away when the computer went dead, went black. I tried to restart it, no luck. I waited and tried again, no luck. On the next try the update slide appeared then disappeared, replaced by blackness. That happened twice. I ruminated. I decide to check the adaptor. Hurrah, it wasn’t plugged in all the way. When I finally got my computer started, it was only 3% charged. I wonder what is next in my apocalyptic revelations.

The day is chilly, in the high 40’s, but it is a sunny, pretty day. Last night I thought I heard something hit the house. It was loud, but the dogs didn’t run to check it out or bark at it so I figured whatever I heard was harmless, but, nonetheless, all of us stayed on alert. In retrospect, I think my Halloween vibes were in full force propelled by the creature movies I have been watching. The sound turned out to be from a heavy wind, not a creature of the night. We were all safe!

I don’t remember ever wearing costumes to school. I do remember how long the school day was on Halloween. It went on and on, endlessly. At recess we all talked about our costumes, what we were to be. Hoboes were big as were ghosts, the easiest of all costumes. You just had to remember to make big eye holes in the sheet. We hated cold Halloween nights. That meant bundling, wearing a jacket, even hiding our costumes. Maybe we should have given thought to being Eskimos.

When the front lights were out, we’d finally give up the ghost and go home. My mother would give us each a bowl for our candy. We’d empty the bags into the bowls, toss the apples and the popcorn balls into the trash then we’d begin the bargaining. We’d trade bar for bar, what we didn’t like for what we liked more. After that, we’d munch and watch a little TV then go to bed. We’d take our bowls upstairs with us and keep them handy under our beds. I remember the bowls were Fire King bowls with tulips. I have a set of the exact same three bowls which I bought in an antique store. They came with memories.

Nala just gave me a laugh. She was in the hall standing by the den door looking at me. She had papers in her mouth she had stolen from the recycle bag by the front door ready for the car. She looked so proud. She raced out the door to the deck. I yelled treat. She dropped the papers and came in. I gave her the treats and retrieved the papers. Treat is the magic word.

The morning is dark and rainy. It will stay that way all day. When I woke up, the rain and the wind were heavier. Now the wind is quiet, but I can still hear the rain, a gentler rain. Henry has been barking all morning. The men came to put in the new water heater, and every time they make a noise, Henry barks. Nala keeps ringing the poochie bells to go out, but the gate is open. They are both driving crazy.

I always used to keep a dictionary by my bed in case I ran into a word I didn’t know. It was a paperback. Downstairs, I had a huge, hardcover American Heritage Dictionary with a red cover. Though I still have both of them, I rely on disembodied voices to tell me definitions. I remember learning how to use a dictionary, how to hunt down a word. I learned what the abbreviations meant. I learned to look at the top of the page to find quickly what I was looking for. We even had to take tests. I always thought it was one of the best skills the nuns taught me. Now it is obsolete.

All my Halloween candy is ready. I taped on the pencils last night. I also filled a few small brown bags with a Halloween pencil, eraser and small pencil sharpener. The bags are my back up in case I run out of candy or, more likely, I decide to save a few bars for myself. All the Snickers are gone, all five of them, but there are still Milky Ways.

When I was a kid, I don’t think my parents ever watched the news. My father read the newspaper, the Boston American. My mother did the crossword puzzle. I do both, but I read the Boston Globe. I also read the Cape Cod Times. Some people are amazed I still read an actual paper. My day always starts with two papers and two cups of coffee. It is a ritual.

It’s raining, loudly right now. It will rain all day, but the storm clouds are lighter than I expected. It is also warmer than I expected at 51°. My deck and lawn are covered with leaves. When I look out the back window, I can see the leaves being tapped by the rain. I can hear the rain on my window.

My sister in Colorado has a foot of snow, and it is still snowing. It is freezing at 31°. She said she had expected snow but not enough to see her entire world buried. She is happy to be home, warm and cozy.

The new water heater will be installed tomorrow. There was a leak in the back which caused the flooding. The plumber emptied the heater before he left, no hot water until Monday. I suppose I could always heat water and take a bucket bath. I am proficient at bucket baths, even with half full buckets. That was one of the unexpected talents I brought back with me from Ghana.

I’m going to get ready for Tuesday. I have chocolate bars and Halloween pencils. I’m going to tape a pencil onto each candy bar, a double treat.

On Halloween I’ll be glued to TCM. The schedule of films is amazing. It includes all of the classics starting with The Mummy at 10am and ending at 5am with The Bride of Frankenstein. Looks like an all nighter, a right night.

When I was a kid, I never saw a ghost or a goblin, but I believed they existed, and Halloween was their special night. Walking home in the dark after a long night of trick or treating I was alert, just in case. A loud noise or even worse, footsteps, would have sent me running. I would not have looked back but would have kept running at breakneck speed while protecting my candy bag the whole way.

I do remember being scared one night but not on Halloween. My parents had gone grocery shopping. We, my brother and I, were home alone with each other. I was watching television in the living room when I heard a noise, a rapping at the window. I looked out and saw nothing, but I heard more rapping a short time later. Thoughts of the man with the hook ran through my mind. I was scared. I locked the door and we hid. Next we heard knocking at the front door then we heard the door being opened. The lock had been breached. We thought death and mutilation were imminent. We didn’t dare move. The next sound we heard was my father laughing. He had been the intruder. He thought it was funny. We didn’t see the humor.

Today will be in the 70’s. Tomorrow will be a quick return to fall with rain and a temperature in the 50’s which is about right for this time of year. My sister in Colorado is already a season ahead of us. She has welcomed, says I with tongue in cheek, winter with a temperature in the bottom of the 30’s and with snow expected.

Yesterday I heard a beeping, three short beeps over and over. I went hunting for the source so I went down cellar where I found no beeper but I found water, so much water. The cellar is flooded on one side, and the water is starting to move to the other side. I checked my water heater as that has to be the source of the water. It is all rusted on the bottom. I wrote a message on Facebook to Kevin Sullivan, one of my favorite former students, who is the president of Ready Rooter. Someone is coming today. I just hope they find the source of that beeping. It is driving me insane. I expect I’ll be down the cellar for days sweeping out the water and drying that side. The sloth in me is screaming in horror.

When I lived in Ghana, I had a stove and a refrigerator. I seldom used the stove as it needed gas which my town didn’t have. I had to go 100 miles each way to fill the canister. My refrigerator always worked. I used to put my meat from the market in the freezer. Sometimes it turned green anyway. I also kept water bottles in the freezer. Nothing was better on a hot dry season day than the coldest water. I had no water heater. I always had to take a cold water shower except for the start of my shower when the still water in the pipe had been warmed by the sun. I learned to take really quick showers but I was always refreshed anyway.

I haven’t been to a movie theater in forever, sorry for the hyperbole but it just seems that way; however, I have watched many movies on TV. This week I watched mostly black and white movies. I even watched Godzilla, the original. Rodan is next. It has been like a trip to my childhood where every Saturday I used to watch Creature Double Feature. One of my all time favorites is Them. I can’t remember how many times I have seen it, but I know it is plenty as I can say some of the dialogue along with the characters. I shout Them with the little girl, the survivor, in the same horrific voice. I think I’m believable.

Today is another lovely day and already 71°. The sun and clouds will take turns. Right now it is cloudy. I have an empty dance card, but I do have a few things to do around the house. I need to replace the lights on the fence and add books to my little library. Today is a wonderful day to be outside.

When I was a kid, the nuns at my school used to tell us to share our desk chairs with our guardian angels. Some of my classmates would slide slide over to one side of their chairs. I never did. I was a bit of a doubter, not at the existence of angels but that they needed a chair. I always figured mine just flew or hovered along side of me.

Popcorn balls on Halloween were my least favorite. They were usually wrapped with colored cellophane to which they usually stuck. I never ate mine. I always threw them away. One time, though, I found a penny shoved into the popcorn ball. In the scheme of things pennies don’t seem like much, but in my day, a penny was worth a piece of candy. That was a wealth of sorts.

I remember hounding my mother on Halloween to let us loose. We’d watch out the windows hoping to see a trick or treater so we could point the kid out to my mother. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn’t. Once we were set free, we’d start in the neighborhood first then move out to other neighborhoods. We had favorite houses which we never missed. We’d stay out as late as we could. It was time to walk home when the lit houselights were fewer and darkened house were more common. I remember walking home down Pomeworth Street, a deserted Pomeworth Street. We could hear our footsteps on the sidewalk. The only lights came from the streetlights. We were the only walkers on the street. Our bags were heavy, filled with candy. The night had been a success.