I am testy. Small things which I usually don’t notice or just ignore have me yelling, bats in the belfry crazy yelling. The dogs run away. It’s the weather. I am so tired of clouds. I can deal with the cold by dressing accordingly, but I can’t take any more cloudy days. Oh sun, where art thou?

When I was a kid, I either went to the early mass with my father, the usher, or the late mass by myself or with my brother. It was the Latin mass. The church was crowded every Sunday, both the church upstairs and the smaller one downstairs. Back then, women had to wear dresses or skirts. Women also had to wear hats. I was never one for hats so I wore a mantilla, a lace head covering, I could stash in my pocket. I’d sit upstairs in the last row, all the easier to escape. Once I heard go in peace, I was out the door. 

I thought a nickel or a dime was wealth. Most times I’d head for the white store to spend it. Their penny candy was in rows in a wooden case with a glass front. Choosing penny candy took time. Mostly I wanted candy with a long life. I liked Fire Balls or chewy candies that hurt your teeth like Banana Splits and Mint Juleps. Sometimes I’d buy a Bull’s Eyes. I’d unwrap the caramel and eat it first. The best part, the white middle, I’d save for last. 

I’d sometimes take hidden candy to school. I always choose candies with no wrappers. That was the key to a successful sneaky candy move. Every day, a metal lunchbox filled with candy bars was delivered to each classroom. They were nickel bars. I was partial to Welch’s fudge bar covered in chocolate. 

My dance card now has a few entries, all ukulele.

Today is a perfect day to see the world through windows. It is only 32°, the high for the day. A bit ago we had a snow shower which left a light coating of snow on the tops of branches and along the sides of the road. The snow showers will be around all day. 

Though my jigsaw puzzle, on the table here in the den, isn’t finished, I can see they’ll be a couple of missing pieces. I know we’ll all accuse Nala, my felonious dog, but we’d be wrong. I caught Henry with a piece of the puzzle sticking out of his mouth as he was trying to sneak out of the room with his booty, his loot. I yelled. He dropped it. Now I’m confused. 

When I was a kid, I went to the parish grammar school, grades one through eight, where I had nuns every other year because there were too many of us and too few of them. Every grade had two classes. Some years there were as many as 40 of us in one class. It was never chaotic. Most of us were a bit afraid of the nuns with their black habits and their white wimples. One of the schoolyard topics of conversation was those wimples. We wondered what their hair looked like underneath. How short was it? What color was it? Once in a while we’d see a tiny line of hair along the wimple’s edges.

I remember the nuns used to keep their handkerchiefs under their habits on their wrists. They wore huge rosaries, our early warning systems. You could hear the click of the beads as the nuns got closer. We learned over time to be covert. 

I remember learning to write. It seems just about every classroom had the alphabet in white letters on black cardboard across the tops of the blackboards. Each card had the cursive upper and lower case of one letter. We’d practice writing the letters during penmanship, a now and then class. We learned Palmer Method. We had writing drills. I was great with the up and down lines but not so great on the circles. Mine were messy. We’d practice one letter over and over. I remember a page filled with upper case A’s. The nun would wander the aisles checking on our work and commenting on our attempts. I never did great, no penmanship awards. My writing now is a combination of cursive and block lettering. 

I still have an empty dance card.