The rain has gone and left us with a damp, cloudy, chilly morning in the 60’s, but the sun might peek through later. The bird feeders need filling and the deck needs clearing. I’ll throw the fallen deck branches into the growing pile I made when I cleared the yard. The deck is covered in acorns. I was thinking maybe I’ll put a few in soil to grow my own oak trees. One can never have enough oak trees. I found a connection between eggs and acorns. If you put water into a bucket until it is about half full, you then put the eggs or the acorns into the water. Discard the ones which float.

My dance card is uke loaded this week. I have practice, a lesson and four concerts, including one on Saturday. I don’t know where I can fit in an afternoon nap.

I’ve always thought of Sunday as a wasted day. When I was a kid, every Sunday morning, I begrudgingly dressed in my church clothes, a skirt and a blouse, and usually walked to mass, the same walk I always took to school. The upstairs of the church is sort of grand. It has a vaulted ceiling, old wooden pews, and when I was a kid, a huge altar by the back wall. I remember the altar boys would go behind the altar and bring out stuff like cruets needed for mass. I wondered if there was a room or just shelves behind it. I never checked. A small altar is on each side of the big altar. I remember one early, dark Christmas morning when the mass was at a side altar. Five or six old ladies and my brother and I were the only people at that mass. In the annals of my mass going, it was my favorite mass, the perfect mass, short with no sermon and no collection. There wasn’t even an altar boy.

At every wedding and funeral in my church, a man called Chewy was in attendance. He probably didn’t know who died or who was getting married, but no one minded him being there. Everyone knew Chewy. My father always stopped to shake his hand and say hi. Chewy was intellectually disabled, what was referred to as retarded back then, but it wasn’t cruelly used to describe Chewy. It was just the language of the times. I remember Chewy usually wore a grey jacket and khaki pants. He waved at the people in the cars passing by the church. I didn’t know anything about Chewy, even his real name. I don’t know how long he was the official greeter.

The rain started yesterday, and it is still raining. It is a heavy rain. I can hear it plinking on the dogs’ outside metal bowl and pounding on the roof and windows. The dogs went out then immediately turned around to come back inside. They are now napping away their trauma. The house is chilly, sweatshirt and socks chilly. It is a perfect day to nestle under a blanket, drink coffee and read.

When I was a kid, today would have been the greatest disappointment. I’d have been stuck with no adventures, with being house bound. My bike would have stayed in the cellar. I’d wind up reading in my room, my refuge, and, in the afternoon, watching Creature Double Feature, the only redeeming piece of the day. Saturday supper was universal, the same all over, hot dogs, beans and brown bread. The hot dogs, covered in mustard and piccalilli, were in a toasted roll. I never ate the beans. I did eat the brown bread slathered in butter. It was the only bread I ever ate which came from a can. I bought a can of it recently. I didn’t like it. I was a little bit sad.

When I was growing up, my town had some factories. I remember the box factory by the railroad tracks. Once in a while, I’d see mostly men sitting outside on the steps smoking. Across from Farm Hill was a chemical factory which I remember and later a pharmaceutical factory, E.L. Patch. I only know about the Patch factory as I have an old postcard of the building. I don’t remember it. The building was beside a different part of the tracks than the box factory. When the trains still ran, I remember seeing train cars parked beside the building. Stoneham was a shoe town. The town seal even has a high top shoe on it. A shoe factory was right below uptown and was still operating when I was a kid, but not anymore. Now it houses condominiums.

I seldom go back to my town, but when I do, I take a nostalgia ride. I ride through the streets which were my walk home from school. I pass the house in the project where we lived before we moved to the cape. I drive by my grammar school, the park where I used to ice skate, the zoo, what once was the dairy farm and through all the other familiar streets which were so important in my life. Sights and sounds jump out of my memory drawers. Time stops, and it is almost as if I were there, and I’m young again.