Keep the Coffee Comimg

Today is a lovely fall day. The air is still. Sun and blue sky are here for the meantime as clouds are predicted for later, but outside is so bright right now that even the brown leaves left on the trees are glistening in the sunlight. It is in the mid-60’s and will stay there most of the day. I was out on the deck earlier. I didn’t even need my sweatshirt.

This morning as I was waiting for my bread to toast I got to wondering. Why do we toast bread for breakfast? Who decided that untoasted bread is not for mornings? I’m sure somewhere on line people have speculated, but I’m not going to look. I like a little mystery.

I remember the first time I voted. I was a senior in college. It was 1968. I had turned twenty-one during the summer, and I had registered to vote right away. I followed the campaigns of both Nixon and Humphrey, but I knew for whom I would cast my vote. My candidate lost. In 1972, my next candidate also lost. I was on a roll, downhill.

During my junior year in college, I used to get up in the early hours on Fridays and go to the wholesale fruit market. I picketed for the grape workers. I remember walking the line one Friday in the rain. I was soaked. A man waiting in his car opened his window and waved at me. I went over. He handed me a rain bonnet, the sort my grandmother wore, and told me to put it on. He said he had a daughter my age.

In the fall of 1968, I went to a George Wallace political rally on Boston Common. I was with 20,000 of my closest friends. To say the crowd was unfriendly is almost polite. He raged against liberals. He said the only four letter words hippies didn’t know were work and soap. “They’re building a bridge over the Potomac for all the white liberals fleeing to Virginia,” was one of his memorable quotes.

I will be watching the results though I know some states will take a few days to tabulate ballots; regardless, I’m doing my best. I’ll have my fingers crossed, I’ll knock on wood and throw salt over my shoulder.

The morning is cloudy and chilly. The backyard has bare trees and a deep carpet of dead leaves. The lawn and deck are covered in brown leaves with curled edges. Gone are the glorious colors of fall. Drab winter is making a headway.

Yesterday I waxed the kitchen floor and hall. I dusted the living room. I am exhausted. Housework does not become me. My flamingo is now a turkey. He is wearing a pilgrim hat, a coat with a turkey tail and has a wattle.

My dance card is full this week with 4 uke events and company coming. I have already planned dinner, and I have a dessert to make or even two if I get really ambitious.

Language changes. Words and phrases are added as others disappear and are lost in time. When I was a kid, other kids had cooties. It was one of the worst insults. We even made cootie catchers out of pieces of paper. Cars were parked by Spot Pond for the submarine races. I really believed there were races. I never noticed all the steamed windows, and I doubt I would have known why if I had. We had party poopers and wet rags. We used to cluck at other kids and call them chicken. My father went to the can. My mother used to say everything is copacetic. I knew what a beatnik was because we watched Doobie Gillis. I remember yelling dibs when I wanted to ride shotgun. Don’t have a cow. Don’t be a fink. I wore pedal pushers and guys wore pegged pants. You gave someone the bird.

Lately I have noticed a few new phrases. People don’t die anymore. They are unalive. I’m hearing the phrase I’m not going to lie peppered in conversations. It always seems to come before an opinion. “Do you want to come with?” Dude is now ubiquitous.

I know I’ve told you before about Ghanaian English. It is both colorful and wonderfully descriptive. “ I went to your house and met your absence,” is my all time favorite. I wasn’t home sounds drab in comparison. “I’m going to come,” my students would say as they were leaving my house. They would return. Obroni waaru was loosely translated as dead white man clothes which were sold in the markets and thought to be castoffs or charity contributions.

I will always be a lover of words.