Keep the Coffee Comimg

We still have clouds. It is still in the low 60’s. It is a damp, dark morning. The weather forecast says it will be a partly cloudy day, but I think partly is a misnomer. The sky is socked in leaving no room for the sun.

Yesterday, I was so involved with bemoaning the day I missed welcoming the first day of fall, my favorite season. Today I’ll remedy that.

I noticed that some leaves on the backyard trees are turning color, a perfect welcome for fall. Some leaves are yellow. Other leaves are red. The deck is covered in yellow leaves blown by the heavy winds. The blanket of leaves in the backyard is getting taller. I can hear Nala doing her zoomies. The leaves crunch under her paws as she runs. That sound, that crunching sound of the leaves, is bright in my memory drawers and part of the melody of fall. I remember walking to school on sidewalks covered in the red leaves of the maple trees. The leaves crunched under my feet the whole walk to school.

I remember the first cold mornings of fall. The light had a shimmer to it. Everything looked brighter in the clear air. I bundled by wearing a sweater under my jacket. The day would warm as the sun rose higher.

I always think of soup this time of year. The most perfect lunch was tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. My mother would put the soup into the pan and fill the can with milk, not water, then add it to the pan. That made for the thickest, creamiest tomato soup. The cheese was always yellow American cheese. In the frying pan, the bread got deep brown and the cheese melted, even oozing a bit from the sandwich. I always dipped the sandwich into the soup. It was the perfect bite.

I have a couple of errands. I have to open a new checking account and get another ATM card so I can get some money. The dollar I have won’t go far. I can’t even buy a Snickers. I also need to stop at Agway for dry dog food, bird seed and a mum for my front steps. Today is the only open day for errands as I have a uke event every day for the rest of the week.

We’re coming into cocoa weather.

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.