Keep the Coffee Comimg

Right now we have a fall morning chill at 65°, but the day will get warmer and will reach the 70’s. Through the trees in the back yard, I can see blue sky. The sunlight is dappling through the oak leaves. This is a lovely morning.

My father always carried a white handkerchief in his back pocket. In the old days, before we had a dryer, my mother used to iron his handkerchiefs. When I was young, I always gave him new ones for Christmas which I’d buy in a fancy package at the drug store. I remember the nuns too used white handkerchiefs. They used to tuck them under their sleeves at their wrists. A small corner of the white handkerchief usually stuck out for quick retrieval.

I have old fingers. A couple are arthritic which translates into trouble opening some bottle tops, especially the ones where you have to press in each side at the designated marks at the same time then turn the top. I have gotten so frustrated I have thrown the bottle. It travels far. My last resort is usually breaking the top with pliers. I use a fork to pull the sort of key on the tops of dog food cans. That works well. Sometimes, though, I just can’t get the bottles opened. They either sit in the cabinet until their expiration date or they get tossed. Getting old has its challenges.

In grammar school, I wore tie shoes. My mother had taught me how to tie bows when I was around five. My first bows were so loose they fell apart. I’d tie them tighter, and they’d become knots. That was sort of a Goldilocks experience of trying to find just right. It took me a while, but I finally mastered the art of tying bows.

We used to have reading class. We had thick readers with stories followed by questions. The stories were interesting. The questions were chronological and easy to look up if you forgot the answers. We used to get graded on silent reading. I always got an S for satisfactory. I figured if your lips didn’t move or your finger stayed off the text you got that S.

Over the blackboards in most of my grammar school classrooms were two rows of letters. It was the alphabet, A to Z, in cursive. The upper case, capital letters, had their lower case, small letters, right beside them. All the capital letters were fancy, but I thought the weirdest looking letters were Q, X and Z. It was a good thing we didn’t use them often.

Today is quiet, calm. It is a fall day. It is cloudy, dark cloudy, but warm, in the 70’s. Tonight will get down to the 50’s. I’d invent today if it didn’t already exist. The best days don’t have to be sunny.

When I was a kid, I wondered why on Labor Day nobody worked. Even my father stayed home. When I was older, I understood it was a day to honor the American worker, to commemorate the contributions of the labor movement. It was in 1887 when Oregon first celebrated Labor Day. Massachusetts followed that same year. Everything used to be closed on Labor Day. We had a barbecue. Labor Day was, for me, the summer’s last hurrah.

School always started the day after Labor Day. It was the end of freedom. No longer were the days mine. My life became regimented. I got up the same time every school day. My mother was my alarm clock, and she yelled up the stairs to tell us it was time to get up. Breakfast was always ready. I remember the tea pot with the ends of tea bags hanging out of the pot was always on the table. Breakfast was either eggs or cereal. After breakfast I got dressed in my uniform. The same uniform I wore every day. My friend and I walked to school together on the same route every day. We waited in the school yard for the bell. I sat at the same desk day after day. The lessons followed the same order except we had art and music once a week. Lunch followed by recess was the same time every day. When the school bell rang to free us from our chains, our proverbial chains, I ran home at breakneck speed. I changed quickly into my play clothes and ran outside. I didn’t want to miss a minute of my free time, the only free time every day. The street lights came on soon enough.

My dance card has only one listing for the week, my uke lesson on Wednesday. I haven’t left the house or even gotten dressed since Friday. I did do some cleaning. I vacuumed and polished. On my to-do list for today is to fill the bird feeders, change my bed, water the inside plants then take a nap. The sloth in me needs its time.