Keep the Coffee Comimg

The rain hasn’t stopped, and now there is also a wind. I’m wearing my sweatshirt in the chilly house. I have an empty dance card so I’m going nowhere, not for groceries and not to the dump. The dogs are quickly out and back. I’m watching Godzilla attack Tokyo.

When I was a kid, on Sunday rainy days, we were inside the house. We were many and the house was small. It always felt crowded when we were all there. I’d hang out for a while in the living room reading the Sunday comics and watching the Sunday movies. For some reason I remember Lassie, Come Home. Dinner was usually around two. I think the whole neighborhood had dinner around two. The backyards were empty and no cars drove up the street. After dinner we usually just lazed around. I’d sequester myself in my room with my latest book in hand.

Sometimes we’d go to East Boston in the afternoon to visit my grandparents. Sunday was the traditional day for the whole family to visit. My mother was the third of eight. We had a million cousins. They were all there some Sundays. I remember the younger cousins running up and down the stairs from the first floor to the kitchen below where my mother, my grandmother and the aunts hung out. I remember smoke in the air and spaghetti on the stove. My grandmother always had a hunk of parmesan cheese and a grater on the table. That was when I found out that not all cheese comes sliced in a package. I loved using the grater so much my spaghetti was hidden. The cheese looked like snow on a mountain top.

We’d go home in the early evening just as it was getting dark. My sisters would sometimes fall asleep. I’d look out the window. I remember a ranch house with a huge oxen yoke on the garage. That was the sign we were almost home. The yoke didn’t seem strange back then, but now I wonder. Why in the heck did they have an oxen yoke?