Last night it rained. I never heard it so I was surprised to find everything still a bit wet this morning. The sun keeps trying to break through the clouds but hasn’t quite made it. It is a warm day, in the mid 40’s. Today is a baking day for me.

I have a memory of a day much like today, a warm, cloudy day, the day before Christmas. I think I was nine or ten. My mother sent me on an errand to the white store probably for milk or bread, staples we seem to run out of often. I could barely believe she expected me to do a plain, every day errand on Christmas Eve, but she did. I took my bike out of the cellar, walked it around front and then rode down my father’s grassy hill, the one we were never to ride down but the one we always did. I remember riding around the corner, passing the brick house, stopping at the next corner to check for cars then pedaling as fast as I could straight away on the next street and around a corner to the stop at Spring Street to check for cars all the while muttering and   bemoaning my fate. I made that trip to the white store so often I can still see the streets and the houses in my mind’s eye. There were two odd houses. One was the brick house near my street and the other was a ranch squeezed on a small lot among houses built in the 40’s. It always looked out-of-place. I remember putting the package in the front basket of my bike and using one hand to hold it so it wouldn’t bounce out at bumps in the road. My other hand was steering. The ride home that day seemed endless, far longer than the ride to get there. I think it was the bumps and the package and the day before Christmas.