The morning is chilly, drab and damp. I’m wearing a sweatshirt and thinking about socks as my feet are cold. I should have known the weather would turn as soon as I took the comforter off my bed. This weather will be hanging around through the weekend so I might as well pull out the comforter and put it back on the bed. I had such high hopes when I stored it. Yesterday I got outside as far as the deck. I made my bed, my sole accomplishment of the day, and went through cooking magazines and cut out recipes. I also browsed catalogues and dog-eared a few pages which had items I’d like to buy. It was a good day.

When I was a kid, around this time in June, we’d have final exams then we’d spend the next few days cleaning out our desks and packing away the classroom. It was always the best time of the year. We could chat all we wanted, and we did no schoolwork. Learning had ended. Our last day of school was always a half day. It was the day we got our report cards. The nun would call us to her desk one by one. None of us looked at the cards until we got back to our desks where we always looked on the back first. The bottom of the back was where it said Promoted To. We didn’t care about grades or deportment. We just wanted the next number in succession. I remember running home that last day with a few papers and my report card in hand. I’d yell to my mother I got promoted. That always seemed the most important part.

My sister who is five years younger than I wasn’t all that keen on being in school. She’d ask to go to the bathroom or the cloak room then go straight out the door and walk home. My other sister, too young for school, would tell my mother, “Sheila’s coming up the hill.” My mother couldn’t drive in those days so she walked Sheila back to school with my youngest sister in tow. The next time it happened I got sent to get her. I never minded. It meant I could leave school, take a casual walk home then walk back to school with Sheila. The nuns figured out the answer to Sheila’s escapes: they sent a guard with her whenever she left the room. That put an end to her walks home and my freedom even if was a little while.