When I woke up, it was closer to afternoon than morning. I suspect it was the combination of pills I’m taking for my back. Gracie and Fern were still with me, both asleep. I imagine they too had excuses for sleeping so late, but I have no idea what they are. They don’t share. It took me a while to get out of bed, but I yelped less than yesterday. I guess that’s a barometer of sorts for my back getting better.

The sun is out and the sounds of drips are in stereo from the front and back of my house. Mostly they are falling from the roof onto the deck. The snow is quickly melting. I can see grass again and the streets are perfectly clear. The sky has more blue than it has clouds so I’m thinking it’s a lovely day. I filled the bird feeders yesterday, and they are now fully occupied. The woodpecker seems to be enjoying the new suet which is a far better alternative to the shingles on my house he was pecking yesterday.

The other day I thought of Mrs. McGaffigan. She used to live in the huge house on the corner at the bottom of my street. She was the other half of our party line. My brother and I used to try to listen to her conversations, but we usually giggled and got caught. She was never happy about eavesdropping and was brusque about our hanging up right away. We usually did but once in a while we only pretended so we could keep listening. I remember picking up the phone to make a call and hearing Mrs. McGaffigan. She’d tell me to hang up as she was already on the line as if I couldn’t hear her. I don’t remember exactly how we knew which calls were ours, but it had something to do with the ringing. Those were the days of clunky black phones and letters as part of the phone numbers.

I remember my mother making sure I had a dime when I went out with friends in case I needed to call. Phone booths were everywhere. I never walked by one without checking the coin slot. Sometimes I’d get lucky and find a dime. In the rain, a phone booth was a great place to wait out the storm for a while. Two and sometimes three of us would jam ourselves inside. We’d be dry but none of us could move. A phone booth always looked kind of cool in the dark when the light went on as you shut the door. I didn’t like it when the booths started to disappear and the phones with small shelves took their places. Now, though, pay phones have pretty much disappeared, and soon enough no one will even remember they existed.

I have this image. It’s a room filled with all the stuff from my childhood, like phone booths, rabbit ears, skate keys and bottle tops on shoe bottoms, and one by one a piece disappears and no one notices.