This morning I got rained on. The rain lasted as long as it took me to get the paper and yesterday’s mail, but since then, the rain has started again, and it is supposed to rain most of the day. Add 55˚to the mix, and it is an ugly day, a sweatshirt day, a good day to be home.

Yesterday I mortgaged my house to buy my dump sticker. Okay, I am exaggerating, but I did pay $190.00 for the privilege of dumping my own trash. That is on my dance card for tomorrow.

When I was a kid, my mother didn’t drive. She’d walk uptown pushing my sister in the baby carriage while my other sister walked beside her holding on to the carriage. My mother Grocery Shopped on Friday nights when my father could drive her to and from the store, but after we moved to the cape, my mother learned to drive as everything was too far way for walking. Later, when she had her own car, she had a sense of freedom she’d never had before. She grocery shopped any day she wanted.

I haven’t been back to my hometown in a long while. But when I go back, I always drive by the duplex on the hill where we Lived for so long. Other than this house, it is where I’ve lived the longest. Even now, years and years away, I still close my eyes and pull from my memory drawer the inside of the house. I can see the green entry way where the desk stood. The living room had a couch and chair, a table by the picture window and the TV in the corner. There were two closets, one in the living room and one in the tiniest of halls, barely a hall at all. It stood opposite the door to the cellar. The kitchen too was small and the table and chairs were in the corner near the back door. Upstairs were three bedrooms and the bathroom. My bedroom was on the left, my parents’ room was on the right of the staircase and my brother’s room faced the hall. The bathroom was next to my room. We didn’t have a shower. I remember the hamper was in the hall across from the bathroom.

I am always astounded by what I find in my memory drawers. My childhood is there in the back drawers. All the places where we lived are there, even the one in South Boston where we lived until I was five. I find joy and sorrow in the drawers, in the memories. I am thankful for both.