Monday Eleven Seven

Humidity 93%, the windows are clouded with condensation as, back on standard Time, Monday comes online an hour later. Six o'clock and the coffee is cold, still sipping on the mug that was hot & black when brewed at three o'clock dark. If as usual, it'll take the mind a few days to get back on the proper Time.

Breakfast: I like cold soup sometimes. My first was cold potato soup at Linda's house in the early 1950s when I was a teenager, eat with a cream soup spoon, properly so Linda's parents could observe that I was an acceptable young Southern gentleman, or sip from a cup or mug. My father couldn't believe I'd eaten and liked cold soup.

Move half a generation into the late 1960s when our neighbors out the back door in Newport, Rhode Island - - Catholic, there were five kids lined up by year, the girl Malinda's age was Edna, and Edna's mom made delicious gazpacho. Charlie Knight was a helicopter pilot, who, from war college, PCS'd to the San Diego as we did and to the same type and class ship as I did. Navy helicopters and U S Marines for the Vietnam War.

Charlie's wife was from Pensacola, which gave us an immediate connection, and I think they'd met when he was in Navy flight school there. We lived at Fort Adams, which was quarters for officer students at the Navy War College. Right on Narragansett Bay and we loved living there even though the apartment was small. We only did it two tours, Yokohama and Newport, but in life I found nothing ever to match or equal the neighborly warmth and friendship of living in Navy quarters among strangers who instantly were ready made friends. Part of it was the commonality, and maybe the uniform. The days were good. Maybe the only better Time in my life was our years in the rectory in Apalachicola.

But cold soup. If there was leftover oyster stew, the next morning I might dip out a mug and enjoy that cold and buttery creamy on the lips and tongue. This morning was similar. For Sunday dinner I'd poured a pint of oysters, with all the liquid, into a pan and heated them until cooked, then poured in the quart of portobello mushroom soup. Heated it up as leftovers for supper, clipping in some pork and chicken, and sprinkling lots of curry powder, and a dollop of plain Greek-style yogurt. This morning for breakfast, the remnant filled a large mug for icy cold sipping curry soup deliciousness, and a cream soup spoon to enjoy the last of the chicken, pork, and oysters at the bottom.

Linda doesn't eat my soups, and even derided this one as "Why is it green?" Sometimes I've cooked my soups, stovetop, beginning with one notion, adding this and that over the course of several days, and the soup assumes personhood, changing color, texture, character and personality as it grows, thicken, thins, and ages. Once in Apalachicola I nursed it along well more than a week, naming it my Living Soup, until near the end no one would eat it but me. I never did manage to get up the squirrel heads for that pot of excellence.

Monday: today's plan involves getting out for an extended errand that will include a stop somewhere for milk for Linda's cereal.

Yesterday was All Saints Sunday at church: with the children Marching in the Saints at the end, it was a riot.

RSF&PTL