Today would be a far better April day. It is damp, cloudy and cold. The morning has been slow. I hadn’t the incentive or the energy to do anything. The house was cold. I was cold. I didn’t turn on the heat. It is May. I sit fine but getting up is painful. I banged my cut thumb. I yelped. It hurt. I keep finding mice. I think there is a never ending supply under the bed in Jack’s room. Yesterday I vacuumed the whole downstairs and swept the kitchen. It was exhausting.

I’m thinking I should stop listing my ills and my complaints. I figure you’ve already figured out my mood. It perfectly matches the day. I even screamed a couple of times. Nala cocked her head, looked at me and wagged her tail, her way of telling me she cares. Henry watched with what I think was a look of concern.

I have no real heavy chores for today. I’m going to clean the silver utensils on the butcher’s block, maybe a silly task but one I can do sitting down and can see the end result, the beauty of the old silver filagree. I’m going to change my bed and take a shower.

The sun is breaking through the clouds. I decided to turn on the heat. I had no reason other than inviting misery to stay cold. I had another cup of coffee and toast with fig jam. I have decided to turn around the day.

When I first finished training and went to live at my school in Ghana, it was quite the transition. I had lost the friends I had made and the comfort of a shared experience. We all gone our separate ways. I was living alone for the first time. I did not teach well. I spoke too quickly with an American accent. I was lonely. I wrote letters describing my life, all I was seeing, the wonder of Ghana and how every day was amazing. I stayed away from how I was feeling only because I didn’t want to stress out my parents. I then started to write letters about how I really felt, but I tore them up when I was finished. They gave me a release. I started to figure out teaching. I got good at it. I got busy. I loved waking up every morning to a new day.

Today Coffee is the letters I tore up. I already feel better. Thanks for listening, sort of listening!

Today is Mother’s Day. It is the day I honor my mother and my memories of her. I put my heart into this posting so every year I post basically this same entry with only a few little changes.

My mother was amazing. She was generous, fun to be with and was the perfect martyr when she needed to be, a skill I think most mothers have. It was her tone of voice so filled with pain that caused our guilt to well to the surface. “I’ll do it myself,” she’d say. We’d scurry to do whatever she wanted.

My sisters and I laugh often about the curses she inflicted on us: the love of everything Christmas and never thinking you have enough presents for everyone, giving Easter baskets overflowing with candy and fun toys and surprising people with a gift just because.

My mother had a generosity of spirit. She was funny and smart and the belle of every ball. She always had music going in the kitchen as she worked so she could sing along. She played Frank and Tony and Johnny and from her I learned the old songs. My mother drew all the relatives to her, and her house was filled. My cousins visited often. She was their favorite aunty. My mother loved to play Big Boggle, and we’d sit for hours at the kitchen table and play so many games we’d lose track of the time. Christmas was always amazing, and she passed this love to all of us. We traveled together, she and I, and my mother was game for anything. I remember Italy and my mother and me after dinner at the hotel bar where she’d enjoy her cognac. She never had it any other time, but we’re on vacation she said and anything goes. I talked to her just about every day, as did my sisters. I loved it when she came to visit. We’d shop, have dinner out then play games at night. I always waited on her when she was here. I figured it was the least I could do.

My mother loved extreme weather shows, TV judges and crime. She never missed Judge Judy. She also liked quiz shows and she and I used to play Jeopardy together on the phone at night. She always had a crossword puzzle book with a pen inside on the table beside her chair, and I used to try to fill in some of the blanks. On the dining room table was often a jigsaw puzzle, and we all stopped to add pieces on the way to the kitchen. My mother loved a good time.

She did get feisty, and I remember flying slippers aimed at my head when I was a kid and one time a dictionary, a big dictionary was thrown which luckily missed though the binding broke. I pointed that out to her and that made her madder. She expertly used mother’s guilt on us, her poor victims. We sometimes drove her crazy, and she let us know, none too quietly. We never argued over politics. She kept her opinions close. We sometimes argued over other things, but the arguments never lasted long.

Even after all this time, I still think to reach for the phone to call my mother when I see something interesting or have a question I know only she can answer, but then in a split second I remember. When I woke up this morning, my first thought was of her, and how much she is missed. No one ever told me how hard it would be.