It is another delightful day, warm in the mid 50’s. The blue sky is striking. The sun is bright. I stood outside on the deck for a while. The dogs were running in the yard. Nala took the lead. I noticed how much trash was in the yard and decided to take my prisoner stick and clean up. I picked up all sorts of trash, compliments of Nala. She had one bread wrapper in her mouth and teased me with it. I filled a bag with trash.

When I was a kid, I remember the trash truck. It was loud. Two trash men hung off the back holding on to their barrels, big plastic, filthy barrels with one hand while holding on to the truck with the other. They’d fill the barrels with trash from the sidewalk barrels then empty the trash into the back of the truck. From the top of the back a presser would slowly drop to the trash and crush it. That was my favorite part.

Yesterday I went to the dump. When I was pressing down the trash in a bag before I left, I slashed my finger, a thumb, on what I figured was the lid from a can. It bled a lot.

My mother colored better than any of us. She could shade the colors so that one crayon was many colors. I was a bit jealous. My colors were always bright, never muted. I got new boxes of crayons every Christmas and most Easters. The number of crayons varied. One box even had a crayon tip sharpener. It looked a lot like a pencil sharpener. We almost never threw a crayon away. The pieces went into a cigar box. The problem was we ripped off the color descriptions when we sharpened. The nuances disappeared. Brick red was just red. Burnt orange was just orange.

I have some boxes I never opened. They are special boxes. One is the last box with some colors soon to be discontinued. Another is a Crayola anniversary box. The last box my mother put in my Christmas stocking has 96 colors and a sharpener. I still have it. Last Christmas my sister gave me a coloring book and crayons. The title of the coloring book is My Coloring Book, Ghana. It has cute animals, African masks, a map of Ghana divided into regions and the Ghanaian flag. On the opposite side of the drawing is place to write the date of completion. On the back cover it says, “For children under 8.”

The paper isn’t published on Saturdays. My morning routine is discombobulated. I wander the house. I wonder what is happening in the world. I long for my puzzles and the comics. I know I can read the paper on-line, but that just doesn’t feel right. I need ink on my fingers. My day has gone awry.

The morning is beautiful, a little chilly but chilly is spring on Cape Cod. My den window gives me a small view of the world, my world anyway. I see clouds and I see sun. Everything is still. It is in the high 40’s where it will stay all day. The dogs have been out longer than usual. They are late for their morning naps. Their day has gone awry.

I was daydreaming this morning. What if I had three wishes? What would they be? Wishing for money would be easy, but I wouldn’t waste a wish on it. I’d wish to go back in time to relive a day or a night, not something huge but something shiny in my memory drawers. One of them would be a Saturday night in my parents’ kitchen. We’d all be at the table playing cards. My Uncle Jack is there, as he was so many Saturday nights. The air is smoky and the back door is open hoping to draw the smoke. On the counter is a temporary bar. Whoever gets up is the bartender. We’re playing high-low Jack. My father won the bid. He was a bid fiend. Toward the end of the game someone dropped a trump card, and he lost the hand, one he needed desperately. He started foaming at the mouth. He fell off the bench on his back. He was on the floor still holding his cards and yelling. We were all laughing so hard he stayed on the floor for a bit. Every time I remember I laugh.

My second wish would be to relive the trip to Belgium and the Netherlands with my parents and my sister Sheila. We laughed so many times. We stopped in a restaurant for lunch or dinner. I don’t remember. My mother and sister went to the bathroom. My father and I were reading the map figuring our next route. All of a sudden flames came through the middle of the map from the candle on the table we had paid no attention to. The crowd roared laughing. My mother and sister came back to the table and wanted to know why everyone was laughing. My father held up the map. That trip was filled with laughter.

My last wish would any evening in Bolga with my friends Bill and Peg. We ate dinner together every night. We laughed and chatted about our day, about going to the market or the meat store or about something one of our students said. We never tired of each other. After dinner we played games. We did the alphabet game with initials to which we had to attach a person’s name. We challenged each other with paddle ball, the wooden paddle with the red ball attached to the paddle with an elastic. It had come in one of the packages from my mother. We played so many times until the elastic broke. We played Password, another gift from my mother, so many times we had the cards memorized. When we challenged other people, we never lost, except on purpose.

This is the longest Coffee I have ever written, but I couldn’t stop. My muse was frenzied. My fingers flew. I was caught in my own memories. My day has no longer gone awry. It is a special day!