Rain, rain go away, come again another day or another week or another month. It started raining over the weekend and continues today. The weather report predicts rain every day until Monday. My neighbor is building an ark in her backyard. I can hear the hammering. I haven’t yet found the invitation for me and the beasties so I’ll just put on my boots, slog through the water and hope for the best. The dogs are sleeping on the couch. They have generously given me some of the middle cushion.

When I was growing up, my hometown was small. I swear my father knew everyone. Saturdays were his chore days, but first he always went uptown to do his errands. He wore white shirts to work every day. The collars were stiff with starch. My mother washed, ironed and put away his laundry but not his shirts. Those went to the Chinese laundry. I’d sometimes go with him. The laundry building was small. It was always thick with humidity from the giant iron at the front of the building. I could see the steam. Most of the clean laundry was folded and wrapped in brown paper. Next, my father stopped for a trim at the barber shop. Hanging outside the store was a small striped barber pole. I sat by the front window reading magazines. There were only two chairs in the small barber shop. Piles of hair were in the corners waiting to be swept. My father’s last stop was to his friend’s drug store. Uptown had many drug stores. His friend’s store was small. It had three stools at a tiny fountain. In the back was the pharmacy. Mr. Pullo was the owner and pharmacist. He always wore a white jacket like Ben Casey wore. I’d sit at the fountain and drink a vanilla Coke while my father visited his friend. When my father was finished visiting, we headed home.

When I was in Ghana, one of my friends was leaving to go home early, before the end of our second year. His school was on strike. Friends and I were in Accra, the capital, as it was a school holiday week. We decided to go out for drinks with him to say goodbye. Back then, expensive hotels were along the airport road. We chose to go to one of the older hotels. It reminded me of pictures I had seen of hotels in old movies in places like Hong Kong. We sat in what was a sunroom. It had wallpaper with green ferns and potted tropical plants placed about the room. The furniture was white wicker. Each piece of furniture had comfy cushions covered in the same fabric. We chuckled a bit as were definitely out of element. The waiter carried a silver tray. He was dressed in black pants and a white shirt with a bow tie. He was from an old movie. We stayed for a few drinks. That was one of the strangest experiences I had in Ghana. It was a step back in time to when Ghana was still a British Crown colony, and the British were given preferential treatment. If it had been a time travel movie, maybe even a Twilight Zone episode, I’d walk out the door and find myself forward in time to my Ghana.

I woke up to rain. It was heavy at times then stopped. The sun came out but the clouds returned. It is a warm day at 55°. Light rain is predicted.

Everywhere I walk in this house clumps of dust mixed with dog hair fly in front of me. I need to clean, but my sloth holds sway. I’ve decided I want the same deal as the Grimm shoemaker. He had no money and no customers and only enough leather for one pair of shoes. He left the shoe pieces on his workbench and went to bed. He figured he’d finish in the morning. When he woke up, the pieces had been sewn into a beautiful pair of shoes. They sold right away, and he was able to buy more leather. He left those pieces. They too were made into shoes, beautiful shoes. The next night he and his wife hid and watched as two elves stitched the leather and made shoes. Those sold at a great price. There is more but not much more to the story. I’m thinking I should leave the vacuum, the polish and dust cloths out. Maybe when I wake up, the house will be clean.

Mrs. McGaffigan lived in the big house on the bottom corner of my street. We shared a party line. We each had separate rings so we knew to whom the call was directed. The phone had no dial My brother and I used to listen to her. We’d pick up the handset and listen. We tried not to breathe but she’d hear us and yell. We’d put the handset right down and laugh. We got a rotary phone. No longer could we be entertained by Mrs. McGaffigan.

When I was in the first grade, I learned to print. I was taught small letters and capital letters. I always used a pencil because of the eraser. Penmanship was one of our subjects and was listed on the report card. We either got an S for satisfactory, an NI for needs improvements or a U for unsatisfactory. It was in the second grade when we started to learn cursive. First we practiced writing exercises. We had to draw things like interlocking circles and straight up lines in a slant. My circles were never good. They were sort of short and long in the same line. I remember my hand rested on the paper and the side of my hand blurred the letters. Cursive wasn’t easy. We had a card of each letter around the outside of the black board. The card had the capital letter and the small letter. We practiced during penmanship. By the third grade, we never used printed letters again.

When I was in the ninth grade, I had to learn to print all over again. We all took the national Latin exam and only printing was allowed. I loved the irony.