The morning is beautiful. The sky is cloudless, the air still and the sun is glint your eyes bright, but it is, after all, winter. The temperature is 38° but, in the scheme of things, it is warm or at least warmer than it has been. Snow is still covering lawns. It is crunchy snow, noisy snow. It sort of squeaks when you walk on it.

I really enjoyed my breakfast this morning. My coffee is from Nicaragua. I savored every sip. I had an English muffin. On it, I had a bit of butter and then a slathering of fig jam. Sadly, it was the last of my fig jam. I ate it slowly. The dogs did not even get a taste. I know you’ll find this unbelievable, but Nala stole something this morning. I know because I heard the noise of something falling on the kitchen floor. I ran to check. Nala grabbed whatever was on the floor and ran out the dog door. I didn’t have shoes on so I couldn’t follow. I did watch her run to the yard, drop something to the ground then look at me standing at the door. I think it was a look of defiance, an I won you lost sort of look.

My dance card is top heavy with uke events. Already I have had my lesson, practice and two concerts, one on Sunday and one yesterday. I have another concert today and one tomorrow. It is still Motown. I feel as if I am a throwback to the Supremes. I wish I had a sparkly long dress and the right moves.

The town where I grew up had a slew of drug stores, three in the square and two more off the square. My favorite was the Middlesex Drug Store. It was the biggest and the fanciest drug store in town. It sat in the middle of the square. The soda fountain had a marble top and stools which spun. A Coke A Cola was made at the fountain. I remember watching the soda jerk filling the glass with syrup and carbonated water. I always got a splash of vanilla. I tried cherry once but decided to stay with vanilla. I used to do some Christmas shopping at that drug store. I think it was always where I bought my father’s white handkerchiefs and perfume for my mother in a fancy bottle with a tassel around the cover.

The animals are all asleep. Henry is on his side of the couch, and Nala is right behind me with her head resting on my back. Jack is upstairs. He likes to sleep in front of the vent. I have no illusions about my spot in the hierarchy of the house. I am on the bottom. Both Nala and Henry take turns on the top. I never win.

We still have clouds, and we still have temperatures in the 30’s. This is only February. The winter with its cold, snowy days still stretches in front of us, but winter is losing its grip. The 40’s feel temperate. Since the winter solstice, we have gained sunlight. The sun hangs around three minutes more a day this month.

My grandmother was always old to me. She wore flowered dresses and clunky shoes. She never once wore a pair of pants. She pulled her wire basket behind her to the First National. It was just up the street from where she lived. My grandparents had what was then a traditional marriage. She was in charge of the house, of cleaning and cooking and washing and such. My grandfather handled the money, the shoveling, the driving. They lived in the same town we did, but we seldom saw them. Only my father visited, mostly on Saturdays. Years later, my grandmother lived in what my father called wrinkle city, apartments for the elderly. Once in a while, he’d coerce me to go with him. I did.

I remember how disappointed my father was when he realized the eggs on the table for breakfast were hard boiled. We, my parents, my sister and I, were in the Netherlands at a small hotel right beside a river dike and were having breakfast. My father wanted fried eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast. Instead, he got hard boiled eggs, fresh bread, different cheeses and deli meats. He kept complaining that this was not breakfast food. It was lunch. He made do but was not happy. That happened many times as we traveled through Europe. Finally, in London, we had breakfast, my father’s definition of breakfast. We had fried eggs, thick slices of back bacon and toast. I passed on the baked beans. My father was in his element.

In Ghana, for the Ghanaians, breakfast was no different than the other two meals. In my town it was t-zed, tuo and zaafi, and soup. The t-zed was made with millet flour. It was a glob. You pulled off a piece and dipped it in the soup. You ate with your right hand. I sometimes had it for supper, never breakfast. In the morning, I had coffee, fried eggs and toast. The eggs were fried in groundnut (peanut) oil. They were the best tasting eggs. In the Peace Corps hostel in Accra, for breakfast, cereal was offered first then the eggs and bacon. I have a weird memory of eating there. I remember the dishes were red or green or a gold yellow. They were unbreakable, sort of a combination of rubber and plastic. They had scratch marks from the cutlery. They were served already plated.

The reason breakfast came to mind today was I was hungry and have no eggs. I heated chili soup instead. I ate it with Saltines. My father would have been horrified.