The morning is lovely. It is already 50°. The air is still. The sky is clear blue, and the sun is bright, strong. As for today, I have no plans. My dance card is empty. I don’t even have any chores. My house is clean, and, ta da, my laundry is done.

When I was a kid, my mother had the wringer type washing machine. It was in the cellar. She had no dryer. She hung the laundry on the line in the backyard. I remember winter wash on the line. It froze straight out. On warmer days, I remember seeing my sisters walking between the white sheets, and I can still hear my mother yelling.

My mother always used the same big pan to cook turkey. It was blue with small white dots. I can close my eyes and see the browning bird in that pan on the oven rack. I remember my mother pulling out the rack to baste the bird. She always ate a small piece of the crusted stuffing.

I still have friends from my childhood. They live in my old town. We go back as far back as grammar school. One friend and I went to the same grammar school, high school and college. We don’t see each other often, my old friends and I, but that’s okay between friends. Distance in time means little.

I still have a pair of saddle shoes. I found them in a small shoe store piled with shoe boxes on every wall. The owner was an old man who knew exactly what was in every box. In Harry Potter, Mr. Olivander’s wand store reminded me of that shoe store.

My father used to tell us scary stories. He introduced us to the man with the hook. In my dad’s story, a couple was sitting in their car in the woods when they heard on the radio that a patient with a hook had escaped from a hospital. He never told us why the couple was in the woods or that the hook man had escaped from a mental hospital. He told us out the couple got scared by the news and left. When they got home, they found the hook was hanging from the door handle of their car. That story scared the heck out of me.

Today is a lovely day. The sun is bright in a deep blue sky, but clouds are predicted for later. The high will be 55°. Last night it rained for a short while and got chilly from the dampness. That’s the way it is this time of year: a warmish day and a chilly night.

The garden is in spring mode. The tips of the daylilies are taller. The dafs are closer to blooming. Even the pebbly looking tops of the purple hyacinths have appeared in the front garden. Every day we’re closer to a riot of colors, to sweeter smelling air.

Today will be a quiet day, a stay at home day. I have a couple of chores to ignore. I have a new book to read. Nothing else needs my attention.

Sunday mornings remind me of my dad. He was up early to go to mass as he was an usher, the basket passer. I used to go with him sometimes. He’d smile at me when I’d throw my dime into his basket. We’d go get donuts after mass. When I was older and lived on the cape, I’d visit for the weekend. My dad would make breakfast. He always used the cast iron frying pan. He always made fried eggs, easy over, and crispy bacon.

In Ghana, every place you stay gives you breakfast. Usually it is eggs, toast and bad coffee. Sometimes they’d be a bowl of fruit and maybe porridge. In the Peace Corps hostel, we got corn flakes first. In Bolga, it was the usual. Only one place actually served real coffee and milk. That was in Beyin on the coast at the far western side of Ghana, near the border with Cote d’Ivoire. The hotel was right on the water. Sand and palm trees were all that was between my room and the ocean. The owner used a French press. Milk was in a small pitcher. I was in heaven.