The day is dark, and it is already raining though only a little rain so far, a spitting rain. The morning is warmish at 67°. The air is still. I’m staying home all day. I have a few things I can do around the house, but I’m waffling between being a sloth and being productive.

When I was a kid, the future was tomorrow except for the countdowns to special days like Christmas and Halloween. I had a regimen every weekday of school and after school play time. I never really complained. It wasn’t as if I had a choice. Besides, I liked school. Saturday was my day. It was anything I wanted it to be. Sunday was family day, staying around the house for Sunday dinner and maybe Sunday visits with family. The weeks were the same, but I was every kid.

I lived in a project, one with duplexes. We all had lawns, backyards and clotheslines. There were kids everywhere. I never really noticed we didn’t have much money. We had everything we needed. We had a few away vacations, but most were daycations to special places like museums and lakes and the beach. We went to the drive-in almost weekly. When I was 15 or 16, we went to Niagara Falls. That was our biggest vacation ever. I still remember my dad talking to a wax figure when he was trying to buy tickets to Madame Tussauds. He asked over and over, more impatient and louder each time. That is one of my favorite Dad stories.

I have fulfilled the childhood promise I made to myself, the one to travel, but my expectations back then were low. Traveling for weeks in South America and living in Africa for over two years never entered my head. I was thinking England. How lucky I have been.

This entry was posted on October 7, 2023 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Musings. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.