We had sun then clouds then the sun came back but only for a bit as the clouds right now seem more insistent. The breeze is strong. It is 73° and won’t get much warmer. Nala and Henry are asleep on the couch, their usual morning ritual. I am about to have my second cup of coffee and maybe an English muffin. I have fig jam.

When I was a kid, even common things filled me with awe. Back then I didn’t know the word awe, but I knew the feelings which seemed to defy description. They filled my everywhere. I knew that clouds and stars and the sun and moon sometimes stopped me in my tracks. I’d lie on the grass and watch the clouds. I’d see a dog or a head or a horse and more as the clouds moved. At night I’d check the man in the moon. Many nights his mouth was open as if in surprise. I could see the Milly Way on clear nights when stars filled the sky, and their light made shadows on the ground. Sunsets were orange and red and yellow. The colors filled the whole sky. In the morning the sun slowly rose with more of it appearing as it grew bigger and brighter. Sometimes the sun and moon shared the sky. I imagined their conversations about how everything went as one took over the sky from the other.

When I was older, I got busy. My view of the world shifted, got more grounded but no less wonderful, just different. I was into clothes, though not much, nights out, movies, music and hanging around with friends. They were the best friends. We laughed a lot and found ways to entertain ourselves, to find adventure, to celebrate life. I remember in high school we sneaked picnic food in our school bags to the top floor of the library and ate sitting on the floor surrounded by the stacks of books. We wandered Harvard Square, visited the museums and saw movies at the Brattle Theater. We were explorers.

Since then my life has gone through so many cycles. I could spend days describing Ghana and the wonder of it. I have so many stories about the high school kids I once taught and the ones who got sent to my office. I love all of them.

I am so much older now. I now count my life in filled dance cards. Awe has returned. I pulled my car into a rest area last week so I could watch the sunset. The sky was pink. I stand on the deck and some mornings can smell the ocean. I do nothing some days and love every lazy minute. I can actually play a musical instrument. Life still surprises me.

The day is beautiful. The darkness of yesterday has given way to a bright sun and a blue sky. It is 74°, a perfect temperature. Last night was cool, down to the mid 60’s. I easily fell asleep.

When I was a kid, fall meant darkness came earlier every day. After school there wasn’t much time to play or bike ride or wander a little before the streetlights came on, and we had to go inside to get ready for supper. We’d watch TV while my mother finished getting supper ready. I remember the sound of her mashing the potatoes. The masher would clink when it hit the side of the pan. The hot vegetables were in pans sitting on the stove. They’d be corn or peas or green beans. I remember ground beef in gravy topping the mashed potatoes. That was one of my favorite suppers. I’d mix in the peas. It wasn’t pretty. We’d watch TV after supper. My father always came home late, too late to sit with us at supper. He was a salesman, and his territory was the south shore, a long ride away. In my mind’s eye I see him wearing a top coat and a fedora when he came in the front door.

Because at this time of year the mornings kept the evening chill, my mother would force me to wear a sweater to school because my uniform blouse had short sleeves. I’d ditch the sweater for the walk home. After school, every kid in the world had to change from school clothes to play clothes. I’d change into girls’ dungarees, the sort with a zipper in the front pocket, a jersey, a light jacket or a sweatshirt and sneakers, dirty white sneakers with pointed toes. Sometimes, when it got colder, I’d wear flannel lined dungarees with a pocket zipper, the start of my cozy clothes.

I vacuumed this morning. That high pitched squeal you might hear is my sloth complaining. I feel it’s pain.

The rain started last night. I could hear it hit the barbecue. It was still raining when I went to bed. The morning is dark and quite humid. I’ve left the house dark. It seems the right way to acknowledge the day. More rain is predicted. The weather lends itself to a lazy day.

My dance card is empty this week. I guess I’ll have to vacuum, no excuse not to tidy the house.

When I was a kid, I got excited as school got closer. By this time, I had everything I needed for school, a new pencil case, crayons, lunchbox, school bag, school shoes and new parts of my uniform, a new skirt, blouse and blue tie. I remember the night before school. We had baths, an oddity on a Monday night. Afterwards, I’d take out my new school supplies and organize my school bag. My mother took our lunch boxes to the kitchen. In the morning she’d make sandwiches and add dessert. We got the best desserts, Hostess desserts, during the first week of school. I think it was my mother’s way to soften the blow, to make school a tiny bit appealing. Bologna with mayo was usually the sandwich. Sometimes there were chips.

I used to keep my lunch box under my desk chair. I loved Hostess cupcakes. I was a chocolate hound. I had a method for eating the cupcakes. I’d save the thick frosting top for last. First I’d eat the cupcake around the inside cream then eat the cream. The frosting was thick and had that white swirl cross the middle. It was always in one piece. My mother would give us milk money just before we left. The walk to school was short. The wait in the schoolyard for the bell seemed shorter. Once we were in the building, the school year had officially started. We were caught in the school trap. One day down.

It is cool at 68°. The morning is cloudy, and there is a 68% chance of rain. I never mind a dark house. Sometimes it feels close and cozy. The dogs are asleep on the couch beside me. Nala had the quite the night. I had kept her in because of the baby spawn. After I let her out, I checked. She kept trying to climb a tree. I figured the baby was safe. Much later, I wanted to go to bed and called Nala. She didn’t come, a bad sign. I checked. Yup, she had the baby spawn again. I went back inside and shut the door. A while later she was whacking the door. She didn’t have the spawn. This morning she came in quickly. Either the spawn is safe or it has gone to its heavenly reward.

We had our last outdoor concert last night, and I have no more uke events until next week. This is a strange week.

I’ll continue from yesterday’s pre-spawn entry:

Some moments stay with us. They may be big events or small pieces of a day we never gave much thought to, pieces that nestled in our memory drawers. Images stay bright. I can close my eyes and still see it all. When I was a kid, things seemed permanent. I passed the same houses for eight years on my walk to school. The sidewalk to school was shaded by big trees. Their branches were full all spring. In fall, the leaves turned yellow, fell, covered the sidewalk and filled the gutter beside it. Part of my walk was over the railroad tracks. Sometimes I saw trains. In my mind’s eye, I can still see that walk and all the houses though it has been 68 years since I last walked it.

In Ghana my walk to town was downhill, on the main road. I’d pass the Hotel d’Bull, a few small shops and the post office. Further on were more shops and the bank, the Super Service Inn and the first gate to the market. Larger shops were further along the road. One spot, beside another gate to the market, had a small table and two chairs. I’d stop there as it had a fridge and the Coke was cold. In front of it was the craft tree. Leather bags hung from its branches while baskets and hats circled the tree trunk. At one small shop, I always bought tinned butter, a luxury for Christmas. I bought fufu and soup for dinner from one of the tiny spots along the side of the lorry park. I’d bring my own pot with a cover which I’d then strap to the back of my moto.

I went back after 40 years. Along the hill from school are shops, a couple of schools and paces to stay. The Hotel d’Bull is now The Black Star Hotel. The old main road has faded stores and shops. The Super Service Inn is falling down. The market, with more gates, is huge. It is my town transformed in real time, but it sits unchanged in my memories. My whole Peace Corps experience has left indelible images, memories, safely kept in my memory drawers, especially of my school and town, the places I called home.

The den is still holding last night’s chill. I put on a long sleeve shirt. The room is too hot for hoodies and too chilly for short sleeves. Fall is more and more imminent.

Some moments stay with us. They may be big events or small pieces of a day we never gave much thought too, pieces that nestled in our memory drawers. When I was a kid, things seemed permanent. I passed the same houses on my walk to school for eight years. I jumped over the railroad tracks.

BREAK! I just went outside to check on Nala, and she had a baby spawn in her mouth. I yelled and ran down the steps to the yard. The spawn got loose and ran. Nala ran too, and she won. She ran up the deck stairs with the spawn in her mouth while I was a madwoman screaming from the yard for her to drop it. She was gone from the deck by the time I got there so I went down again looking for her. I didn’t find her, but because I didn’t want the trip to my yard to be fruitless, I grabbed some trash Nala had brought from the house. I carried it up the stairs to throw away into the trash. As soon as I walked inside to the kitchen I was shocked to see Nala on the couch with the spawn between her paws. The spawn looked dead, glassy eyed. I got something to pick up the poor baby so I could unceremoniously drop it over the fence, but the spawn had been playing possum. It got up and ran off the couch. I imagined it taking up residence as there are plenty of places to hide. All I could think of was I didn’t need another pet. Nala found the spawn which ran then just collapsed close to me. I kept Nala at bay and grabbed stuff so I could pick up the spawn. I got it outside the back door and threw it over the side to the grass. It shook a little then ran back to the yard. I shut the dog door. Nala is now napping on the couch, exhausted from her morning adventures.

Okay, I am going to stop here. I will continue tomorrow what I started earlier about moments.

We have our last outdoor concert in Hyannis today. If you have a little time, bring a chair to the Hyannis green and enjoy a wonderful ukulele concert. We start at 5: 30.

Deep grief is quiet. It settles in the heart. It stays there. It softens but never disappears. My circle gets smaller as I grow older. My grandparents left first. My parents and my aunts and uncles left next. No one ever tells you how awful it is to lose your parents. The hole never closes. I have lost dear friends, as close as family friends. Last week I lost the closest, but she had been disappearing. She had Alzheimer’s. Yet, I was surprised when she died. After I heard, I just sat and everything disappeared, all my thoughts, all my feelings. I couldn’t grab hold of anything. Now I can sit with my memories. I laugh a lot.

Yesterday I visited my former neighbors who had moved from next door to a larger house and yard. They came from Brazil years ago. We sat and chatted. We drank mimosas and ate plantain and Brazilian linguica. It was a wonderful afternoon, a perfect time to be with friends.

Labor Day is late this year which is a good thing as it always signals the end of summer. School starts here just after the holiday. The tourists hang round, but fewer are here during the week. The weekends stay busy. The tour buses start. We won’t get the cape back until November.

Today I am seeing a play with a friend, the musical The Girl from North Country. Tomorrow is the last Monday concert of the summer. We always play Irish music last. We dress in green and wear fascinators with shamrocks or leprechauns. It is a lively concert. I’m glad for lively.

The weather has been delightful. Right now it is 77°. I love the view outside my window. I can see the sunshine through the oak leaves on the tree closest to the house. From in-between the top branches I have glimpses of the blue sky. The air is quite still. It is a quiet Sunday.

I know. I know. It is later than usual. I admit I allowed my sloth to drive. I took my time on the paper and all the puzzles (which I successfully completed), ordered my groceries and paid some bills. I even brought some trash to the car and dusted a couple of shelves. All of this was done with not a list in sight, and I am not even finished. I have more I want to do today including vacuuming the tumbleweeds of Henry fur.

When I was a kid, I was never really into clothes. I was into comfort. The only exceptions were when I was a teen, and I wore the uniform of every teen especially one year, the year of stirrup ski pants and fluffy sweaters. My sweater was pink. My pants were black. In Ghana I had to wear dresses every day. During my first year I had several made with Ghanaian cloth by a seamstress. That was for when I was in public. In the house, after my shower, I wore comfy clothes. I really didn’t complain so much about the dresses. They were cool in the heat. For most of my professional life here I wore dresses and skirts. I was not a fan of either. My winter comfy clothes were hoodies, pants and flannel shirts while in summer I wore mostly short sleeve shirts and exchanged my shoes for sandals. Around the house I wear t-shirts and casual pants, not fit for the eyes of the outside world. My inside clothes are often worn in places and have holes, but I don’t care. My fashion sense ends when I walk into the house.

Today is hot and partly cloudy. Nary a breeze blows. I have the fan going here in the den. It is cool enough. Both dogs are sleeping. Earlier they were both panting, Nala far more than Henry. Poor boxers don’t abide the heat well. Nala is asleep beside me and enjoying the fan. I don’t mind sharing.

I have always loved summer nights. In the field below my house fireflies flitted and darted, their flames blinking as they flew across the tall grass. I used to sit on the embankment above the hill and watch. I’d try to follow one firefly. I found out in my trusty encyclopedia that both males and females blink. The males blink to attract females, and the females blink their responses. Their flashes sync. When I was really little, I thought fireflies were fairies, relatives of Tinker Bell. I could hear from beyond the field the sounds of frogs and crickets on the swamp. The sounds were really songs, quiet, rhythmic songs. I used to love to fall asleep listening to them.

I have fireflies in my yard and frog songs from the tiny pond at the end of my street. Because they are there, I still believe in fairies and night music.

The day is lovely. The few clouds don’t obscure the sun. It is 80°. A breeze is constant and cooling. Lately the nights have gone down to the 60’s, wonderful for sleeping. These lower temperatures are previews of fall and warnings that summer is closing. Fall is nudging.

My friends and I often went to the midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show. We yelled lines and brought props. It is still a favorite film of mine. I love the view of the heels on the elevator as it descends, and that first look at Frank-N-Furter’s face. I even have an old vinyl soundtrack album, and I saw the play in Boston. Tim Curry was the most amazing Frank.

When I was a kid, I loved movies, especially science fiction movies, the old black and whites from the 50’s. They had a plot formula. Most aliens wanted Earth. Creatures destroyed cities and ate people whole. Pandemics killed people or turned them into zombies. Ordinary creatures like spiders or ants became enormous. They too ate people. They kept their creature characteristics which made them scarier. Spiders wove huge webs big enough to catch people. Ants dug holes for their queens. There were pirañhas and alligators and sharks. The water creatures had enormous teeth. They too ate people. I was not a kid easily scared by all these creatures. I really enjoyed these movies, still do. I search for them and hope to find one I haven’t seen or saw so long ago I don’t remember. When I do, I pop the corn and while away the evening watching.

I have always been an egg fan. My mother used to make us eggs in egg cups on winter mornings. She’d cut the toast to fit the top of the egg. I didn’t know the formal name for these eggs was soft-boiled eggs. She’d also make dropped eggs on toast. I was older before I learned they were actually poached eggs. She used to make them in boiling water. She always made sure the yolks were still soft. She’d sometimes make egg salad for Friday’s school lunch. I only liked the salad if it had celery and lettuce. Egg salad needed crunch. My mother’s peppers and eggs were the things of legend. My friend used to make the best deviled eggs. My fridge always has eggs.

I have a concert today. I had one yesterday. Today it is the Beatles.Yesterday it was the Beach Boys.

The sun is bright, the sky blue and the small breeze refreshing. I woke up from my hibernation just before noon. I had gone to bed when morning light was making its appearance. Nala woke me up. She was at the bottom of the bed crying. I figured she wanted out so I dragged myself out of bed and opened the door. She ran outside. Speaking of Nala, I did guess that the mouse motel trap which had gone missing from the kitchen had been stolen by Nala. I ventured another guess and figured a mouse was inside when Nala saw it so she took the whole trap to the yard. She knows to hide her swag. I was going to look for the trap, but it rained for a few days and then I forgot. Last night it reappeared in the hall. It was dirty inside and out. One end was partially opened and the plastic on the bottom of that end door had been chewed. I think it was the mouse trying for freedom, but I’ll never know its fate.

This is one of those where is my muse days. I’m watching a video of a street market walk in Accra. These are local markets, and every day is market day. It is loud, a babel of voices. Most are speaking Twi or Fante. Tables line the sidewalks. Aunties are selling their merchandise. If you want yams, rice, tomatoes, fruit, onions, ginger, carrots, cloth, pots and pans, clothes, baskets, buckets, palm oil, kenkey, canned mackerel, spaghetti, peppers and so much more you can shop at any table after table selling the exact same goods. Mostly women walk in the small spaces between the tables while carrying goods or buckets on their heads. Cars are carefully driven in the streets made narrow by the tables on each side of the road. In another market the tables are three deep along the sides of the railroad tracks. Goats are sleeping between the tracks. The train doesn’t run there any more. People are rummaging through piles of used clothes. When I lived in Ghana, they called the clothes obroni wawu, translated as dead white man’s clothes.

I have a busy uke week. I also need to do a dump run, vacuum the upstairs, wash floors and polish furniture so dusty I could sell advertising space on it. I think I just saw my sloth walk down the driveway with a suitcase in her paw.

The day is perfectly lovely. It is 80° with a strong breeze from the north. The den is dark and cool. This is a busy week for me with ukulele just about every day, four concerts, practice and a lesson.

I found a book in the back of my bedroom bookcase. Finding it was happenstance as I was looking for something else. The book, Dorothy Lamour and the Haunted Lighthouse, had been a stocking stuffer. What made this book special was its publishing date, 1947, the year I was born. The book was published by Whitman Publishing, the company in which I invested my weekly 50¢ allowance when I bought mystery books like Trixie Belden and Donna Parker. I started reading my find. The book is dated but readable. The pages have yellowed.

My father used to tell us stories. They involved men with hooks instead of hands and things that go bump in the night. I was not so much frightened as wary. A strange noise in the house gave me pause. I listened but nothing ever came of it. The wind banging against the windows had my imagination running wild, andI was alert for one of those things that go bump in the night, but I never saw anything. When I walked home in the dark, my footsteps echoed on the sidewalk, and, just in case, I would check behind me. No one was ever there. At some point, when I was older, I didn’t notice the sounds anymore. I didn’t look for shadows. I stopped being wary.

I still have a strong imagination. My coffee maker is a Black and Decker. You lift up the top to add the coffee grounds and the water. When the top is up, it looks just like Darth Vader’s helmet, black and with the same shape. The good thing is it doesn’t talk or make breathing sounds.