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The wind started around two am. It was fierce. The rain came with the wind. It pounded the windows, but I fell asleep anyway as did the dogs. When we woke up, everything was still wet, but the rain had stopped. It will be cloudy and in the 50’s today. The wind is still fierce and still blowing the pine branches, even the tallest and the thickest pine branches.

When I was a kid, this was spring vacation week. We never went anywhere because my father worked every day. I entertained myself by bike riding, picking out books at the library and spending time with friends. April weather is iffy here. Some vacations had warm weather while others still had a bit of winter about them. I didn’t usually care. It was vacation after all.

When I was a teacher and later an administrator, my parents and I started traveling during my April vacation. We’d choose one country, rent a car and tour all over. I was the driver. My parents paid for the car.

My favorite country was Portugal. We saw Iron Age and Roman ruins. My mother and I climbed a hill to see those Iron Age ruins. My father waved from below. We went way up country to Miranda do Douro, my favorite spot of all. I remember the wisteria was in bloom. It hung from trees and covered fences. We roamed the town, visited the cathedral and castle and the ruins around it. We stayed at Pousada Santa Catarina. One night we ate dinner in the hotel. The meal was extraordinary.

We loved our stay in Miranda do Douro, but after a few days, we had to leave to go south. A couple we had met during our stay left a while before us. They took the main road. I took a dirt road we happened upon which seemed to be headed in the right direction. It was scary as it was steep and winding, and I had to go slowly. At one spot my front wheels went off the road a bit and hovered over the side, but they were easily turned back to the road. My parents didn’t notice, but it scared the heck out of me. At the end of the dirt road we joined the main road. Later, we saw the couple was behind us. I’m sure when they saw us they wondered how we got ahead of them. I would have told them a death defying road.

The morning is a delight, a bit chilly, but it is April after all, early spring here on Cape Cod. The sky is brilliantly blue. Yesterday’s clouds have disappeared. Nothing is moving though there had been a wind warning earlier. The sun is shining so brightly I could barely see when I went to get the paper. It is one of my favorite sorts of mornings.

Some days are exciting by their very natures. Today is a holiday in Massachusetts, a big day around here, an amazing day filled with tradition. First and foremost it is Patriot’s Day which commemorates the battles of Lexington and Concord, fought near Boston in 1775. The festivities of the day started with a reenactment of the battle. We love and celebrate our history here. It is also Marathon Monday. The race has already started. The male wheel chair athletes were first. The winner has already crossed the finish line. The Red Sox start at eleven, an odd time, but scheduled so the fans can walk to the finish line of the marathon after the game to cheer on the runners. Today is a wonderful day to be in Boston.

When I was a kid, I loved the parades, the ones on special days. My town had one on Memorial Day. I was so excited to march in my first one when I was seven. I marched with my brownie troop and in my brownie uniform. When I was older, I marched with the drill team. We usually had a barbecue, the first of the season, after the parade. I still go to watch my local Memorial Day parade.

I think birthdays are sacrosanct. We get to celebrate our own special days. This summer I will invite my friends to celebrate with me at a barbecue. It is a special birthday, a milestone birthday. I won’t have a cake. I’ll have a lemon meringue pie. It is tradition for me.

Today is chilly at only 48˚. It may rain later, but right now the sun is working its way out of the clouds. I can see some blue. Last night it rained starting after midnight. I fell asleep to the sounds of the drops hitting the roof, one of my favorite sounds. Both dogs, still wet from the rain, fell asleep quickly. Henry sleeps at the bottom of the bed. Nala sleeps right beside me on the other pillow. They are both more comfortable than I am.

Today is a quiet Easter. I have a special dinner, and I bought the dogs Easter bunny cookies with fake chocolate and white frosting. Henry licks his. Nala chomps. I’ll surprise them later.

I remember waking up on Easter morning and racing to see my basket. It was always one of those brightly colored baskets with green grass, plastic green grass. In the middle was the big rabbit. Its ears were solid but its body was hollow. I ate the ears first. Jelly Beans surrounded the rabbit. They were the big jelly beans without a whole of flavor, but I didn’t notice. I remember hard, colored candy eggs. They were white inside. There were Peeps, pink and yellow, small chocolate eggs and a few toys. I lugged that basket everywhere until only a few jelly beans were left hidden under the grass. They were the last of my Easter candy.

I remember one Easter egg hunt when I was young. It was in the field below my house, the field where I caught grasshoppers and lightening bugs. All the kids in the neighborhood went hunting. The eggs mostly had candy inside, but there was one special egg, a golden egg. I remember the year I found it. I held it above my head and announced my find. Inside was money, a $5.00 bill. I was rich beyond measure.

Every morning when I first wake up, I ask Alexa the time and weather. Today it was 9 when I asked. She told me to enjoy the sunny day. Hey Google told me it would be mostly cloudy but was sunny right now. Neither one is right. The sky is covered by clouds. It is windy and only 57˚. I am staying close to home today.

When I was a kid, Saturday was bath night. I think it was universally bath night. I took one alone as did my brother. My two sisters took one together. After their baths and shampoos, the torture began. My mother had to comb out the snarls. Both of my sisters cried. I was glad for short hair.

Yesterday was clean the yard day. I took my convict stick and poked all of the trash then put it in the bag. I got to see what Nala had stolen. Most of it was paper and cardboard from the recycle bin. Later she was outside an inordinate amount of time. I called her. She didn’t come. That made me suspicious. I know she can’t get out of the yard so I went to look for her. She was sitting just below the deck’s edge looking up at me. I thought she had one of her toys, one of the flat toys missing its insides. She didn’t. Nala had a dead squirrel. She grabbed it and ran thinking I’d chase her to get it. Nope. I learned when she had the possum not to bother chasing her.

My mother used to get our Easter clothes ready on Saturday. She’d snip the tags and lay out our new outfits. When I was young, my Easter outfit included a hat, white gloves and patent leather shoes. My sister gave me one of her Easter hats for my hat collection. It is white with a blue around the outside top of the brim and a blue bow around the head part in the center. It is exactly what an Easter hat should look like. My mother paired it with white gloves and a fluffy pastel dress. My sisters liked to swirl in their dresses.

Our Easter baskets ad all the traditional candy. A hollow rabbit was the centerpiece. We always ate the ears first. It was the unwritten rule. The jelly beans were big and mostly tasted the same. The Peeps were pink or yellow. Chocolate eggs were wrapped in colorful foil. Small toys were also in the basket and sometimes a stuffed rabbit or duck. I remember getting jacks and sometimes yo-yos.

Today I might do laundry. I even brought the basket down to this floor, only one more floor to go, but if past history is any indicator, the basket will sit there for a few days until I get tired of looking at it. That usually takes a while.

Today is a delight. The sun is bright, the air is still and the deep blue sky, unmarred by clouds, stretches across to meet the earth. Everything about the morning is inviting. We will be in the 60’s today. It is a spring day. More flowers have bloomed. White dafs, deep purple hyacinths and a little forsythia, only a couple of branches, have bloomed in the last couple of days. I love going outside each morning to see my garden, to see what surprises Mother Nature has unearthed.

Today is Good Friday. I used to have the day off when I was in elementary school, but there was a catch. I had to sign up to do vigil for an hour. I used to sneak in a book and hope the nun watching us was only looking for noise, not diversions. I figured hiding it in a prayer book and reading with my head down made me look devout. That hour was endless.

I was never much a counter of days except for the days until Christmas. Easter was never big. Summer vacation came with only a little fanfare. The last day of school was a half day, and we got our report cards. We all looked on the back to make sure we were promoted. We all were. Everyone was promoted. I wondered about that. I always figured we just dragged along some of my classmates who maybe should have stayed behind but somehow got caught in the swell of promotion.

Last night I watched The Beach Girls and the Monster. I had to look it up as I hadn’t ever heard of it. The movie was listed among the 100 most enjoyably bad movies ever made. The opening was a slew of dancing girls in bikinis. The theme, Dance Baby Dance, was written by Frank Sinatra Jr. The monster was silly looking with bulging eyes which never moved. The victims screamed but were never heard so the monster had its way and killed three people. The movie, though, did have one redeeming feature, amazing surfing footage. I watched the movie until the end. I needed to know the fate of the monster.

Of late, I have been a flurry of activity. I had a list. I cleared my bedroom of bins and boxes. I mailed Christmas presents which have been ready to mail since the holiday. My friends were excited, my sister not so much. After all, it is April. Maybe I should have wrapped them in pastels.

Yesterday was glorious. It was long sleeve shirt weather at over 60˚. I did some errands with the window down. The air smelled of flowers. They are blooming everywhere. Color has finally pushed winter away. The flag by my front steps says Welcome Spring.

Today is cloudy, and rain is predicted for this afternoon. The temperature will be around 60˚. I love that the low will be 45˚. Not so long ago I would have been happy for a high of 45˚.

When I was a kid, I loved spending time in my room on a rainy or chilly day. I’d get cozy and read the afternoon away. Back then we had classics to read. Robert Louis Stevenson was a favorite. I remember reading almost all of them. Where we vacationed in Maine one year, there was a sun room in the house where we were staying. It had windows all around, wicker furniture and a filled bookcase. That’s where I first read A Child’s Garden of Verses. I had found a treasure. The poems were happy. They were about me, about me being a kid. Sometimes I read the poems out loud. The rhyming was almost joyful. It was like skipping but in my mind. I was amazed that poetry could be such fun.

One summer my friend and I traveled. My favorite stop was Edinburgh. I walked the Royal Mile with my travel book in hand. We stopped at Deacon Brodie’s Tavern. Deacon Brodie was the inspiration for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I felt as if I was at a holy place.

I like windows. When I travel, I love looking out windows and imagining. At Dickens house, I remember stopping at a landing between two flights of stairs and looking out the window. I knew Dickens probably did the same. We were connected over time.

My favorite windows were at Machu Picchu. They had an odd shape, a trapezoidal shape, which I found out later was a typical Incan window. Looking out, I could see the odd shaped mountain across from Machu Picchu. I knew the views hadn’t changed since the Incas. We were connected over time.

From my back window I can see the yard. The trees have grown over the years. Some have died. One fell during the wind storm of not so long ago. It leans against the fence. I think of my yard as a measure of time. It and I have grown old together.

Last night it rained. The morning is cloudy and damp. More rain is expected. It could reach 60˚. Today’s low will be in the 40’s, the high temperature of not so long ago. Maybe spring is making its mark, defining the weather and pushing through the dampness, the browns and the grey. I do see more flowers every morning. It was two hyacinths today, both of them a deep rose. The mornings are noisy now, filled with the songs of birds. When I got the paper, I saw a cardinal couple probably looking for the perfect tree. The red was bright against the wild rose bush just beginning to get buds. There is just something so wonderful about the spring.

Yesterday I got bought a pineapple. It is still a bit unripe. When I was a kid, I never saw a pineapple outside of a can where it came in slices with a sugary syrup. In Ghana, a bowl of cut fruit was my lunch every day. I ate bananas, oranges, mangos, pineapples and pawpaw (papaya here) when it was in season. On the road, I often bought oranges. The aunties selling the fruit always cut off the top of the peel with a razor blade. I’d suck out all the juices then turn the orange inside out to eat the pulp. I remember those oranges were the sweetest I’d ever tasted. They were green. I often wondered why they were still called oranges.

The first time I saw a Guinea fowl I didn’t know what it was. I wasn’t quite sure if it was beautiful or ugly. They have small heads and big bodies. Their feathers are spotted. My first thought was Guinea fowl are off-beat relatives of a chicken. I was wrong. They are singular birds, and they can really fly. They wandered all around the school compound eating bugs. They have a funny run and are quick, hard to catch. I never saw a baby Guinea fowl. Sometimes I bought Guinea eggs. They were hard to break.

Okra and garden eggs were two vegetables I hadn’t ever seen. I liked okra except it was slimy. I only had it in stews. Since then, I’ve found out to de-slime. Cooking them with tomatoes is an easy way. Garden eggs, nyadua in Twi, were white though some had green stripes. They were baby eggplants. I also ate them in stews. One of my friends grows them in her garden.

If I cooked a Ghanaian meal here, it would have kelewele, jollof rice, chicken, a light soup and a green sauce I never learned how to make. I’d eat dinner with my right hand, the Ghanaian way.

Today is a pretty day with a bright squint your eyes sun and the deepest blue, cloudless sky. It is chilly, only in the mid 40’s, but it will get warmer as the day settles. I’m going to water my plants, trash pick my yard and organize my closet. I can barely wait. The excitement is building.

I seldom plan a meal. I have plenty of groceries, but I don’t usually cook. In the mornings I have a couple of cups of coffee and sometimes a banana. The dogs wait impatiently for their teaspoon of coffee and a bit of my banana then they join me on the couch for their morning naps. Jack has breakfast then sleeps curled in a ball in his cat house. The cat house looks like a camping tent. My father used to say he wanted to come back as a pet in any of our houses.

In my town, when I was a kid, was a pet store right beside Santoro’s subs. I bought a chameleon there. When I got home, I put it in a small glass aquarium with leaves and sticks as cover. I used to sit and watch the chameleon change color from the brown of the branches and the green of the leaves. Even though I knew why, it was no less miraculous.

My favorite aunt lived about three blocks from my house. I often visited. She had Sam, my dog Duke’s son. It was my aunt who had given us Duke. I used to take a short cut home from her house. It meant climbing a chainlink fence. One time I was nearing the fence when I saw a half dollar on the path. I thought it was strange, even eerie. I had been wishing I had some money not long before I found it. I couldn’t imagine how a half dollar got to be on that overgrown path where I had to dodge bushes and weeds. I thought it had to be a miracle.

I was at a Christmas event where there were prizes. I was standing with a friend when I told her I was going to win the next prize. I had a weird feeling about it. The prize was a Christmas Buche d’ Noel. They called my name. My friend was a bit freaked.

I suppose I could say it was just serendipity, but how did I guess ahead of time the prize was mine and how was the half dollar right in front of me on that seldom used path just after I had thought about it. I didn’t have an answer back then, but I thought maybe there was a bit of of the divine about them. Now, I just chalk it up to karma. I wish it worked on guessing lottery numbers.

Mother Nature was a tease yesterday. The temperature got to 59˚. I wanted 60˚, a small hope, a single degree hope. I did get sun and some blue sky so I suppose I ought not to complain. I’ll have to remember that today as we will have the same weather as yesterday. Right now it is 47˚, spring morning cold. It will be in the mid 50’s later, shorts and tank top weather for sure.

When I was growing up, I was a busy kid. I was a Girl Scout. I started in the second grade as a brownie. We met every week. The best part was I could wear my brownie uniform to school. I had everything a brownie wore: the uniform, the beanie with the girl scout symbol in an orangey gold on the front and the change purse also with the brownie symbol. It hung from the belt. I was really proud when I wore my uniform. A few years later I flew up to girl scout. That’s what they call it, flying up. My uniform was a white blouse, a green skirt, a girl scout hat with the trefoil symbol on the front and a sash which became covered in badges. I was a Girl Scout for ten years. It was a big ceremony when some of us got our ten year pins. Both my parents were there.

I joined St. Patrick’s drill team when I was ten. We had practice every Saturday at the armory where we learned the basics of marching. I had fun though sometimes we weren’t supposed to. At one point our instructor, John Kelly, told us we were ready to join the senior drill team. We had practice once a week in winter and twice a week in summer, sometimes even Sunday mornings before a competition. We had competition all summer, some Friday nights but mostly Sunday afternoons. It was huge commitment, but I loved being part of the drill team and still have friends dating from those long ago days.

I had other loves as I grew older. I loved acting, and we did one act plays at my school. We even competed. Though we never won anything, I did get a jar with a preserved embryo of a pig, a gift from a science teacher.

I’ve been the president of the library board. That lasted years. I took tap dancing lessons. I knew all the steps but that barely translated from my head to my feet. Now I’m still learning the uke which I love playing. I have little or no musical ability. I know all the chords now, but my head doesn’t always translate well to my fingers. Today I have another concert.