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“Let us step into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure.”

July 25, 2014

Today is glorious. It is the definition of a summer day. The air is dry, the sun warm and there is a bit of a breeze ruffling the leaves so they glint in the sun. It is a day to be outside.

Today my grandniece was born, Georgina Kay Smith, 7 pounds-9 ounces and 19 inches long. The first picture arrived shortly after her birth. She still had flat ears and a squashed face as new babies do. Both Georgina and her mother are fine. My sister, the grandmother, called from the hospital and was thrilled. We all are. Now we wait one more week for the next baby, Jackson, who will be born on August 1st. He will be my niece’s second child. Georgina has an older brother, Ryder, who is eight. It is amazing that in one week the number of grand babies will have doubled.

The cool weather has put me in a peculiar mood. On hot days I have no ambition, but today I want an adventure of sorts. Maybe I just want to be ten again when the whole world was mine to explore. There was the zoo, the  farm, the horses in the field, the ripe blueberries, the swamp, the pool and the pond with the raft, the Huckleberry Finn raft. All we had to do was pick one or two or as many as we could fit into a single day.

When I travel, I still love adventure. I take in everything. My memory drawers fill. I wake up early and roam the streets. I buy coffee and fresh bread still warm from the oven, find a place to sit and eat and watch the morning unfold. Each new place is different but each morning seems somehow familiar. I watch people rush to work while others amble and take their time. I prefer the latter. During the day I sometimes have places to see while other times I just wander and hope to chance upon the unexpected. I eat when I am hungry usually at a place where I can sit outside. At night there are lanterns and muted light. Sometimes I eat in a restaurant while other times I buy food to take with me as I walk. People sit outside. I hear a babble of voices in a language I don’t usually understand. At open store doors, merchants beckon me to shop, but I just smile and shake my head. I am on an adventure.

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“If it could only be like this always — always summer, always alone, the fruit always ripe… “

July 24, 2014

Yesterday I was productive. I did errands, potted a few flowers, cleaned the deck, changed the litter, made my bed, went to the post office and went out for lunch. I wanted applause.

Yesterday was Humid, with a capital H. I put on the AC and left it cranking until this morning.

Today is dark but not so humid so I don’t have that closed in feeling. A small breeze is coming through the north window. Thundershowers are predicted for later.

The spawns of Satan have been eating acorns and tossing the pieces on the deck. I go barefoot so I have been stepping on them, yelping and then cursing. I believe the spawns know exactly what they’re doing. Every morning I clean off the pieces, and every afternoon more are back. That sounds like a plot to me. The red spawn isn’t coming around as much. I don’t think it likes the jet of water I spray at him. Now I just walk out on the deck and he’s gone in a flash. Even though I can’t reach him, I spray in his direction for effect.

My neighborhood is so quiet today. I don’t know where the screaming kids and barking dogs have gone. Yesterday my landscaper took down two dead pine trees from my backyard and hauled away the huge branch which had broken off the large pine tree. The back of his truck was filled. It had been a noisy day so today is a pleasure.

When I think back, I remember my neighborhood was only quiet late at night. During the day there were kids playing in the backyards, mostly younger kids who couldn’t go far and didn’t yet have the independence of a bike. My sisters used to play dolls on the steps right outside the back door. I remember them sitting there, one sitting on a step higher than the other. They talked through their dolls using voices wholly different from their own, voices higher in pitch, doll talk.

The neighborhood would start to quiet down around suppertime. The kitchens of all the houses faced the back yard, and I could hear dishes rattling and snatches of conversation. It was not a neighborhood for privacy. We all shared the back yard and the windows were open all summer. The night quieted as it got older; kids went to bed and I could hear the TV from the house closest to mine. That were always the last sound I remembered hearing on any summer night.

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“…it was so rich and exotic I was seduced into taking one bite and then another as I tried to chase the flavors back to their source.”

July 22, 2014

The morning has been a busy one around the Ryan homestead. The huge pine branch which fell is gone as are several branches and a dead pine tree or two. I had to keep an eye on my landscaper as many more trees would have gone on the chopping block. He loves to cut down trees. All the ground brush was also cut down then everything was blown clean, including the deck. The yard looks great. The deck needs a bit of washing because of the birds, and I’ll do that later.

Finally we have a glorious summer day, sunny and cool, and in the 70’s. It rained again yesterday so the grass is staying green and the flowers are tall and filled with buds. My front garden will soon be awash with brilliant colors. Every morning when I get my papers I check on the garden. I stand and marvel at how fresh and beautiful it all looks.

I really have nothing to do today, but I thought I’d go to the library and Agway. A few of my deck flowers need a boost so I’ll buy some annuals which didn’t find any homes and supplement the ones on my deck. I ate tomatoes yesterday, cherry tomatoes, straight from my garden. They were sweet and juicy.

When I lived in Ghana, I had a bowl of fruit for lunch every day. The bowl was filled with oranges, pineapple, pawpaw, mango and bananas. I never tired of that same meal. The fruit was as fresh as any fruit I had ever tasted. Ghanaian oranges are green and on the small side, but they are the sweetest of the fruits. I used to buy one or two to eat when I was on the road traveling. Aunties and small girls would come to the bus window to sell oranges from trays on their heads, and I always bought a couple.

My love for pineapple comes from Ghana. Before eating the fresh Ghanaian pineapples, I had only eaten Dole’s cut up pineapples in thick juice from a can. I’m not even sure we could buy fresh pineapples when I was growing up. Had I seen one in the flesh, I would have thought it a strange fruit with all the nobs on its skin and the green sprouting top.

Sometimes I think about the foods I ate when I was a kid. Most vegetables came from a can, corn in the summer being an exception. The fruits were apples, oranges and bananas, nothing exotic unless you count green apples. I don’t remember farm stands anywhere near we lived, and farmers’ markets were a long way off in the future.

I know it was Ghana which totally changed my palate. The fruits and vegetables I ate were fresh from the market. Some I hadn’t ever seen or heard of before, but I tried them and mostly liked them. The chickens were still alive when I bought them but the beef wasn’t. It was iffy. I didn’t really care. I ate it anyway.

I found out there was more to the global world of food than just Italian and Chinese. Though I didn’t think about it at the time, one of the best side benefits of being a Peace Corps volunteer was an educated palate grown out of a curiosity about trying and liking new foods.

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“Trust everybody, but cut the cards.”

July 21, 2014

The sun never showed yesterday; in fact, it poured most of the afternoon. Gracie and I watched from the front door. The air smelled sweet, of grass and flowers and summer rain.

Today is yesterday’s twin with cloudy skies and a dampness which makes for a cool day. Gracie and I have a dump trip ahead of us and my laundry is nearly finished. Already I am more industrious than I have been the last few days.

Yesterday the red spawn was back. It was sitting in a feeder out of the rain eating my sunflower seeds. I could only see its tail hanging down outside the feeder so I knew he wasn’t looking so I got the hose and sprayed the opening of the feeder where the tail hung. That spawn set a new record getting out of the feeder onto the closest branch and jumping from branch to branch to get away. It, of course, tried again later so I sprayed it and it ran.

Growing up, I played all sorts of board and card games with my family. Every Christmas we’d get a new board game, sometimes new to us and sometimes to replace the one we’d worn out by playing it so much. The other night I dragged out my Go to the Head of the Class Game, and we played. The questions are divided by age, and many of the questions are tough or tricky. One of my friends stayed in kindergarten just about the whole game which was cause for a great deal of laughter and lots of harassment. Sorry is still a game we play every week. It is an I love it/I hate it game depending upon what happens. Even if you think you are in position to win, you could be very wrong and end up with a man starting all over again. That’s I hate it part which generally causes just a bit of foul language. We have decided it is the best game.

My parents taught us whist, and we played often. We played casino and fan tan, also card games. Many weekend nights we sat at the kitchen table playing game after game of hi lo jack, and that remains one of my strongest memories. I can still see the smoke-filled kitchen, the bar set up on the counter and the players sitting around the table. Usually my uncle, my mother’s brother, was there and sometimes my aunt, my father’s sister, was also there. My aunt was competitive, and my dad, also competitive though he didn’t admit it, always harassed her when he beat her. He was the master at driving her crazy, and the rest of us loved it. Once my dad fell off the bench onto the floor, but he never dropped a card. He held on to his hand even through the fall and from the floor offered his card for the turn he was playing. Come to find out he had wrenched his back somehow and a spasm had dropped him to the floor. That feat of holding on to his cards cane continuing to play even through the pain became part of family lore and has been passed down the generations.

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“Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week”

July 20, 2014

This morning is still and overcast, white cloud overcast. The sun may appear but in its own good time. Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy the coolness of the morning. The only sound is a dog endlessly barking. It is somewhere down the street, and the bark is unfamiliar.

My eyes are a bit better. The swelling has gone down, and I can “clearly now” from the worst eye. The strangest symptoms are the bumps still in the corners below the eyes and the red underneath both eyes. I look like some science fiction writer’s vision of the raccoon from hell. The second symptom, the itchiness, is only spotty now so that too is on the mend.

A giant branch broke off one of the pine trees in the backyard. I never heard it. It must have happened last night when I was sleeping. I was surprised to see it when I did my morning survey from the deck.

Today seems like a throw back Sunday. It is so very quiet. Even the barking dog has stopped. I am reminded of Sundays when I was a kid. We never really played outside or made much noise. All the lawn work was finished on Saturday, and there were no Sunday errands. The stores were closed. Sometimes I wish we could go back to those Sundays.

The other afternoon I watched a movie new to me: The Wasp Woman made in 1959. It was wonderfully bad. The owner of a cosmetic company is visibly aging so women aren’t buying her stay youthful products. A doctor who has been experimenting with enzymes from a wasp successfully used his formula to make Guinea pigs younger. Janice Starlin, our cosmetic queen, wants to be the first human. The doctor is reluctant but agrees. Believing the process is going too slowly, Janice, our soon to be wasp, breaks into the lab and injects herself several times with the formula. Now here’s my favorite part: the doctor realizing the formula causes test subjects to become violent goes to tell Janice but gets hit by a car and falls into a coma; of course, he’d get into an accident. Telling her would ruin the plot. Janice then keeps using the serum causing her to transform into a murderous queen wasp wearing a dress and high heels. I’m thinking a dressy queen wasp beats a fly any old-time, even a talking fly.

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“Swollen in head, weak in legs, sharp in tongue but empty in belly.”

July 19, 2014

Today is a bit overcast which won’t deter a single vacationer. Yesterday Route 6, the mid-cape highway, was bumper to bumper because of the cars trying to get off at the Dennis exit and the other cars trying to merge where two lanes become one. The line of cars on Route 134, a local road, was endless. I found the traffic mind boggling.

Today I will not muse. I am taking the day off. Around my eye is even more swollen. Yesterday I could feel the swelling and see it in the mirror. Now the swelling is like an overhang, above and below my eye, and I can see it when my eye is open, no mirror necessary. The itching continues. It is spreading and getting itchier as it spreads. I did go to my doctor yesterday. I got a good laugh when he felt the lump near my eye and I could see a pondering look on his face so I asked him what he was thinking and he said, “I was wondering what the hell that lump is.” He gave me two medications: one for the itching and the other for the swelling. If it isn’t better by Monday, I’m supposed to call so he can see me again. I just hope I can see him.

See you tomorrow I hope!

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“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

July 18, 2014

Today is the sort of day Adam and Eve gave up when they ate fruit for lunch. The morning is cool and there’s no humidity. The sun is sharp bright and everything seems to pop in the light. The breeze is just right. I stood on the deck for a while and watched the birds, so many birds at the feeders I filled.

I never left the house yesterday. Truth to tell, I never even got dressed. It was just that sort of a day, one which lent itself either to pure leisure or sloth. You can decide which it was. I choose leisure. It has a more pleasant connotation. I did at least make my bed which gave me a sense of accomplishment. Everything is relative.

My dance card is empty today. That’s fine with me as I have settled into a summer mode of living. The deck is my go-to-it spot, and I love a little nap in the afternoon. Meals are catch as catch can, whatever I can scrounge from the refrigerator. I’m not fussy. It’s a permanent summer vacation.

My eye is swollen and has a bump right below the corner. I’m thinking a bite of some sort, maybe a spider. It’s creepy to think that while I was sleeping something was crawling on my face looking for dinner. If this were a science fiction movie, that bump would be where the man-eating spiders are gestating. The bump would get bigger, start to pulsate and a hungry brood would emerge looking for food, and there I’d be. The plot has more to it, but I’ll leave the rest up to your imaginations. Just think open mouth screaming and go from there.

I was never afraid of snakes or bugs when I was growing up. I was curious more than anything though I do admit to screaming in pain when I got bitten by a bee on the top of my head. The most amazing bug I ever saw was a centipede. It was walking down a tree trunk near where I was sitting behind my house in Ghana. If I had been Ghanaian, I would have grabbed it, roasted it and eaten it with soup.

Around here there are no spectacular bugs. I’m not sure whether I should be glad or disappointed.

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“Hope combined with action is the only thing that will bring you contentment.”

July 17, 2014

The rain was light but steady when I went to bed. During the day it had gotten heavy at times, and I had a flooded floor in the kitchen when I got back from my errands as I had left the back door open. It took a mop. By afternoon the humidity was thick and stifling so I put on the air. The house felt wonderful and I slept until 10, unusual for me. I turned the air off this morning as the day is cooler and less humid than it has been. The sun is even breaking through and the day is getting lighter. I didn’t begrudge the rain. We needed it.

Once I wanted to be Annie Oakley, a horse riding sharp shooting cowgirl who also happened to be the sheriff. I didn’t realize it at the time but she wasn’t stereotypical which is what I think drew me to her. Many of my favorite characters were girls and women who were smart, brave and daring. I loved Lois Lane though I hated those tiny hats, the suits she wore and the purse she always carried. She was dogged in her pursuit of a story and the identity of Superman, and she never let being a woman stand in her way though she did end up being saved time and time again by Superman. TV in the 50’s had few strong women characters. Most, like June Cleaver, wore dresses, pearls and aprons and had dinner ready when their husbands came home from work. Alice Kramden managed to break out a bit. She wore the apron but she was never cowered by Ralph.

As I was growing up, I knew I’d go to college. No one in my family had, but I just knew I would. It was part of the plan I had hatched when I was young, as young as ten or eleven. I’d go to college then I’d travel the world. There was neither doubt nor hesitation in my mind.

When I graduated from college, my mother told that she and my father had never envisioned that one of their kids would go to college. They were both thrilled and proud that I had. Earlier, though, they weren’t so thrilled and proud when I had announced the next part of my plan, traveling the world. My father forbade me to accept the Peace Corps invitation to go to Ghana. I mean really, here I was twenty-one, a few months from graduating, and my father actually thought he could stop me from doing what I wanted. If I hadn’t been so angry, I would have laughed at the absurdity. I ignored him, and he knew I was going with or without his support so he begrudgingly accepted my decision and gave his support.

My life has worked out even better than I had envisioned. It has been so much more.

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“If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.”

July 15, 2014

Every day is dark and humid, but we don’t get rain. We just get sweaty. Thunder showers are predicted for the third day in a row. The difference today, though, is a strong breeze, strong enough to sway the chimes, bend branches and swish the leaves. The birds are unusually quiet. The rental next door has people this week, and I can hear them talking and laughing. They interrupt the usual quiet of the morning.

When I was in the fifth grade, we were bussed to school in the next town over while they finished building our new school. That was the year I got Little Women for Christmas, and I remember reading it on the bus. I loved the March girls and how they called their mother Marmee. Beth’s death made me cry. I hadn’t ever read a book before where someone dies. Jo was my favorite character. I wanted to be Jo. As I read the book and got closer and closer to the last page, I remember feeling sad, feeling a sense of loss, but then I found Little Men and Jo’s Boys, a sequel to Little Men. I could stay with the March family even longer. That was the year of Alcott for me.

I still hate reaching the end of a good novel. If I had more self-control, I’d slow down and make it all last longer, but I can’t. It is as if I am possessed. Sometimes I’ll read all day and well into the night, even to the early morning and first light. One Christmas my mother gave me Alive, and I started reading it Christmas afternoon. I was in a reading frenzy, the zone where there is nothing else. There are no sounds and no people, just the pages of my book. My mother broke in and thought I should put the book down as I had just opened it that morning and wouldn’t it be a shame to finish it so quickly. I didn’t know how to answer. My mother was a reader and should have understood. A good book is savored. It trumps everything. It’s a world unto itself which draws us in so we are lucky enough to become a part of that world.

It’s still happens to me.

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“Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them.”

July 14, 2014

Last night the weather woman predicted a polar vortex. She was describing summer temperatures in the mid to low 60’s. I guess polar was about the best adjective she could find to describe the cool, even cold, summer days and nights. Right now, though, it is oppressively humid and totally still. I feel closed in, surrounded by the thick air. I swear I can even see it.

Gracie and I are going to the dump today. Sunday, our usual day, is, in the summer, the worst day to go. I know. I’ve been there. Cars are lined up at the gate waiting to get in, and there are no parking spots near the trash or the recycle bins. I just hope the predicted rain holds off. My luck is usually such that just as I’m arriving at the dump the skies open and the deluge begins.

I don’t remember staying in the house any day, especially on a rainy day, when I was a kid. Rainy days were fun. We’d find the biggest puddles, jump in and send sprays of water all around us soaking ourselves at the same time. We’d walk barefooted in the gutters filled with rainwater splashing and kicking water as we went. If the rain was heavy, the water ran quickly through the gutters to the sewers. We’d float leaves or pieces of bark and run along side to watch them fly through the water until our makeshift boats disappeared in the sewer grate. Then we’d go back and do it again.

I never minded getting wet or dirty when I was young. My standards for cleanliness were low. Sometimes I’d even go to bed in the clothes I had worn that day. It just seemed easier. Now I carry wet naps in my bag and in the car. I wear gloves when I pot  plants or when I’m in the garden. I carry a Tide pen in case of spills. My standards now are quite high. I think that is one of the burdens of adulthood.

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