My creative juices, my muses, are among the missing. I think they left me adrift so they could go somewhere warm. I have been sitting a while on the couch hoping for inspiration which hasn’t come. One dog is asleep on each side of me. Nala is snoring. They care nothing about my plight. I guess it is time for a stream of Coffee memory consciousness.

When I was a kid, I lived in a neighborhood of duplexes. In the duplex next to mine lived a photographer, his wife and I remember a son though there could have been more children. I remember seeing the father’s photos in the town paper. The wife was German. This was significant. Back then almost all the fathers were veterans of WWII. What I didn’t know was the wife was being called names like Kraut by one of the neighbors. The husband confronted him and the two men had a fight. I was right in the middle of the watchers. We followed them from yard to yard, lawn to lawn. We looked like people following golfers from hole to hole. That was the most monumental event, and its memory lived on. For years, the question, “Do you remember the fight? sometimes popped up in conversations.

This next memory occurred earlier than the memory above but popped into my head later. The field and the dead old tree trunk near my house were always a part of my memory until the horrific day they were cleared and then later replaced by apartments for the elderly. We kept our boundaries, them and us. We never played there, and they were never on my street then it happened. An ambulance, fire truck and two police cars came speeding up the hill their horns and alarms blaring. It was loud enough to get us out of our houses. I was young so this was exciting. We followed the cars and stood on the sides of the road where they were parked. I remember the crowd talking. Now I’d describe their conversations as speculations, guesses, and inside information which ran rampant. They brought a lady out on the stretcher, I could see her head, but her condition didn’t register with me. My most vivid memory of that day is not the lady but rather the excitement from the fire engine being on the street and from seeing the firemen carrying a hose and what looked like a Klingon weapon. I found out much later her robe had caught on fire from her stove and had burned her. I never heard anymore.

These are two rare memories. They just sort of showed up today.

Winter reigns. It is another grey, cold day. Right now it is 28°. The high for today will be 32°(insert snort of derision here). I could go to the dump but I doubt I will. I am into warmth and comfort. I am into cozies and hot coffee. I am into staying home. As Scarlett was wont to say, “I’ll think about that tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day.”

We have a little bit of snow on the ground but only on yards and lawns and my car of course. The snow crunches underneath when I walk on it. We had a bit of a melt then the cold came back and everything froze. Walking takes attention.

When I was a kid, we’d walk across the field on our way to school. Winter walks were the most fun. The snow tops on the field often froze. We could never resist them. We’d put our school bags down, get running starts and jump on the snow tops. They would crack and send snow quake lines cross the field to break the snow. We watched the lines travel. They became snow quakes. They never moved in a straight line. They moved quickly across the snow tops. We always watched for a while.

Where I lived in Ghana is the hottest part of the country, the driest part of the country. The worst weather is during the Harmattan occurring from December to February. Intense, dry winds come and cover everything in dust. Cleaning doesn’t clean. The air is so dry that lips and heels crack. Mosquitos and most other bugs disappear. The water is turned off a few days during the week so filled buckets waited in the shower room for my nightly shower, a Harmattan bucket bath, and toilet flushing. I got hoarse from the dust, walked on my tiptoes when my heels cracked from the dryness, stopped missing the rain and learned to live with haze. The Harmattan had one bright spot, the nights. I did love the nights. They were cold, down to the 50’s. I snuggled under a scratchy wool blanket on my bed. I never imagined I would need a blanket in Ghana.

Today is another freezing day. I think my body is trying to hibernate as I tend to sleep until almost noon. Nothing outside is inviting. Even the dogs are quickly in and out. I am so much better, only the short of breath is left, and I can recuperate for another week without missing a thing. My uke leader now has the plague, my name for it, and has cancelled events for the week. The only item left on my dance card is the dump run for later in the week. I still need to put away Christmas, bring sick hampered my efforts because of all the up and down the stairs and my breathing; however, I’m going to start today and see how far I get.

Every kid I knew had pretty much the same childhood I did. My close friends and I and most kids we knew all wore the exact same clothes every day, our school uniforms. I never minded wearing one. It was just what we all did. For my mother, it was less money for a single uniform, some of which could be handed down, than new clothes every year for the four of us. I had all the kid stuff for every season. My friends and I skated together. We went to the Saturday matinees together. We were in school together for eight years. We joined brownies then Girl Scouts. We first joined the junior drill team on Saturday mornings then quickly moved to the regular drill team where we stayed for years.

Over time my friends and I moved in all different directions. I lost track when I was in Ghana, but I ran into a few much later on, many of them my friends from elementary school, those 8 years. Right away we were comfortable with each other. We had a shared history. We shared our childhoods.

I think seeing the dusting of snow we got last night has helped me remember when I was a kid, when cold was no never mind, when the deeper the snow, the better the storm. We raced on our sleds down the hill with our thoughts only on our speed and winning, of course. These friends I have known for over seventy years pop-up everywhere.

The morning is a delight, warm and sunny. It is 44°, almost deck weather. The dogs have been out for a while appreciating the day. Nala is lying in the sun stretched out in the warmth. As for me, I’m still ailing a bit. This whatever it is lasts a while. I missed two concerts this week, the first time I’ve missed any, and am still wavering about today’s concert. It just takes so much effort to get moving.

I traveled in the days of maps, travel books and brochures. I planned everything ahead of time for long trips. The eight weeks in South American were the most amazing. We did just about everything I’d planned and some surprising side trips I hadn’t. The start of our trip was Caracas. Eight weeks later we left from Rio having traveled a continent. During that whole trip, we met one American. He had just given his suitcase to a cab driver who wasn’t. The cab driver was a thief. We did meet a British woman on the 3 day boat ride from Paraguay to Argentina down the Paraná River, and she was the only one who spoke English on the boat. My two years of college Spanish held me in great stead on that trip as did the South American Handbook, put out by BOAC back then. The book was thick. It covered everything. I read through all the countries, made notes and compared that handbook to another handbook or two, but no other handbook came close. I used it to plan the entire trip.

On that trip, every geography book I ever studied popped into life. We managed to travel a good portion of a continent by ourselves. Mostly we rode in locally scheduled town to town busses, some long distances. The trains too were local, no tourist trains back then in Peru. We left Cusco to Machu Picchu on a train with all the women vendors on their way to markets. Some got off at each stop. We got off at the end, down the hill from Machu Picchu, the place which seemed to appear in every geography book I studied. You know, the place with the tall mountain in the middle and the whole city across in front of it. No tourists back then.

We rode regular buses and trains. We took a couple of flights because of time and distance. We had that one long boat ride and another couple of boat rides, short rides: by train from Quito to Duran, Ecuador then across by boat to Guayaquil. The next was a train ride from Cusco to Puno then a hydrofoil across Lake Titicaca from Peru to Bolivia. We stopped at the Islands of the Sun and the Moon and at Copacabana mostly to see the church of Our Lady of Copacabana. We walked and toured and and got all our information from the handbook. No one spoke English. We saw Incan ruins on both islands and we were awed by that Basilica. After wandering a while, we boarded the boat then across more of the lake to the Bolivian side to a bus to ride across the altiplano on our way to La Paz.

There must have been a border in Puno, or maybe not. Back then, in the 70’s, few American tourists were traveling country to country as we were so we were an oddity. Sometimes that meant quickly stamped in with a visa. Sometimes we waited.

That trip is my most spectacular trip. Awesome was everywhere. I saw bananas growing and mountains covered in snow. I rode through cities with their grand Spanish architecture cathedrals. I saw the front of the train from the back on quite the curvy rail on my way to the Valley of the Incas. I have memory drawers bursting with scenes from that trip. It was so amazing.

I am late today. I slept through the morning, on the couch again. If I had a roommate, the mirror under the nose would be have been in order to make sure I’m still alive. Nala slept with me. Henry went out and stayed a while. He was at the back door whining for me to let him in. We’re still stuck in the cold at 32°. Tonight we’ll get done to the 20’s.

When I was a kid, my least favorite season was winter. Christmas was over, and February vacation was a long January away. We had no days off from school in January. Most of our days looked the same. We’d play outside if we couldI remember doing homework on the kitchen table before dinner but after we’d played outside if we could . The snow on the road, on the hill, got slushy from the cars so we couldn’t go sledding on it anymore. We’d sled on the grassy hill behind my house. It wasn’t very tall, and you never went far, but the sled picked up speed right from the top of the hill.

Going fast on a sled is one of the joys of being a kid. The technique was widely known. We all used it. I’d run and jump so most of me was on the sled, only the bottoms of my legs were raised in the air. The key was the run. I’d run as fast as I could and jump on the sled just about the same time the sled hit the ground. The runners cut through the snow. Bits of snow flew in the air along the runners. The best was the crunching sound of snow meeting runner. I never had to steer until the end of the hill where you had to dodge clothes lines and some hot top. The further you went, the greater your mastery.

Another winter technique most kids mastered is walking in heavy snow, 6 to 8 inches at least. Arms are bent at the elbow just above but not touching the top of the snow. One leg at a time gets lifted above the snow top then down a bit further ahead. Lifting legs is the hardest part. To go fast takes more energy and more effort but fast is relative to height. The snow behind me was more piled than flat, a weird path needing more walkers.

I think snow is beautiful, newly fallen and untouched. I turn my lights on to watch the flakes fall. My backyard gets dog prints. It is the after snow to which I am not a fan. My plow guy didn’t show last winter after our one storm needing a plow. Luckily a neighbor, I didn’t know, came and shoveled me out. That was so kind. I need a plow guy.

Winter is stubborn. Once it has a hold, it keeps on holding. Today is partly cloudy and 30°. The high, now wait for it, will be 31°, cold, not chilly, but downright cold. I am still hibernating, trying to get rid of this malady. I missed a concert yesterday and might miss another tomorrow. I hope to be in fine fettle for Sunday’s concert.

I am at my animals’ beck and call. I can even interpret Henry’s barks unless he uses compound sentences. Both dogs have resorted to crying if I ignore them for even the shortest time, but that’s not what has me thinking. It’s beck and call. I wonder how I learned beck and call. Perhaps my mother was complaining just as I am but about us, the kids. I haven’t heard anyone use beck and call for a long time. I’ve heard beckon as in,”Winding roads that seem to beckon you,” from Old Cape Cod but only because we uke it. Words die out, disappear. Some deserve to die. Others will be missed, by a few of us at least. Doff is gone. Erewhile is too great to lose. I’ll just make an effort to save a few.

I taught my students bamboozle. They loved the word and used it in other classes. It wasn’t the definition they liked but the sound of the word. They pronounced it like balm-boozle, in their Ghanaian English accent. Their history teacher stopped and asked me about bamboozle as the word had appeared in several answers on the exam, and he didn’t know the word. I explained. He was impressed with them.

When I was a kid, the nun taught us how to look up a word in the dictionary. She explained how the words were organized by letter. I remember doing a practice sheet of finding the right pages for specific words. I got a dictionary that Christmas. It was on my list. I remember it was heavy and had a red cover. I still have a heavy dictionary with a red cover, not the same one, a later one. I used to keep it by my bed so I could look up words I didn’t know. Now it is stored in the bookcase of obsolete but still valuable books.

Today is a pretty and, even better, a warm day at 41°. A slight breeze only ruffles the few brown oak leaves hanging from the ends of the branches. Right now the sky is a lovely deep blue but clouds are expected for the afternoon. I have a couple of errands.

Every now and then I have a perfect moment, a time when everything aligns. They aren’t usually monumental moments though that does sometimes happen, but, rather, they are mostly every day moments. The other night I had a perfect moment. The house was quiet. I could hear the dogs breathing as they slept one on each side of me on the couch. I was reading my new book from Christmas and drinking a cup of coffee. I was content. I could feel it.

When I travel, I love the mornings best. I like to take an early walk. People are going to work, and trucks are unloading, parked on the streets. It is an ordinary day in their lives. As for me, I’m a traveler. No day is ordinary. Every day becomes a memory, starting with the mornings.

I have been crowned sloth queen, queen of the sloths, or any other name you want to use to recognize my ascendency to the throne. I have done nothing in the last couple of days. Oh wait! I did nap a few times, okay a lot of times so I still have tables covered in decorations. My cold is to blame, but my cold is almost gone. I guess I could blame the dogs next.

The fun of Christmas for me has always been the search for the perfect presents for my sisters and my friends. For a few years I stitched all their gifts. I’ve brought back gifts after every trip to Ghana and my trip to Morocco. I like to shop the small stores, the one of a kind stores, to find different gifts. I do love thrift shopping but haven’t done much lately. That sounds like a good way to spend a Saturday.

Nala was playing in the hall with a toy which, when I checked, turned out to be my embroidered Irish harp, a travel gift from friends who are gone. I walked toward Nala all the while pretending I didn’t care. She caught on and ran outside, harp in mouth. I coaxed her inside, harp-less, with a treat and went outside to save the harp. It was just fine, not a mark, but while I was in the yard, I decided to do some clean-up: a dog food can, a couple of paper towels, a paper plate, the headless body of a Santa and the hat still headless from the same Santa. The mystery of it all: where is the head?

I am fighting off a cold. I am at the wheezing, snorting, napping and occasionally coughing stage. Last night I fell sleep sitting up on the couch. I woke up at midnight and, of course, wasn’t tired. Afterwards, to pass the time, I read, played a few games on my iPad and watched more wonderfully bad black and white movies. I went back to bed around six.

When I was a kid, I had a set bedtime on school nights, but I usually cheated. I’d have my flashlight under the covers so you couldn’t see any light, and I’d read. Every now and then I’d surface to cool down a bit. I’d read until I got caught or until I was tired. I’d also use my plastic bed lamp under the covers. It hung over the headboard. I’d move it to under the blanket. get settled and read. Under the covers got really hot. I used to sweat. Eventually, night time usage took a toll. The plastic lamp parts melted a bit. That always perplexed my mother. I never told her. What’s life like without a bit of mystery?

When I was young, every school day went as expected. The only unknown was my lunch. Dinner would be meat and potatoes and a vegetable. We’d have cookies for dessert if any were left. They went quickly in my house. We’d watch a little TV before bed. I swear just about every program was a western. I’d go upstairs to bed, sneak read then fall asleep. The new day would dawn and we’d do it all again. There was a huge degree of certainty.

Christmas is still here but in pieces. Decorations from each room are on tables waiting to be boxed away until next year. The tree, though, is still decorated because its ornaments go into one storage bin of only tree ornaments so they’ll go last, and the other, the scrub pine tree, gets covered as is. The obstacles to my finishing this task are the boxes. They are still in the cellar just waiting to be filled. I need to start carrying the boxes upstairs, filling them then carrying them back downstairs, tasks I keep delaying.

I have no system, except for the trees, for packing Christmas away. That is utterly contrary to everything I do, to all the notes, all the preparations in numbered order by day, lists stuck to the table and everything labeled. Years ago, in my younger days, each box held all the similar decorations like all Santa’s and trees. Each box was taped and labeled. I still have a few of those long ago organized and labeled boxes but which now mean nothing. I put in anything which fits into the boxes including old glass ornaments wrapped in bubble paper. Year to year the filled boxes are packed away, unlabeled. Next year I’ll bring the same boxes upstairs and be surprised when I unpack the decorations Willy nilly stored inside from this year. Surprise is a neat feeling still, especially at Christmas.

Snow started a bit ago, big flakes slowly falling. It won’t amount to much, less than an inch, but it is the first snow of the season. The morning is warm, in comparison to the last few mornings, at 34°. My bird feeders need filling. That’s next.

Henry is afraid of ghosts. No big deal, I’ll just add it to his always growing list of phobias. Let me explain. Both dogs sleep on my bed, Nala under the covers, Henry at the foot of the bed. Nala moves a bit under the spread before she settles. Henry usually jumps on second. Last night was different. Henry was asleep at the foot of the bed when Nala got under the cover and did her usual settling. Henry saw a giant, amorphous, moving lump under the covers. He growled his scary growl. I quickly took the spread off Nala so he could see her. I patted him. He settled down at the foot of the bed. Nala slept beside him with her head out and her body covered by the spread. Ghost dispelled.

I love black and white science fiction movies, especially the ones released in the 50’s. I saw them first hand back then. I loved the monsters and the men who became monsters. The special effects looked real enough in black and white. Aliens were never friendly. Earthquakes were common and many necessitated a trip to the center of the Earth. Much later, Creature Double Feature cemented my love for these movies. I have watched a few of these movies the last few days. Right now I’m watching The Night the World Exploded. I can see what I never saw when I was a kid. The special effects are now easy to see. I see repeat pictures, backgrounds. Moving a set back and forth or up and down is movement, in a train or an airplane. One character is a woman scientist, a beautiful scientist. She and the leading man are thrown together to stop the disaster. At one point they kiss, world crisis averted, romance begun and the movie is over.

I love finding new 50’s movies I haven’t seen or don’t remember. Those special effects now enhance the movies for me. Many are creative. Many are not, some almost silly, but I don’t care. They are fun to watch and enjoy.

I’m wearing a pair of muk luks over a pair of socks, a thick long sleeve shirt under my hoodie and a pair of flannel cozy pants, and that’s just my inside outfit. On a day like today, there will be no outside outfit. We have wind, a cloudy sky and a temperature of 24°.

When I was a kid, the weather never mattered. We all walked to school every day. My father left too early to drive us, and my mother didn’t drive. We never complained. We just accepted the walk as routine. The worst walk was in the rain. I’d arrive at school with wet clothes and sopping shoes. It took all day for my socks and shoes to dry. In the winter, when I was little, my mother bundled me for the walk. I wore layer upon layer from top to bottom, from a wool cap to knee socks. I was warm, but, at school, it took forever to get down to my uniform under all those layers. The next obstacle was finding a hook to hang my clothes on in the clock room. Once all that was accomplished, it was time to sit at my desk for school to start. One memory of school in winter makes me smile. When it was recess time, I’d just grab my coat and run outside, no hat, no mittens, just an unbuttoned coat. My mother would not have approved.

I have always believed in magic, not the rabbit in the top hat magic or witchcraft, but the magic that brings Tinkerbell alive when we clap. I can see the man in the moon, I left my tooth under the pillow. I wrote a letter to Santa, and I believed a rabbit brought eggs and chocolate. Fireflies are magical. When I was young, I’d sit on the hill and watch them light up the field below my house. Now, from the deck, I watch the firefly lights flicker in the backyard. A night with only the sounds of katydids, crickets, cicadas, and, if I’m lucky, an owl, is a magical night. There are no cars, no people and no barking dogs. I sit still and listen, caught in the magic.

I have never been this old before. I am at the, “May I help,” you age. People asked if they can help carry my grocery bags, usually they can. I always underestimate the weight of the bags and overestimate my strength. Things are slower now like walking and remembering, but I adjust. I still believe in magic.