Archive for the ‘Musings’ category
August 30, 2013
Somewhere off in the far distance, I can hear a dog bark, barely hear that dog bark, but Gracie feels it is her responsibility to respond. That she is standing on the deck directly under my window is of little importance. A dog does what a dog wants to do.
Last night was so chilly I shut my downstairs windows. My feet were even cold. Yesterday was fall. I don’t care that it is still August. Fall drops in now and then to get the lay of the land and last night was one of those visits. Today isn’t much better. It’s still chilly and damp. School should start on a day like today.
My friends are leaving for Ireland on Tuesday. My other friends are going to Ghana in the middle of September. I feel like the poor relation. I haven’t even been to Hyannis lately.
I called Rose Atiah, one of my students, this morning. I needed a Ghana fix, and Rose is always good for a conversation. She said it was getting ready to rain, and I could picture exactly what Bolga looks like with an impending storm. Rose said she was doing nothing, and I told her I was doing nothing as well. We chatted a bit more, and Rose said she would pass along my greetings to Agatha, Francisca and Bea. Hearing a Ghanaian accent always gives me a bit of a lift, and I love that Ghanaians pass along greetings.
Sometimes I feel like a bit of a hermit. With no reason to go out, I don’t bother to get dressed. I make my bed, brush my teeth, do a cursory wash of hands and face and then let the day while by me. Today could easily be one of those days, but I have no choice but to go out to the pharmacy. Gracie gets to come because it will be cool enough in the car for her.
When I finally got to my house in Ghana, I was living alone for the first time in my life, and it was a difficult transition. During Peace Corps training, we had been herded and kept in large groups, and we had each other, but now I had no one to talk to about how I felt, no one who understood what I was going through. I was homesick, doing a rotten job in the classroom and an object of curiosity for my students and just about everyone in town. I fled to books and checked for mail every day at least a couple of times. I was starved for conversation and companionship. I was miserable. I don’t know when that began to change, when I knew I was home, but change it did. I loved living alone. It was fun going into town and to the market. People greeted me all the time, and I returned their greetings. I was madam, a teacher at the school, and that was all.
Talking to Rose today brought a lot of that back. She still calls me madam.
Categories: Musings
Tags: barking dogs, Bolgatanga, BWTTC, difficult transition, former students, Ghana, greetings, homesickness, living alone, madam, market day, Peace Corps Ghana, Rose Atiah, teaching
Comments: 8 Comments
August 29, 2013
Today is dark, damp and chilly, but I don’t mind. My dance card is empty so I’ll probably just stay around the house and read. Last night I started a book called The Altar of Bones. It will keep me occupied.
I feel witless today. Nothing of import rambles in my brain. I looked out the window over the sink for a long while waiting for the coffee to brew. The male gold finches are at their most beautiful. Their feathers are deep yellow and striking in the darkness of the day. I noticed the red chests of the house finches. Even slight colors pop on a day like today.
For the longest time, probably well over twenty years, the walls of my house were white. Color came from whatever I used to decorate. One year, though, when it was time to repaint, I decided to go with color. I didn’t just choose pale or pastel colors. Nope, I went put on your sunglasses bright. The living room is lipstick, a deep red. I chose grey as its companion color. The bathroom went pink, bright in your face pink. Nutmeg was my choice for the dining room, and it is my favorite of all the colors. The kitchen is green but an odd color green difficult to describe. The hall is blue, a light blue. Upstairs the hall is grey because the walls leading to it are red. The open linen closet is red, sort of the living room in reverse. My room is a bright yellow; the guest room is deep blue and the bathroom was lilac. I say was because that bathroom is now blue-green to match the new shower curtain, but I liked the lilac so much I used it downstairs in the once pink bathroom. I like the lilac better.
All this talk of color has reminded me of my Crayola crayons, the box I always got for going back to school. There were 48 colors back then. No other kind of crayons would do. They would be an embarrassment, just pale imitations of Crayola crayons. I remember opening the box and getting my first whiff of those crayons. It was a special smell that only came from a box of crayons. I’d look at those perfect crayon tips lined up in the box then I’d pick the crayons up one at a time to see the name of the color. I learned burnt Sienna is a sort of brown and periwinkle is a kind of blue. It wasn’t just a red crayon in that box. It was brick red or violet red. Yellow was lemon yellow, as bright as the fruit. There were new words for me to learn like magenta, thistle and maize. The colors were the hints.
I have a commemorative tin of Crayola Crayons. It contains all 48 colors that were in my box some of which have since been discontinued. The tin isn’t valuable in money, but when I open it, I smell the crayons and see those tips lined up in a row, and I am seven again. That tin is invaluable to me!
Categories: Musings
Tags: bird feeders, blues and green, brick red, chilly, cloudy, Crayola crayons, damp, gold finches, house finches, lipstick red, magenta, maize, paint colors, Prussian blue, the whiff of crayons, yellow
Comments: 20 Comments
August 27, 2013
Gloomy is the best I can say for today. It was late last night when I heard the rain start. It wasn’t a dramatic storm with thunder or lightning was rather quiet and gentle. I could almost hear each drop as it fell on a leaf or the deck. When I woke up, it was still raining, still a quiet and gentle rain. Since then, the rain has stopped. Everything is still except for one raucous crow.
I didn’t go to the dump yesterday. I didn’t feel like it, but today we’re going. I have collected all the recyclables from the cellar and put the trash bags by the car. The rest of yesterday’s to-do list got finished. I felt quite accomplished. I even filled some bird feeders which were not on the list. I’m thinking some sort of a trophy would be nice. It should be engraved.
My first grade teacher was a menace. She scared the heck out of me. Her name was Sister Redempta. She was really old, at least to my six-year-old eyes. Her habit was black and white. She wore blinders on each side of her white coif (I looked up what that was called. I always just said headpiece). It wasn’t until I was a little older that I realized that coif gave us an advantage. The nuns had to swivel their heads back and forth to catch us so we had a bit of time to do whatever. Every nun I had in elementary school kept a handkerchief up at the end of her sleeve. A bit of white always showed. That’s sort of gross when you think about it. We could always hear the nuns coming because the giant rosary beads they wore around their waists made a lot of noise. It was like an early warning system. I had more good nuns than bad throughout my elementary school years. Considering it was baby boomer time and some classes were huge, with 30 kids, you’d think discipline problems, but there were none. Our parents would have killed us.
When I was in the seventh grade, the habits were changed, and the blinders were replaced by what looked like small visors. Now the nuns could see everything. They had the advantage. That was a sad day for us.
My aunt is a nun. That’s all I’ve known her as. She used to wear habit. Now she wears regular clothes. We all call her my aunt the nun as if she has no other name.
Categories: Musings
Tags: blinders, changed habits, coif, dump run, first grade teacher, gloomy, handkerchief, my aunt the nun, nuns, nuns' habits, rainy, raucous crow, rosary beads, to do list
Comments: 10 Comments
August 26, 2013
Today I’m tired for no reason as I slept just fine. It may be the clouds and the coolness giving me a bit of a down day. My to do card has change litter, change bed, shower, do a wash and go to the dump. I’m thinking that list has something to do with my mood. Not one thing is fun. If I were a Disney character I could just sing The Happy Little Working Song and the spawns of Satan, the chipmunk who lives in my lawn, the mice probably still hiding in the cellar and the birds from the feeders could join in the cleaning. Then again I could just Whistle While I Work and even make it a happy tune. Somehow, though, none of that is appealing. I choose to wallow in my mood.
This is it: the final week before school starts. It was a mad dash for my mother to get us all ready. Mostly we needed new school shoes and whatever parts of the uniform we had out-grown over the summer. I usually got a new blouse or two, always white, and my brother generally needed new pants and new white shirts. The shoes were always sturdy, meant to be worn most of the school year. We didn’t have much money, but my mother never skimped on school shoes and clothes because we had to wear them every day. She always figured it was cheaper in the long run to buy more expensive clothes rather than constantly replacing them. The rule, of course, was to get out of our school clothes into our play clothes as soon as we got home.
I don’t remember when the categories disappeared and all of what I wore just became clothes. When I was little, we had school clothes, play clothes and church clothes. None of them were ever interchangeable. Most of my clothes were play clothes because I wore a uniform to school and a dress to church, usually an old Easter or Christmas dress. My Sunday shoes were also dressy, sometimes patent leather with a strap. My play shoes were usually sneakers or shoes which in a former life had been school shoes demoted because they were worn and scuffed with a sloping heel.
I really liked going to the shoe store, putting my feet in the x-ray machine to see the bones and having the shoe salesman check my size using the sliding silver sizer. I’d wander to look at the shoes on display, always only one shoe of a pair, and them pick out some to try on until I’d found the perfect pair: the pair my mother and I could agreed upon. She’d pay for them, but I always proudly carried the bag with the shoe box inside. They were my new shoes.
Categories: Musings
Tags: church clothes, cleaning, Disney character, down day, Happy Little Working Song, new shoes, play clothes, school clothes, shoe store, spawns of Satan, sturdy shoes, to do list, wallow in my mood, whistle while I work, white blouses, x-ray feet machine
Comments: 23 Comments
August 25, 2013
Last night I put on socks as my feet were cold. I even closed the window behind me in the den. The night got down to 57˚. This morning the house was only 64˚so I went outside where it was much warmer to read the papers and have my coffee. At first it was quiet with only the sounds of the birds then some neighbors went out on their deck. I call them the loud neighbors as I usually can hear them, especially when they argue, and when their language gets a bit salty. I met her once. She was smoking and wore curlers in her hair, those huge curlers. I swear she could have been someone from the mid-60’s pulled out of time to here. Her complaint was I call at night for my dog Carol too much. I told her I’d never call Carol again. They didn’t stay outside long this morning, and I’m grateful as I have just the sounds of birds again.
All the signs of the coming autumn are moving into place. The den gets darker in the late afternoon now because the sun is setting so much earlier than it was a few scant weeks ago. My autumn clematis is filled with buds and has taken over one section of the front fence. It will be glorious when the flowers bloom. The rental next to me is empty this next week. The garden centers are filled with mums and ornamental cabbage and all the other fall plants. I’ve got a hankering for a garden run.
I think this is my favorite time of the year. Even when I was a kid, I loved the autumn. My town had all different varieties of trees lining the sidewalks and in the front yards, unlike the cape with its scrub pines and oaks. Those trees were full and brilliant in the fall and were a palette of reds and yellows. It was like walking in a rainbow when I went to school. We always picked up the prettiest leaves and put them in our school books so they’d flatten. I was partial to yellow. Every fall we’d iron our favorite leaves between pieces of wax paper. It was our way of saving the beauty of the season for we knew it wouldn’t be too long before we’d be walking along the curbside kicking piles of dead, brown leaves as we walked to school.
Categories: Musings
Tags: 57˚, a dog named Carol, autumn clematis, chilly house, cold nights, favorite season, garden centers, ironing leaves in wax paper, loud neighbors, mums, ornamental cabbage, palette of colors, picking up leaves, setting sun, the coming season
Comments: 19 Comments
August 24, 2013
The morning is delightfully chilly. The sun, though, is warm and has drawn Fern and the dog to the mat by the front door. The deck is in shadows so I stayed inside to read the papers. My lawn got cut this morning. The noise scares Fern so she sits on the floor between my feet until the lawn is done. The deck cleaning is after the lawn and that noise is right by the window in here so Fern runs for cover. Now that everything is quiet she’s asleep in the warmth of the morning sun.
My mother did her grocery shopping on Friday evenings. She didn’t learn to drive until she was in her late 30’s so she had to be driven to the store by my dad. The weekend was always errand and chore time for my dad. Taking my mother was first on his list. We always liked their going grocery shopping because cookies and treats were back in the house. Though they never lasted long, it was still nice having them for a while. Oreos were a staple, no fancy double stuffed or orange at Halloween, just your regular Oreos. My sisters were famous for eating just the middles and feeding the rest to Duke, our dog, a Boxer of course. He knew to stay close to my two sisters.
Saturdays my dad went uptown in the mornings to drop off his shirts at the Chinaman and to get a trim at the barber shop. It was a small shop with either two or three chairs. I can’t remember which. After an Italian deli opened up, my dad would stop there to buy cold cuts. The place was called Angelos.
I swear my dad knew at least half the town. He had lived there since high school, was an usher at church and was also a member of the Red Men; he was even Sachem once. It was an all male club which had meetings and did some charitable stuff but mostly I think it was a place for guys to get together and have a few drinks. The Red Men building was a nondescript gray square with only a door in the front. It was on a side street and had an unpaved parking lot beside it. You had to know what it was because the front gave no inkling. The downstairs was for drinking while the upstairs was for rent, and I remember going there many times. We even had my aunt the nun’s anniversary there. I think it was her 50th.
The Red Men building was razed as were several others including the Chinaman’s laundry when that part of uptown became the victim of beautification. The town built a park and a parking lot where those buildings used to stand. I was sorry to see them go. The ones on the Main Street were not the prettiest, and they needed some tender care, but they were old and had been a part of the town for decades. A bit of local color disappeared for the sake of beautification. I figure that’s the definition of irony.
Categories: Musings
Tags: beautification, cat lying in the sun, deck clearing, deli, grocery shopping, irony, lawn mowing, local color, lovely day, oreos, parking lot, Red Men, Saturday chores, Saturday errands, the Chinaman's, weekend chores
Comments: 14 Comments
August 23, 2013
Today is simply beautiful, sunny and cool with a strong breeze. The nights will be delightful for sleeping: cool, even cold. Tomorrow night could be down in the 50’s. Gracie has been out all morning, and I will join her as soon as I can!
When I was a kid, I didn’t mind being dirty and sweaty. Both of those were from having a great time. My socks often slipped down in my sneaker, and I didn’t even care when I walked on the lump of a sock. I’d eventually pull up that sock, but in a short time, it would slip again. That was the way it was. I took a bath once a week, that Saturday ritual we all had. For dinner, our vegetables, except for potatoes and carrots, came from cans. I don’t remember fresh vegetables, maybe because my mother knew we would probably not eat them. She had enough trouble getting us to like carrots without pushing even more. In the summer, we’d play all day then go to bed exhausted. A bath wasn’t ever part of the nightly ritual, even in summer. I guess jumping into the sprinkler or going to the pool kept us clean enough.
We girls wore blouses, never t-shirts. Some of my blouses were sleeveless, and they were the coolest for summer, coolest in the sense of the word, the opposite of hot. We wore shorts and sometimes clam-diggers. I know why the pants were called clam-diggers, but I had never dug a clam in my life so in a way it was an odd name. We also wore dungarees, but girls’ and boys’ dungarees were different. Ours had zippers, usually in the side pocket. When I was really young, mine had elastic at the waist. Girls could wear sandals. Boys never did, too risky and too open to name-calling. My sisters wore white sandals with buckles. When I got a little older, I stopped wearing sandals and wore white sneakers instead. The sneakers usually had pointed toes, and when I was in high school, I used to polish them to keep them white. Dresses and skirts were still necessary wardrobe components.
The last time I wore a dress was Easter. My friends and I go out to a fancy restaurant every year so we get dressed up. Tony wears a suit and tie and Clare and I wear dresses. Many of the people at the restaurant are also clad in Easter finery. The few who aren’t stand out a bit. I always feel a bit outlandishly proper when I’m in a dress. It happens so seldom.
My uniform of the day almost always includes a t-shirt. At night, for a play, I do wear a regular shirt and nice pants, but not dressy pants. I don’t even own a blouse anymore. I do happen to have a pair of clam-diggers, but they are meant to be worn around the house or to the dump which doesn’t have a dress code.
Categories: Musings
Tags: baths, blouses, breezy, canned vegetables, clam diggers, cool nights, Dresses, dungarees, lovely day, sandals, shirts, skirts, sleeveless, slipping socks, sneakers, uniform of the day, white sneakers
Comments: 12 Comments
August 22, 2013
The humidity is so thick I can almost see it in the air so the slight breeze has little effect. The sun bobs in and out, but all it does is highlight the haze. The last two days the AC was on so this morning I turned it off and opened the doors and windows to freshen the air in the house. Gracie likes the back door open because she is able to go in and out her dog door, but once the panting starts, Gracie is in and the air conditioner is on.
Last night, a red fox darted across the road in front of my car. Luckily it was quick as I wouldn’t have been able to slam on my brakes in time had it been just a touch slower. The fox was small, probably young. I haven’t seen a fox in a while, but the Cape has many. Come to find out, it also has bobcats for the first time since Colonial days. An iPhone film of one was taken by a man who saw the bobcat in his yard. He highlighted it in his headlights, and the bobcat stood long enough to be filmed. Wildlife experts have confirmed that it was indeed a bobcat, Lynx rufus. They are common in other parts of the state but were designated rare to absent here. The experts figure the cat probably walked across the bridge. They think this one is a juvenile because of its size. Last year it was bear; now we have bobcats again.
I have probably told my story before, but the sighting of a bobcat reminded me of my wild animal sighting in Ghana, and it’s a great story, worth the retelling. It was mid-morning, and I was on my motorcycle riding on a dirt on my way to a small village to visit a friend for the weekend. The road is so untraveled that the only car I saw stopped to ask me if I was lost. I guess a white woman on a motorcycle is as rare a sighting there as the bobcat was here. I told them where I was going and they said I was on the right road. That kind of made me chuckle as it was the only road. I kept riding until I saw what I first thought were men crossing road, but I stopped to get a better view and noticed these were hairy men on all fours. I knew right away they were baboons; there were about five or six of them. I was totally enthralled by the sight. I mean, really, in Africa riding on a motorcycle on a dirt road and seeing baboons would make anyone fascinated. I watched them crossing the road and was, I thought, far enough away, but one of them stopped, turned and looked at me. I didn’t move but immediately formulated an escape plan just in case it became a bit more than curious. It didn’t. The baboon joined the others and all of them left across the grassland and out of sight.
That is one of my favorite memories of Ghana. I knew there were wild animals, even elephants, still roaming the savannah grasslands of the Upper Region and around Bolga where I lived, but I never expected to see any of them. I often rode my motorcycle on the dirt roads just for the ride, but I never saw any animals close to where I lived. That was an adventure, an unexpected wonderful adventure.
Categories: Musings
Tags: AC, baboons, backroads, bobcat, Bolgatanga, dirt roads, humidity, Lynx rufus, motorcycle ride, Peace Corps Ghana, red fox, savannah grassland, small villages, Upper Region of Ghana, wild animals
Comments: 10 Comments
August 19, 2013
This morning was a put a mirror under her nose to see if she’s still breathing type of morning. The alarm woke me at 8 so I could go to breakfast at 9, but I called my friend and cancelled. I was just too tired. Going back to sleep was no problem nor was sleeping two more hours. Even Gracie and Fern settled back down on the bed with me; however, I’m now awake and they’re not. Both are having their morning naps: Fern in the sun and Gracie in her crate. I can hear Gracie’s snores all the way down the hall.
Yesterday my friends gave me a birthday dinner. We sat on the deck and played our card game, Phase 10, before dinner and I won. The crowd cheered. Okay, no crowd was there, but had they been, they would have cheered loudly and maybe even given me a standing O. During the game, it started to rain, but we stayed dry under the umbrella. We heard the best of sounds, the drops of rain hitting the umbrella above us. It would rain then stop for a while then rain again. After the game, we left the rain and the deck and went inside for dinner. I ate only a little as I wasn’t feeling tip-top, but I did manage to scoff down the desert: lemon brownies. I got a plateful of dinner to take home so I’ll enjoy it today.
The only low point of the evening was the Sox lost to the dreaded Yankees. At one point in the game, it looked as if there would be a melee. That was right after A-Rod got hit by the ball when he was at bat. The crowd cheered the hit on A-Rod then the benches cleared and the bullpens came in just in case, but nothing happened except Girardi got tossed out for throwing his hat on the dirt in front of the umpire while he was screaming at the guy for not tossing out the pitcher. I understand his anger but tossing his hat is a bit childish. A-Rod later hit a home run, his sort of revenge.
Today is a take it easy day. I have a chore or two, but nothing imperative. I’m even thinking I might have an afternoon nap. The day is sunny but pleasantly cool and tonight will be even cooler, a good night for sleeping. That sounds most appealing.
Categories: Musings
Tags: A-Rod hit, birthday dinner, cool day, cool night, dog snoring, exhausted, Is she alive?, mirror under her nose, Phase 10, rain, Red Sox, sleep until 10, take it easy day, Umbrella, Yankees
Comments: 10 Comments
August 18, 2013
This morning I woke up early to go to the bathroom. The bathroom window was open so I rested my arms on the small sill and looked out. It’s the same view as from this room but so much higher, a third floor view. I was in the trees. I could see movement in and around the branches, but I couldn’t see the birds. I could smell the morning air, a combination of so many things. I could smell dampness, not the sort a moist cellar brings, but the sort which comes from humidity and a wet driveway and dewy grass; the sweet aroma of flowers was strong, mixed as it was with the dampness. It seemed to circle me on all sides and come from all the gardens. The best smell of all, though, was the one only a morning brings. It was the smell of freshness in the air, the smell of a new day, of another start. I stood for a bit at the window, took it all in then went back to bed. The morning was still too new, too early. Fern and Gracie hadn’t moved. They were both still asleep in the same spots on the bed as when I’d left. I slid in between them and fell back to sleep.
Today is dark, cloudy dark, with a chance of rain, but I don’t think it’ll rain. Today will stay humid and close. Right now nothing is moving in the dense air, and it is quiet except for Gracie’s every now and then bark. She sounds so loud I keep wanting to hush her. I want the quiet I love so much.
When I was little, my dreams were enormous. I thought I could do and be anything. The worse part of growing older was learning I had limitations. Math was out of reach. Once it got too complicated for my fingers, I knew it wasn’t for me. I loved nature and bugs and snakes and all sorts of crawly things, but I didn’t want to learn about them from books. I wanted to watch them crawl and slither. I learned early, third grade, that I couldn’t hold a tune so singing was out. I had begun whittling the list of what I could do and be. Amazingly I wasn’t disappointed that some doors had closed for me because I figured there were plenty out there just waiting for me to find them, and when I did and turned the door knobs, I knew I’d find treasures. I started to like some things over others and was better at the ones I liked. I tolerated the ones I didn’t. Soon enough, I got to pick, and I chose to study English. It was the best of all choices for me. It gave me the world.
The first time I ever taught was in Ghana. I remember those first few months. I was awful. I stood in front of my students day after day, and they had no idea what I was saying. I spoke too quickly, and they couldn’t hear my English accent though they spoke English. I was having the same trouble but in reverse. Somehow, though, over time, I stumbled into teaching so that we all learned. Franciska still remembers much of what I taught her. The best thing she said was I told them the sky was their only limit. They could do and be whatever they wanted. They just had to keep reaching.
I still do that-I still keep reaching.
Categories: Musings
Tags: barking dog, Bolga Women's College Students, closeness, Clouds, cloudy dark, Dreams, flowers, freshness, Ghana, humidity, limitations, morning, opening doors, reaching, smells of the day, stillness, studying English, teaching
Comments: 22 Comments
