Oh! What a beautiful morning, a perfect fall morning. The sun is bright. The sky is blue and cloudless. It is in the low 50’s, a chill leftover from last night, but it will get warmer, even shirt sleeve warm.

When I was a kid, I often ate oatmeal on cold mornings. My mother was insulating us for the walk to school. She always added sugar and milk to the oatmeal. Sugar makes everything tasty, even lumpy oatmeal. I can’t remember the last time I had oatmeal. I know it is now instant and has no lumps. Too bad, I always thought lumps gave oatmeal personality.

When I was in Ghana, I loved the mornings. Even in the dry, hottest time of the year, the early mornings were comfortable. I had two eggs and two pieces of toast every morning for breakfast. The eggs were fried in groundnut, peanut, oil and were delicious. My stove seldom had gas so meals were cooked over a small, round charcoal burner. The bread leaned against the hot part of the stove for toasting. In Accra, I had bought a giant stein like mug for coffee. I had a cup before breakfast and one during breakfast. I’d have one more cup at the end of my first couple of classes. I used to sit on my small front porch to drink the first cup. I’d greet the kids cutting across school grounds to the elementary school just outside my school’s gates. They’d stop, salute and say, “Good morning, sir. How are you?” They were learning English and had started with memorizing greetings. I lived on the school compound so after breakfast I’d walk from my house to the classroom block. That walk never felt commonplace.

Yesterday I brought my flamingo inside the house off the deck. It is a fall ritual. The flamingo has several outfits. She is now decked in a black robe with a purple lining and a witch’s cap with pumpkins on it and hanging bright lime hair now draped around her head and beak. She is ready for Halloween.

Last night was cold, and the cold lingers in the house. It will be chilly all day, staying in the 50’s. The sun is shining. It is windy. I can see the top most branches still filled with leaves swaying.

I filled the bird feeders yesterday, and a riot of birds are flying in and out. They are nuthatches and chickadees. When she visited, my mother used to love to watch my birds. She also had feeders in her backyard, but her birds were pigeons and crows. We used to joke they were country pigeons. Spawns would hang from her feeders while they dined. We watched other spawns tightrope cross the clothes line to a feeder. Regardless, my mother faithfully filled her feeders.

When I was a kid, I used to love to visit Boston Common. We’d go in the summer and also in the winter near Christmas. In the summer we’d ride the swan boats. My father would buy us peanuts, and we’d feed the spawns. They came right to us and took the peanuts out of our hands. We were swamped with spawns. We were delighted.

I am reminded of one trip to London. I was traveling with my mother and father. My father and I went walking while my mother stayed back at the hotel. We stopped in Trafalgar Square. We bought some seeds. The pigeons attacked. My father laughed the whole time. He didn’t know I even put seeds on his head. The pigeons went after those seeds. He still laughed. I have a wonderful picture of him with the pigeons on his head and hand and other pigeons flying around him. We decided we’d bring my mother to the square. When we did, we gave her a cup of seeds. The pigeons attacked. She screamed and kept screaming. She threw her seeds to the ground. She gave us hell.

I voted. I never miss voting. My first time voting was 1968 for the Nixon-Humphrey race. My candidate lost. I was disappointed. I was in the eighth grade when I first got interested in politics. Kennedy was my senator so he was also my candidate for president. I wore Kennedy pins, still have them. I watched the debates. On election night, I watched the results trickle in. When I went to bed, there was still no winner announced. It was too close to call. The next morning Kennedy was declared the winner. Nixon graciously conceded.

This is a four uke week, a slow week. I have already had practice and a lesson. The first concert is today, another tomorrow. Nothing else is on my dance card.

Today will be in the low 60’s and partly cloudy. The sun was shining when I woke up then the clouds took a turn. Now, the sun and the blue sky are back. I always wonder why the weather is described as partly cloudy. Partly sunny is lovely. Everything pops in the light. The leaves seem to glean. It is a bit windy, and more leaves are falling. The oak leaves have all turned red.

When I was a kid, I loved walking to school on fall mornings. The clear air held a chill from the nighttime. The sunlight had a sharpness and slanted a different way. My footsteps on the sidewalk seemed to echo. We talked in whispers.

I never saw a nun eat lunch. The nuns went back to the convent across the street to eat. The only nun I ever saw eat was Sister Hildegard. During lunch, you could buy a candy bar. The bars were delivered in a lunch box just before the lunch bell. Sister Hildegard would go through the box and take a few bars and hide them in her drawer. She never fooled any of us. During the day, she’d put her hand to her mouth. After that she’d chew. We knew she was eating candy. One time I went to her desk with a worksheet to ask a question. She spit nuts on the paper then sent me right back to my desk.

My Halloween candy arrived yesterday. I put it in the closet so I don’t see it. I have full size Hershey Chocolate bars and an assorted box with Snickers, Milky Ways and Three Musketeers. I hope I give that last box all away, and I hope I don’t give any of it away.

I love the classic creature movies like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Invisible Man and The Mummy. I always feel sad for the cursed Wolfman. His transformation is not his fault. Poor Larry Talbot was bitten by a werewolf. Dracula is my favorite. You never see him bite his victims. He waves his cape to hide it. Renfield is the saddest character. I love the way the Mummy walks. I love Dr. Frankenstein’s lab. I love the Invisible Man and especially the old woman screaming and running up the stairs. I love that all of these movies are black and white. That makes them just a bit scarier.

The morning is wet and chilly. If Nala hadn’t whacked me a couple of times, I’d still be in my warm bed. I turned on the heat so the house will be comfortable enough for my shower a bit later. I have to go out.

Rainy days in fall are sort of ugly. The leaves on the ground get soaked and stick together in a brown mess. The bark on the trees looks almost black. The sky is ominous. Everything is dark.

When I was a kid, my favorite subjects were English followed by history and geography. I wasn’t a fan of arithmetic. I remember memorizing the times tables, the only way to learn them. One, five and ten were easy, eight and nine were not as easy. I also remember learning coins. We got work papers with pictures of coins and problems to solve like adding together a dime, a dime and a nickel. I’d practice at home with real coins.

I converse with my dogs. Nala usually answers. Henry listens. He always looks right at me when I chat with him. They have favorite words like treat, dinner and out. They both come when I call, Henry right away and Nala after a few calls. When she doesn’t come, I know she’s caught a critter. I don’t check anymore. I’ve learned she’ll come in when she gets bored or, in the case of possums, when they dupe her and pretend to be dead. She doesn’t kill the critters. She carries them around the yard then just leaves them.

After school, I’d go out on the warmer afternoons to play. I was never out long. Darkness came early. Once in the house, I’d watch TV until supper. My mother was always in the kitchen cooking. Supper was meat, potatoes and some sort of vegetable, a canned vegetable. We ate a lot of ground beef, but my mother was a whiz with ground beef. She served it in so many different ways. Her meatloaf was my favorite, especially the one frosted with mashed potatoes.

This is a four event ukulele week.

The weather is just about the same every day, but I’m not complaining. We do have a bit of a breeze today. The oak leaves are turning brown and will soon cover the deck and hide the acorns. The spawns haven’t been at the bird feeders. They are content with the acorns, so many acorns.

Today is a house day. I need to put in the other storm door, vacuum the tumbleweeds, aka clumps of Henry fur, water plants and change the bed. I’m thinking I’ll need a nap. Just the list makes me tired.

When I was a kid, Sunday was definitely a day of rest. After church and dinner, we sometimes went to East Boston but more often we stayed home. We’d watch a movie except during football season when my father watched a game. He was a Giants fan back then. When I was young, I’d often color at the kitchen table. A cigar box held all the crayons. They were of different lengths, and the wrap was usually gone so we didn’t know the nuances of the colors. We had coloring books, some nearly filled but all with empty pages. I used blunt colors when I was younger, but as I got older, I shaded the colors. Sometimes my mother would color with me. I always thought she was an artist with crayons.

On Sundays, a roast of some sort was always baking, and its aroma filled the house. Roast beef was my favorite, but stuffed chicken was a close second. We had mashed potatoes every Sunday. Even now, when I cook a roast of some sort, I think I need mashed potatoes to make the meal complete. Gravy and baby peas, at least for me, were the rest of the dinner. On Sunday nights we had hot, open-faced sandwiches with slices of the roast on bread covered with gravy. The bread was white and soft, probably Wonder Bread.

My groceries were delivered yesterday. I treated myself to a big container of animal crackers and a package of Oreos. I still check which animal I am about to devour. I mostly eat the Oreos whole. I even sometimes dunk them into my coffee. Oreos taste great no matter how they are eaten.

I love this morning. It is sunny, though the sun is only temporary, and it is warmish, already in the mid 60’s. The air is still. The leaves outside my window have turned bright red, and the color is popping in the sun. The house is quiet. It is nap time for the dogs. After all, they have been awake for a couple of hours and must be exhausted.

When I was a kid, my favorite day of the week was Saturday. My father did his errands, and sometimes I went with him. When I did, I thought those were special Saturdays. Uptown was always bustling on Saturdays. Hanks had fresh bread. The barbershop, a small one with only a couple of chairs, had men waiting. My father always got a trim. He’d pick up his clean shirts and leave his dirty shirts at the Chinese laundry. The clean shirts were wrapped in brown paper and tied with white twine. They were on a shelf in a sort of bookcase behind the counter. The laundry was hot and humid from the big presser in the front by the side window. Sometimes our timing was perfect, and I got to watch the man press shirts. The presser hissed with steam.

Three drug stores were right in the square and another was not far from the square. Middlesex Drug was the biggest. Pullo’s was the smallest. Sometimes my father stopped to visit with Pullo who was also the pharmacist and wore a white coat. He’d come from behind the counter to visit my dad. I’d have a Coke while I was waiting.

When I go back to my hometown, I ride through the square. From my memory drawers, I can see my square when I was a kid. I see the police box in the middle of the street, Woolworth’s and Grants, all those drug stores, Kennedy’s with its cheese, pickles and barrels out front, the spa and the Chinese laundry. I knew how special the square, uptown, was even way back then.

Today is so lovely it just about defines fall on Cape Cod. It’s 65° and sunny. I went on the deck to fill the birds’ favorite feeder and sat a while. The dogs romped in the yard. The nuthatches, even more than the chickadees, flew in and out then perched on branches to dine.

My house is so filled with spiders’ webs it could be the setting for a black and white 50’s science fiction movie. The spiders are all babies, spiderlings. They link everything together with tiny webs. I carry a duster for the high webs and find my stocking feet work well in clearing the lower webs.

When I was a kid, I was never afraid of spiders. I remember some girls would scream and run as if a horde of giant spiders was chasing them, chasing their entrees. I might have had a spider bite, but it’s hard to know. The bites are tiny and red and don’t even hurt. The bigger webs are beautiful, like doilies crocheted into intricate patterns. My favorite web was at the end of the movie The Fly. The main character with his human head and fly body was stuck in a web and crying, “Help me. Help me,” because a spider was advancing with dinner on its mind. Two men, who knew what had happened, were watching. One grabbed a rock and killed the spider and the fly.

When I was a kid, I was exasperating. You probably will find this difficult to believe, but I had an answer for everything. My parents were not amused.

I have favorite places. Home is always at the top of the list. It is where I find comfort and warmth, where I can wear my cozy clothes and where I can sometimes eat out of the pan. Ghana is next. It is my other home. Other countries, Portugal and Ecuador, are also on the list. I have done amazing things I dreamed of doing when I was eleven, when I first promised myself I’d see the world. I stood in two hemispheres at the equator. I have ridden a camel in the Sahara. I have bargained in markets where I probably paid too much but still thought I was wonderful at haggling. I have ridden in a balloon, a helicopter, a glider and in wonderful old prop planes. I don’t know what will come. I just know I’ll find it wonderful and exciting. I always do.

When I went to get the paper, I could smell the ocean. I don’t live near the ocean, but some mornings everything is right for that wonderful smell to fill the air. I stood outside for a while. Today is another lovely fall day. The morning is chilly as fall mornings are. We have muted sunlight and a blue sky. Today will be in the 60’s.

Yesterday I hauled the storm door from the cellar to the kitchen. It is cold at night, and because I have to keep the door open so the dogs can come and go through the dog door, it was time. I had to move the door corner to corner to get it upstairs as it was heavy to lift. The difficult part was holding it to get it in the door, but I was successful. I think the bit of cursing helped. Other than my uke lesson, that was the only thing I did all day.

I had an aunt who was a nun, my father’s older sister. We used to have to visit her once a year in Connecticut. We’d wear our church clothes. We’d stop at a brick gas/relief station close to the convent where she lived. My mother would make sure hair was brushed and faces were clean. I remember in the convent we always sat in the living room. The convent was quiet. The visit was awkward. We didn’t have much to say to each other. She’d take us to her school to see her classroom. At some point another nun would bring cookies and milk for us and coffee for my father. My mother never drank coffee. I was never fond of my aunt. I don’t think any of us were.

I remember my first grade nun, Sister Redempta. She was scary. None of us dared to talk. We’d sit with hands folded on our desks just as she told us to do. There were so many of us the classroom was filled with long rows of desks. The room had two doors. One led to the cloakroom and the other to the hall. We were on the first floor. I always thought the school day was never ending. I was six.

When I was a young kid, I didn’t think of time as intervals, as seconds, minutes or hours. Time was a block. It was distance. I counted it in days. How many days until Saturday, until Christmas, until summer?

Two of my former students and I are meeting for lunch. We reconnected at their fiftieth class reunion a few weeks back. We’ll catch up today.

Today is fall. The sun is bright in a blue sky, for the meantime anyway, as clouds are predicted. The breeze is warm. The high today will be 66°. I’m still wearing flannel.

Nala loved her ride and loved the vet. She was so stressed, tongue in cheek here, that she fell asleep lying on the floor. She got her shots and her nails clipped. The tech who returned her to me said she is the nicest dog, a sweet girl. I agree, but I did have to bring in some hangers she stole and took outside and chase her for the bird seed loader.

When I was a kid, my mother woke me up every weekday morning, gave me breakfast, made sure I was dressed neatly in my school uniform, handed me my lunch and sent me on my way to school. It was the same each day, but I never noticed. I thought every day was special. Breakfast always included cocoa. I remember my mother made it with milk. There were always little bubbles on the top of the cocoa. Sometimes we had soft boiled eggs in chicken egg cups with sliced toast for dipping, oatmeal, always with a few lumps, or cold cereal, Rice Krispies for me. I’d hold the bowl to my ear and listen for the snap, crackle and pop.

The walk to school changed with the seasons. In the fall, the trees overhanging the sidewalk turned color then their leaves fell and covered the sidewalk. The leaves would turn brown and sort of crispy. They’d crackle underfoot. The walk was cold most winter days. Our cold breath made clouds, and we pretended to smoke. Sometimes the sidewalk had snow piled high on both sides. Most people shoveled the walk in front of their houses but a few didn’t. We’d stomp through the high snow. Spring was the best time. The air was sweet, flowers stated growing in the front beds of the houses lining the sidewalk and the birds sang. I wanted the walk to be longer.

I learned something new every day. I never knew what I’d see on my walk to school. I remember watching a frog jumping the tracks, and I remember a few birds’ nests on the branches of the maple trees. I saw flowers bloom and grow. It was a time of wonder.

When I was older, I forgot to notice the world around me, but that wonder returned when I was in Ghana. I found joy in everyday. I haven’t forgotten.

It is a fall day in New England. The only missing piece is a bit of a breeze to spin and twirl the fallen leaves. Right now it is 64°. The high will be 67°. It is a flannel shirt day.

When I was a kid, my parents took pleasure in duping us. They weren’t mean about it. In a way I guess it was sort of cute, to them anyway. One I remember is when my father would steal my nose. He’d show me my nose now held between his index and middle fingers. I’d panic and feel for my nose. My father always explained he just had the tip. I’d beg for my nose, and he always returned it. My mother did her Jack and Jill trick. She’d tape a small strip of paper on each index finger. One was Jack and the other Jill. She’d say, “Fly away, Jack,” and put her hand over her shoulder. She’d do same the with Jill. She’d then place both fingers back on the table, and Jack and Jill had disappeared. We’d check the floor behind her and the floor under the table. Jack and Jill were nowhere to be found. She’d have her hands behind her head and say, “Come Back, Jack. Come back, Jill.” She put the two fingers on the table and Jack and Jill had returned. It was magic. My mother always told us our tongues turned black when we lied. She’d question us under the hot lights to find the guilty party who had done something he or she shouldn’t have. We all said we didn’t do it. She’d tell us to stick out our tongues. The guilty party always refused. My mother had identified the miscreant who would run to the bathroom to check out his tongue. It was never black. My mother explained only mothers could see it. More magic.

Somethings are the reasons the air around me turns blue. When I am behind a car doing 30 or even 25 in a 40 zone, I get frustrated and wish I had a cattle catcher. Today I was in the queue on the phone. That disembodied voice told me where I was in the queue. I swear today I was 135th in line, okay maybe not but that is how it felt. That same voice kept telling me where I was in line. I’d be 330 then 250 then on and on (okay I really was 5th to start, but it didn’t feel that way). When she finally came on, her voice sounded as if she was eating the phone, but garbled voice or not, she did solve my problem.

Today Nala has a vet appointment for shots. She loves the car. I wonder if she will love the ride home today.