Gracie battered her bells until I heard them, woke up and let her out, about 4:30. While I was waiting, I went out to the deck and watched the start of the morning. It had that hazy light between night and day. Fog hung over the street low to the ground. The air was damp, an after the rain damp. The first of the morning birds were already singing. I could hear Gracie walking in the underbrush of my backyard. No houses had lights. I was the only one lucky enough to be awake.

Today is cloudy and damp, the perfect day for all those errands. It’s warmer than I would have expected, but dampness this time of year doesn’t get close to the bones. The birds are noisier than usual.

June is among the great months. From the time I was little, I loved June. It meant the end of school. It meant freedom. Our last hurdles before summer were always exams, but they were no big deal. Our futures didn’t depend on them. We would be promoted regardless. I never knew anyone who wasn’t. Nobody was allowed to fail. The  nuns saw to that.

The last day of school was always a half day. We had to clean the room, put books away, clear out our desks and get report cards. I remember running out the door carrying my book bag filled with crumpled papers, pencils and other bits and pieces from my desk. My report card was usually in hand all the way home. I could hardly wait to show it to my mother. “I’m promoted. I’m promoted!” was what I yelled as soon as I opened the door.

The morning is cool with a bit of a breeze. With my coffee in hand, I stayed outside on the deck for the longest time. Few things are prettier than a late spring morning which carries the promise of a warmer day. I sat, closed my eyes and let the breeze wash over me.

Rain is predicted for late this afternoon and evening, maybe even a thunderstorm, my favorite of all storms. I love hearing the thunder announce a coming storm. First, from a distance, is the rumbling which sounds a bit like a hungry stomach, a big hungry stomach. As the storm nears, the thunder gets sharper and louder and  rumblings give way to claps and peals. My house sometimes shakes when thunder cracks overhead. I’m never frightened. I’m usually awed.

Lightning is magnificent. I love when it brightens up even the darkest, stormy sky. My favorites are the real bolts which reach to earth like branches from an eerie, skinny tree. Lightning behind clouds always makes me think of aliens descending to Earth in hopes of conquest.

I’m going to take my shower shortly, outside. It is one of the best parts of a warm day. I can hear birds singing and squirrels, those spawns of Satan, jumping from branch to branch. I always think of my shower as a bit like camping, only better.

I have things I could do today, but none are all that important. They’ll keep for another day. I hold fast to the belief that the worst thing of all is to waste a perfectly beautiful day going from store to store and errand to errand.

I hate to repeat myself, but today too is lovely. As I crossed the bridge on the way to breakfast, I saw the crests of small waves twinkling in the sun like polished jewels, so many quahoggers I can’t believe they weren’t stepping on each other’s feet and a family having breakfast on a blanket by the water. Even the back roads were busy, and on the bike path were lots of bike riders, old and young, people jogging and dog walkers. It’s like a summer’s day.

I intent to be lazy the whole of today. Yesterday I got a couple of books at the library, and I’m champing at the bit to start one. I do have two chores but neither chore is too strenuous. I have to fill the birds feeders and add water to the fountain, which Gracie drinks dry most days.

The summer church opened this morning. As I passed by, mass was over and people were leaving. I noticed some church goers were dressed in shorts and t-shirts, and I didn’t see a single hat, mantilla or tissue bobby pinned to any woman’s head. I just sort of smiled and remembered my church clothes.

My friends are coming to dinner. It is the opening of the deck season here at my house and the first of many evenings eating, talking and laughing together on a gentle summer’s night.

The day is beautiful, yet again. I fear I’m getting spoiled. Yesterday Gracie and I took a ride just because we wanted to. She hung out the window, and I swiveled my head back and forth to see the sights. I saw gardens riotous with color, people mowing lawns, walkers and bicyclists. It seems the world is enjoying each glorious day.

The spiders are active. I saw a huge one I recognized as having once starred in his own scifi movie. He was weaving a giant catch a cat size web. It isn’t there anymore. Every morning there is a web in the same spot under my bureau and every morning I clear it. The spider must wait until I’m out of the room then he starts again. I noticed a web under the rocking chair this morning. It looked like a Miss Haversham web, one grown over time, but I know it wasn’t there Thursday when I polished the chair. It must be a really big spider to weave such a web.

I have never been afraid of spiders or snakes or any other creatures which cause other people to squeal in fright. When I was a kid, I loved watching bugs. At the swamp, dragonflies, darning needles to us, flitted and zig-zagged across the water. They were all sorts of colors, and I remember how their wings seemed to shine and reflect the sun. Snakes, especially garden snakes, were common. They’d be in the garden, and we’d give chase, not to hurt them but to watch them slither. I always thought that was pretty neat. Once, in Ghana, a boa was on school grounds, lethargic after having fed, and I ran to look. I wished it would move so I could watch, move in the opposite direction, of course.

The praying mantis is my favorite bug. The cockroach is my least favorite. In Ghana, cockroaches were as big as houses. Okay, maybe not that big but they were huge. We used to hunt them in the room in the back where the food was stored. We’d corner and shoot. Okay, we didn’t shoot. We broomed.

The morning is spectacular. It’s late spring cool. The air is clear and the sun sharp. I’ve been outside filling feeders and watering plants. The birds are noisy.

Yesterday I watched a mother squirrel. Her baby followed her everywhere and kept trying for food on the run, but she would have none of it. I figured it was weaning time. At every stop, the mother would lie on a branch with all four legs hanging, access denied. At one point the baby walked directly underneath its mother so they were a double-decker for a bit. They got closer and closer to the deck, but because I was outside, they never did make it to the feeders. The mother stayed near me on a branch and stared. I supposed she was a bit put-out because she didn’t get to show her baby the promised land.

Some years shine brighter than others. I remember 1960. In the late summer I turned thirteen, a magic age. I was no longer a little kid. I was a teenager who would soon start the eighth grade, the pinnacle of the elementary school world. In 1960, John Kennedy, my own senator, ran for President, and I watched it all, the primaries, the debates and the election. It was my first time ever being political. A couple of my original Kennedy campaign buttons hang with a few others in a frame. McGovern is there too. I was a democrat in 1960 because JFK was.

1968 shined. I turned twenty-one. I could vote for the first time and could drink legally. I’m not sure which was more exciting but I’m suspecting the latter. I started my last year of college, my last year of being irresponsible, and I took full advantage. It was a year for the archives.

Every day I drift back into my memory drawers and am usually surprised by what I find. Today was no different.

Last night it thundered and later the rain woke me up. I listened for a bit then turned over and went back to sleep. It’s a much cooler day today compliments of that rain. It is also a bit damp still though the sun has finally made its first appearance. Tonight will be in the 40’s.

My very first graduation was from the eighth grade, and I still have our class picture. It was taken in front of a statue of Mary on the lawn of the convent across the street from the school. Father Sexton, the head of the parish, sits smack dab in the middle of us. All the boys are wearing jackets and ties. We girls are wearing party dresses, the sort which pouffed because of the petticoats underneath. I remember when that picture was taken, but I don’t remember graduating. I figure the ceremony was in the church as the school had no hall or auditorium. It’s strange that my memory drawers have such a hole.

I remember going to buy my high school uniform that summer. We had to travel a couple of towns over to where I’d be going to school. I remember my mother and me in a huge room filled with wardrobes holding the different pieces of the uniform in a variety of sizes. My mother bought a skirt, vest, blazer and two blouses. I remember wearing my uniform the first day of school. It had that stiffness new clothes seem to have.

I didn’t graduate from that high school. We moved to the Cape where, for the first time, I went to a public school and didn’t wear a uniform so my mother had to take me clothes shopping before school started. I still remember my first day at the new school. I wore a black wrap around skirt and a madras shirt. Before the bell, I stood on the bus port off to the side and by myself feeling scared, lonely and sad. Everybody knew everybody else. All my friends were far away at the school I loved.

My new school was the last place I wanted to be. I hated it. Each day I’d come home, throw my books on the table and tell my mother how much I hated it and how she and my father had destroyed my life by moving us. In time, though, I stopped throwing my books, found friends, got involved in the school and actually came to like it. It was where I returned after the Peace Corps and spent thirty three years of my professional life. It’s strange sometimes how things work.

Yesterday’s breeze must have worn itself out as today is already warm and nothing is moving, not a leaf, not a skinny branch. I was on the deck with my papers and coffee, came in to muse and found the den refreshingly dark and cool.

I woke up earlier than usual this morning roused by the sounds of the street cleaner with its brushes and beeps while it went up one side then down the other of my small street. Neatness counts but not that early.

My mother and father had stock questions, threats, answers and sayings for almost any occasion. “I’ll give you something to cry about,” was one of my father’s threats when I was in tears over something he considered trivial. We’d bring something neat home, and my mother would toss it. “You don’t know where it’s been,” was her reason. I never understood her need for provenance. My parents were big on ultimatums. “I’m not going to tell you one more time,” was never to be ignored if we wanted to escape retribution. “What do you think you’re doing,” wasn’t really the question I thought it was. Neither was the very famous, “How many times to I have to tell you?” I learned the hard way it had nothing to do with an actual number.

Parental rhetoricals were sometimes difficult to interpret. I was torn between answering and not answering. Most times I answered. “Are you talking back?” generally followed my responses. “Because I said so,” never carried much weight with me. I wanted logic and rationale, but my parents seldom obliged. “Didn’t I warn you?” was an all purpose parental rhetorical for anything from getting a sunburn to being humiliated. I remember suffering through a cold because I ignored my mother’s advice about a hat. “Just wait until your father gets home, ” was a universal heard throughout our neighborhood. It was always scary.