Mother Nature is especially kind today. It is already in the 70’s. The sun is so amazingly bright everything shines. The sky is a deep blue and not a cloud is in sight. A slight breeze ruffles the leaves on the oak trees. It is time to put my flannel shirts away and almost time for the door screens.

When I was a kid, my grammar school wasn’t all that far away. I always walked no matter the weather. The school is still there and is still in use. It was built in 1910. The building is brick with wood around the doors. It has two doors but we only used one. A statue stands in front of it. The school was too small for all of us. Every classroom was filled. My classes had at least 40 or 45 kids, but there was never noise or chaos. All it took was one nun to keep us in line. Sometimes she didn’t even have to say anything. A look was enough. We didn’t have a gym or a cafeteria. The only bathrooms were in what I always thought of as the cellar. It was a long run from the second floor. I loved the inside of that school. It was all wood, everywhere wood. The stairs dipped a bit from age and made creaky noises the way old stairs do. Each classroom had a cloakroom, also too small for all of us. The coats were hung on the hooks, but there were so many coats on one hook I could push my coat between the hooks, and it wouldn’t fall down. The windows were tall. A long pole was needed to open and shut the windows from the top. That was a boy’s job.

I spent my first and second grade in that school. For my third grade, I was in the cellar of the rectory. There were just too many of us for the school to hold. In fourth grade we did double sessions. I liked sleeping in when I had the afternoon session, but I hated having little time to play after school, especially in winter. For the start of the fifth grade we were bused to the next town over. I remember my nun sitting in the middle of the back seat of the bus. She had her eyes on all of us.

We moved into the new school in the spring. I remember it looked huge with wide corridors and bathrooms on each floor. I was in a room on the first floor. I sat next to the windows. My nun, who was huge, always sat at her desk. She didn’t move. We did.

I graduated from that school three years later. I have never been back.

The dark sky was the first hint of a coming storm and now we have thunder, loud, constant thunder. The dogs are sleeping beside me on the couch, and they lifted their heads when the thunder started. That was their only reaction. They are back to sleep. It is 66°, and the predicted showers have started.

When I was a kid, the worse walk to school was in the rain. My shoes got squishy. My hair dripped. I had to air dry while sitting at my desk. The one plus was at this time of year the classroom air was not saturated with the smell of wet wool wafting in from the cloak room.

I lived in a place with a rainy season where it rained just about every day. It stopped nothing. People went about their business. The only umbrellas in sight were the ones the aunties used in both sun and rain to cover themselves and their food as they sat along the roadside selling their wares. I came to see rain as just a minor inconvenience.

We always had fruit in the house when I was a kid. Mostly we had oranges and apples. In the summer we also had watermelon, with seeds. They all had seeds back then. Spitting the seeds for distance was an important part of the watermelon experience. We used to take pears from the branches hanging over into our yard from a tree on the other side of the fence. The pears were always hard.

I have been a sloth. I did do a bit of vacuuming and changed my bed, but they are the only house things I did. Yesterday afternoon I went for a few groceries. I needed bread, cream and cat food, but I never buy just what I need. I added hot dogs and rolls, dry dog food, pita bread and cheese, a mocha cupcake and a bar of Snickers for me.

Today I have nothing planned. I might go for a ride in the rain with maybe a stop to check out the ocean. The rain isn’t too heavy so I won’t mind getting wet.

At first I thought I was dreaming. When I woke up, I could see sun and blue sky through my bedroom window. The day looked early so I figured I’d fall back to sleep. I didn’t because the dogs heard a noise outside, jumped off the bed and barked as they ran downstairs. I followed but without the barking. It was the landscaper doing my neighbor’s yard. He did mine yesterday. The dogs had heard his truck. I put a pot of coffee on, grabbed my paper and officially started my day.

My dance card is empty this week, not even uke. Our fearless leader is sick. We were going to start The Beatles, but that will have to wait. I do have a couple of errands so I’m going to go out and enjoy the day.

My outsides belie my insides. I feel the same way now as I did when I was young, but when I look in the mirror, I see a wrinkled face and lots of grey hair. My classmates are starting to plan our 60th high school reunion. My youngest sister will be 70 this year. It was 55 years ago when I started Peace Corps training. Life passes so quickly.

When I was a kid, I never gave time much thought. I did count days to special events, especially to Christmas and my birthday, but the rest of time just kept moving along without me paying a whole lot of attention. I’m there again. Some mornings when I wake up, I ask Alexa what day of the week it is as I had lost track. Sometimes I’m surprised.

When I was in Africa, a pompous man named Mr. Edwards was the local head of education. He sometimes spoke at my school. In each speech he always said, “Time and tide wait for no man.”

The sun is coming but just not today. The temperature will rise out of the 50’s but just not today. I will get ambitious but just not today.

When I was growing up, we had a phone with a party line. It was less expensive than having your own line. We counted the rings as to whether the call was for us or for Mrs. McGaffigan who lived at the foot of the hill in a big house on the corner. We’d sometimes try to listen, but she usually caught us and would tell us to hang up. I think we breathed too loudly.

I miss the wonderful sounds from my childhood. I loved the sound of the rotary phone when I dialed a number. I’d turn the dial until my finger hit the stop and then I’d pull my finger from the dial. It would go back to the start, counterclockwise, with a clickity-click sound. Typewriters made a similar sound every time I’d hit a key. My typewriter was a high school graduation gift. My house, when I was a kid, had radiators. I loved the sound of the steam from the radiator on the wall at the foot of my bed.

In the coffee percolator, in the little glass on the top, the coffee sort of popped up and down as it brewed. It was one of my favorite sounds. I loved the clicking sound of the needle on my 45’s. It was sort of a cackle. I even liked the sound when the needle skipped.

My father would never wear corduroy. He said he hated the swishing sound. When he was a kid, he wore knickers. They were corduroy. They swished. I bought him some corduroys one Christmas. They didn’t swish. He loved them and wore them so often the wale disappeared.

Cash registers had bells. The fire alarm rang and the rings told us where the fire was. They also rang for no school. Hand bells were rung in school for every change, for the start and end of school and recess and for classes.

My parents gave me an Instamatic to take with me to Ghana. They also gave me a few flash cubes. They were four-sided. The cube made a clicking sound when it turned.

I still have my typewriter and an old rotary phone. My furnace makes noise. I can hear the hot air blowing. My coffee maker does give a beep when the coffee has finished brewing. Those about the only sounds left like those from my childhood.

I almost don’t want to mention the weather, but I usually do so here it is. The sun is elsewhere. The sky is still cloudy. We are in the low 50’s and the air is misty.

Last night when I went into the living room, it smelled like Christmas. That’s when I noticed all the pine needles and a couple of small branches all over the floor. This morning I spilled a bit of my coffee, ran into the kitchen, grabbed paper towels off the roll which then fell to the floor and wiped up the mess. Later I went into the kitchen to put the roll back. The wooden rod was missing. Right away I checked the yard and found it as well as an empty dirty dog food can, a glass candle holder covered in mud and a wooden decoration. I wonder how they got into the backyard.

When I was a kid, Sunday was a special day unlike any other day. I had to go to church which meant wearing a skirt and blouse or a dress. I had to wear a hat of some sort. Usually I wore a mantilla, a lacy head covering. It could be crumbled into my pocket after I wore it. Once I even had to use a Kleenex attached with Bobby pins, and I was not the only one. Head covering was literal.

We had to stay around the house on Sundays. I read the comics and watched TV. I remember watching Lassie Come home. I have no idea why that movie is saved in my memory drawers. The house smelled wonderful on Sundays when the roasts were cooking. The chicken smelled the best, but my favorite was roast beef. My mother always cooked it so all the pink was mostly gone. That was how my father liked it. We always had mashed potatoes. I remember the beef gravy was dark and thick. The vegetables varied. Other than carrots, the vegetables were canned.

After dinner, we often visited my grandparents. My mother was one of eight so the house was often filled with her sisters and their kids. Lots of kids, we were a prolific family.

Sunday night was early to bed night, earlier than other nights. My mother used the pretext that there was school tomorrow. I never bought that.

Today will be a quiet day. I have no plans. I’m just fine with that!

Today is rainy, no surprise there. Today is also chilly at 52°. I was awakened this morning by a summer sound, a lawnmower. It was so loud I figured it was mowing my front yard.

Lie has been quiet of late. My ukulele events and an errand or two get me out of the house, but other than those, I tend to be a homebody. Most of the time I am okay with that.

When I was a kid, I lived in a project, in a duplex. The project had, I think I remember, twelve duplexes. My house was on the corner so we had a bigger front yard than the other houses. In the back of the house was a grassy hill shared by many of the duplexes. Some houses had bulkheads leading to their cellars. My house had a set of stairs. Each of the sides of the duplexes had their own clotheslines and in-ground garbage cans. You had to step on a sort of pedal to open the cover of the can. It had a handle which the garbage man grabbed to pull out the can for emptying. My mother used to have a plastic sink strainer shaped to fit in the corner of the sink. She’d put all the garbage in it, and I often had to empty it outside in the can. Sometimes I’d gag.

I used to get car sick. Most times I got my father to stop the car in time, but a few times I didn’t. My mother used to bring extra clothes for me. I do remember one time. I got sick, barely sick, out the car window. My father said it felt like rain. I didn’t tell him, better he thought it was rain.

The first time I went into a Ghanaian market was during training. It was a small market. Right inside the gate was a table selling dried goat dung pressed into a circle. It is used as fuel. I gagged, ran outside and got sick.

During my third week in Ghana, I was standing on the side of the street and talking to another trainee. We were standing by an open sewer filled with trash and debris. I didn’t even notice.

The sun broke through the clouds left over from yesterday’s rain to give us a beautiful morning. The blue sky is amazingly dark and stretches all the way across without a cloud. It is 59° but will get warmer. I have nothing on my dance card today, and my house can stay dusty. I’ll just enjoy the day.

I’ve had trouble getting started today. My muse is elsewhere, probably enjoying the day and leaving me in the lurch. I figure today is perfect for random thoughts.

I am not a user of ketchup, only once in a while on my French fries. I would never desecrate a hot dog or eggs with ketchup, that seems a violation of the natural order. I am also not a fan of yellow mustard. Of late, I have been using German mustard which comes in a glass. My cupboard is filling up with those small glasses. They look like the younger siblings of beer mugs.

I do not drink hot tea. It was a go to, with dry toast, for my mother when we were sick so I associate hot tea with being sick, but I have tea bags just in case, probably really old tea bags.

I wear sandals a lot in the summer. I cannot wear a sandal which has a strap between my toes. My favorite sandals are slip into sandals with a strap across the back of my foot. I bought these sandals in 2011 for my first trip back to Ghana. They have come with me every trip. They are still in wonderful condition. They and I would love one more trip.

I seldom check the back of my cabinets, the ones with spices and can goods. I just add new purchases to the front. The last time I culled was during a cleaning frenzy. I got all the way back on two shelves. One can won the record. It was four years over its use by date.

I get lazy, sloth like, when it comes to meals. Lately I’ve been cooking fried potatoes with caramelized onions. Sometimes I add ground beef or sausages. Usually I get at least two meals from this concoction.

I love breakfast for supper. Either I have fried eggs over easy or scrambled eggs with cheese. I always have toast.

I don’t remember a time we didn’t have a TV. I figure that makes me part of the first television generation. There were only a few stations when I was a kid, but that made little difference. We still thought TV was a marvel.

I will not get dressed today. I will stay in my cozies.

The rain was loud on my roof when I first woke up this morning. I decided to get comfy and go back to sleep. The dogs and I slept another hour. When I go to bed all is well. I have my side of the bed, and the dogs share the other side. During the night they move. I am the loser. They take most of the room, and I have to save myself from falling off the bed. Some mornings it’s close.

When I lived in Ghana, I loved the mornings. My rooster greeted the day from the backyard. From the compound behind my house, I could hear the pounding of the mortar and pestle as the women prepared fufu. I could smell the smoke of the charcoal fires. Students cleaned the school compound with hand held grass brooms. They had to bend over to sweep. I could hear them in front of my house. I always had neat dirt. After, the students lined up at the bath stalls carrying buckets filled with water. Fourth years were first in line. I had my first mug of coffee. I liked to sit on my small porch in front to watch the littles walk through the compound to their primary school just outside the gate. They usually stopped to look at the white lady. I greeted them. They returned the greeting. In Ghana greetings are important. I ate breakfast, fried eggs cooked in groundnut, peanut, oil and two pieces of toast. It was the same breakfast every morning, but I never tired of it. After breakfast, I’d walk across the school compound to the classroom block to teach my first class of the day. When I finished, I went home and had a second cup of coffee, the last piece of my morning ritual.

My mornings still have rituals. I am at times a creature of habit. I have two cups of coffee in a mug but no eggs though sometimes I have toast, always two pieces. I read the paper. If it is a warm morning, I go out to the deck with my coffee and take in the day. The mornings smell sweet. The birds are singing. They always sound so joyous, but I do miss the rooster.

Hello to spring, finally. It is a beautiful morning. The sunlight is so bright everything in the backyard glistens. The sky is a deep blue and cloudless. The air is so calm not even a single leaf is moving. The dogs are out and have been out for a while. They are my barometer.

When I was a kid, I noticed spring more than any other season. The air had a lightness. Color returned in the riot of flowers growing in the gardens. Winter clothes got packed away. The days got longer and longer. The sluggish feelings of winter disappeared. The warmth brought energy, a need to savor every day. A spring in my step was real.

Why do we have toast in the morning, instead of just bread? Who decided to first toast bread? I slather my toast with butter or jam because of its dryness. Mostly I have toast with my eggs though occasionally I have an English muffin, toasted.

I always try foods when I travel. I don’t like to judge the strange dishes by appearances. I also don’t like to ask the ingredients of what I’m eating. I eat the food, and if I like it, I keep eating. If not, I just push the plate away. It was in Ghana when I first became an adventurous eater. I remember when I ate my first dinner at my Ghanaian family’s house during training. I was alone on the balcony outside my bedroom. The food was on a table so I sat down to eat. It was a bowl filled with stew, a white blob and some bony meat. I had no one around to ask what I was eating so I dug right in using my right hand as there were no utensils. I ate almost all of my first real Ghanaian food, whatever it was, leaving only a bit of broth. I liked it.

My dance card for the week is again uke heavy. I have my usual practice and lesson and also two concerts. We are playing The Beach Boys this week. I also have a dump run and animal food shopping on my list. I need to vacuum. That will satisfy my cleaning bug.

I wrote this on a past Mother’s Day. I don’t think I could write better than this about my mother.

Special days have special posts. 

Today is Mother’s Day. It is the day I honor my mother and my memories of her. Every year I post basically this same entry with only a few little changes. 

I am amazed at how long ago I lost my mother. Sometimes it seems like a day while other times it feels like forever. I keep her close always, in my heart. 

My mother was amazing. She was generous, fun to be with and was the perfect martyr when she needed to be, a skill I think most mothers have. It was her tone of voice so filled with pain that caused our guilt to well to the surface. “I’ll do it myself,” she’d say. We’d scurry to do whatever she wanted. She was tricky, that woman.

My sisters and I laugh often about the curses she inflicted on us: the love of everything Christmas and never thinking you have enough presents for everyone, giving Easter baskets overflowing with candy and fun toys and surprising people with a gift just because.

My mother had a generosity of spirit. She was funny and smart and the belle of every ball. She always had music going in the kitchen as she worked so she could sing along. She played Frank and Tony and Johnny and from her I learned the old songs. My mother drew all the relatives to her, and her house was filled on holidays and weekends. My cousins visited often. She was their favorite aunty. My mother loved to play Big Boggle, and we’d sit for hours at the kitchen table and play so many games we’d lose track of the time. Christmas was always amazing, and she passed this love to all of us. We traveled together, she and I, and my mother was game for anything. I remember Italy and my mother and me after dinner at the hotel bar where she’d enjoy her cognac. She never had it any other time, but we’re on vacation she said and anything goes. I talked to her just about every day, as did my sisters. I loved it when she came to visit. We’d shop, have dinner out then play games at night. I always waited on her when she was here. I figured it was the least I could do.

My mother loved extreme weather shows, TV judges and crime. She never missed watching Judge Judy. She also liked quiz shows and she and I used to play Jeopardy together on the phone at night. She always had a crossword puzzle book with a pen inside on the table beside her chair, and I used to try to fill in some of the blanks. On the dining room table was often a jigsaw puzzle, and we all stopped to add pieces on the way to the kitchen. My mother loved a good time.

She did get feisty, and I remember flying slippers aimed at my head when I was a kid and one time a dictionary, a big dictionary, was thrown which luckily missed me though the binding broke when it hit the wall. I pointed that out to her and that made her madder. She expertly used mother’s guilt on us, her poor victims. We sometimes drove her crazy, and she let us know, none too quietly. We never argued over politics. She kept her opinions close. We sometimes argued over other things, but the arguments never lasted long.

Even after all this time, I still think to reach for the phone to call my mother when I see something interesting or have a question I know only she can answer, but then in a split second I remember. When I woke up this morning, my first thought was of her, and how much she is missed. No one ever told me how hard it would be. Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!