The rain continues. It rained all night and will rain all day. It is cold now with a wind, but it will get warmer, not that it matters on such an ugly day. I have one errand today.

When I was a kid, I remember going shopping for Easter clothes. We were decked out on the big day with new clothes and new shoes. When I was young, I always wore a fancy dress, a pouffy pastel dress. I had patent leather shoes, usually ones with a strap across the top of my foot. Even my dainty white socks were new. They used to have lace at the top. I was never a lover of hats, but Easter seemed to demand a new hat. Sometimes it had ribbons. It was always decorative and usually white. I’d wear short white gloves to complete my outfit, to complete the transformation from scruff to elegant. I was always so excited to have a new outfit from top to bottom. Other than school shopping, my mother seldom bought us an outfit for just one occasion. ‘

Sometimes we went to Jordan Marsh. I liked the one in Boston. In one part of the store, in a nook, they had a children’s book section. I remember the shelves were tall and wooden, and there were chairs. I’d sometimes hide out there waiting until the choosing was finished. My mother would concentrate on one of us at a time. I was never too choosy and always finished quickly. My sisters took more time. They really loved new dresses. I remember they’d whirl, and their dresses would get even pouffier.

I never questioned why we got new outfits for Easter. I always figured they were a celebration, a welcome to Easter and to spring and a final farewell to winter clothes. Come to find out the tradition of new clothes goes back to Christian medieval times. They were a fresh start, a celebration to symbolize the resurrection.

Our debut was church. Masses were always filled on Easter Sunday. Every kid was dressed to the nines. All the girls were in dresses. The boys wore suits or jackets and pants. They all wore ties. My brother wore a white shirt, a tie and a sort of sport coat and pants.

We stayed in our outfits the whole day. We ate our special Easter dinner, always ham. We ate our chocolate bunnies.

I will post the music later. I am doing all this from my iPad, and I am having trouble figuring other than text. I did get the picture so I figure I’ll get how to post the music video, but my iPad would like to be charging for a bit so I’ll do that while I do errands. I’ll be back !

All the predictions were correct. It is raining, and it is raining loud enough to be heard on the roof and windows. The rain will be around all day. It is the warmest day in a while, in the mid 40’s. I have a couple of errands to do. That’s it on my dance card.

Today is Holy Thursday. I have a memory of this day from when I was around 13 or 14. My grandfather was a little man, not very tall. He was pompous and acted as if he were the tallest man in the world. He smelled of cigars. I remember in his house was a small round cabinet which opened to be a pipe holder, but I never saw him smoke a pipe. He used to rub his whiskers against our cheeks in some sort of weird fun for him. It hurt. He was the chief usher for the church. Anyway, my mother and I went to the Holy Thursday evening mass. During the mass was the ceremony of the priest washing the feet of some of his male parishioners, a sign of humility representing Christ washing the feet of his disciples. My grandfather was one of those men. There he was sitting in a chair on the altar with his feet bare. I remember how white his feet looked. When the priest started to wash his feet, my mother and I started laughing. We did it quietly, but our shoulders shook as did the pew. We couldn’t stop. It struck us as so very funny. We did calm down but not before a few looks from our pew mates.

I have a bit of a Bible story. When I was still in training in Ghana, I spent a week at my school setting up a checking account at the bank in town, seeing what I needed for my house and meeting the principal, Georgina Intsiful. I remember she drove a small blue car. I was sitting outside the front of my house when she drove up, got out of the car and introduced herself. She told me what classes I’d be teaching and explained some of my other duties. I was going to be the housemother of the bottom dorm of the new two story dorm, the one called Georgina. I would be the tutor on duty for a week in my turn, and one of the responsibilities was to lead morning prayer before breakfast. She asked me if I had brought my Bible. I was flummoxed. I had no Bible. I blurted out to her that I had parts of it memorized.

I can see the color of the hyacinths. The dafs have bloomed. The flowers know it is spring.

Today is another miserable day, cold and drizzly. To add to the misery, my computer will not charge so I am on my iPad. My front fence won’t stay up, and an animal broke into the trash. When I woke up, Nala was so asleep she didn’t move. I had to disturb her to make sure she was just sleeping. My coffee maker is being testy and stopping before being finished. I am holding my breath hoping the rest of the day gets better, but that is, I expect, a bad idea. I’ll probably gag.

One bright spot is uke. It starts again tonight with practice. Our music book is the 70’s. Some of the songs are difficult. Carole King is best for listening, not playing.

When I was a kid, I would plan my future, not what I’d be but where I would go. Using pamphlets from the airport and post cards, I’d cut out pictures and make scrapbooks of my travels. I even wrote the narratives as if I had been there. They were my dream books.

I remember one Easter Sunday when I was in Ghana. I was staying at the Peace Corps hostel in Accra, about fifty cents a night with breakfast. It was in a section of the city called Adabraka. I always stayed there, and it was a reunion of sorts with other volunteers I seldom saw who were posted all over, none near me. We made plans on Saturday to spend Easter at the beach. After breakfast, we jumped into taxis and went to a beach club. It was sort of ritzy. The beach was lovely. Tables with umbrellas were by the club. We swam and played in the water. We had lunch. We decided after lunch to take a walk down the beach. I remember all the palm trees. Husks of coconuts were under the trees. We found a piece of palm tree and half a coconut and played baseball along the sand. I remember laughing and getting only one hit. I remember the sunburn. It was fierce.

Other than uke, my dance card is empty. I ordered Easter dinner, a traditional dinner with ham. I still need to buy my Peeps so they have time to harden. I like them rock hard. I have no favorite color. Each one tastes the same.

The sun is among the missing. Spring too has gone into hiding. It is only 37°. That screams winter to me. The wind is still here and is blowing the branches, even the tallest pine branches are swaying. My backyard is littered with pine branches. On some warm day I’ll haul or drag them into a pile to wait for a chipper. I have an idea for one of the straight branches lying in the way back of the yard. I haven’t been able to put up my bird feeders. All the branches close to the deck are dead or dying. They were where I hung the feeders. I’m thinking to buy long wooden boards, nail them to the deck then nail the branch to the top of those boards. I’ll hang my feeders from the branch. I miss my birds.

My mother had a small enclosed garden next to her house right outside the kitchen windows. A statue of St. Francis, the patron saint of animals, was her bird feeder. She’d put seeds in his outstretched hands. We used to watch the birds from the windows. The statue was surrounded by flowers. A small fence circled the boundary of the garden. One morning Maggie, my boxer, found her way pass the fence. She sniffed the flowers in her best imitation of Ferdinand and snorted at the seeds. I told my mother she had a giant bird at her feeder. She wasn’t amused.

When I was a kid, I started believing in magic. The fireflies glowing in the field below my house were fairies, kin to Tinker Bell. Gnomes lived in the woods in hollow tree trunks. I never saw them, but I was sure they were there. I used to jump over the railroad ties with the double OO’s. I was keeping my mother safe from a broken back. I knocked on wood. I knew Santa and the Easter Bunny were real. I whistled walking pass a graveyard. I used chants. Rain, rain go away is one I should be using now. Abracadabra was my favorite magical word. It didn’t work, but I didn’t stop trying. Sometimes my mother would tell me to use the magic word. Hers was not abracadabra or open sesame. It was far simpler. It was please, the universal magic word every kid learned. It always worked.

Last night the freight train sounding wind blew down the front fence. Cold air came through the flap on the dog door. The rain pelted the windows. It was a remarkable night. Right now it is 37° and cloudy. The wind is still strong though not as strong as last night. The rain is gone and won’t be back.

After a drab winter, I crave color. This morning I noticed my daffodil buds right away. They are finally yellow, quite close to blooming. They are the only color brightening the garden. The hyacinths will be next. The forsythia buds still have a while to grow.

When I was a kid, I always thought Sunday was a wasted day. Its only bright spots were donuts and Sunday dinner. I had to go to church. That was a given. I had to stay around the house, no wandering. I’d read the Sunday comics, watch TV and wait for Sunday dinner, our fanciest meal of the week. It was always a roast with mashed potatoes and a vegetable or two on the side. The roast beef was always well done. The chicken was whole. Carrots were fresh, but the peas and asparagus came out of cans. I remember the asparagus tops would bend it you held a spear straight up. I always ate the peas and some carrots, but the carrots were forced on me. Desserts were cookies. I’d grab a few and go back to watch TV. Usually they were Oreos and sometimes chocolate chip cookies. Sunday meant early to bed. It was a school night.

Today is Palm Sunday. I remember getting fresh palm fronds at mass. My mother used to have some tucked behind a picture over her bed. They were last year’s fronds. They’d get so dry over the course of the year that the tips could puncture your skin if you weren’t careful. They went into the trash, carefully thrown away. The new fronds started their year long tenure behind the picture.

My dance card last week was empty. I stayed home almost the whole week. I did some cleaning, reading and a bit of napping. Uke is back with practice on Tuesday, a Wednesday lesson on Zoom and a concert Wednesday afternoon. I will be emerging from my self-imposed hibernation.

Today is a carbon copy of yesterday, a beautiful, sunny day, a cold day with the temperature in the low thirty’s, but it still feels like spring to me. In the front garden, I can see the yellow in the buds of the daffodils. The hyacinths have a tinge of purple. My forsythia, a housewarming present forty-five years ago, has tiny buds. Despite the chill, spring still comes in its turn.

The dogs are the barometer for the day’s weather. They stay out for the longest on nice days. Right now, they are still out despite it being their morning nap time. I’ll check in a bit.

Today is another day for cleaning. I’m on an every other day schedule to keep my inner sloth happy. I’m thinking of washing the bathroom floors. The kitchen will have to wait as rain is predicted over the weekend and the dogs will leave their marks. I still have a few things needing to be ironed. I had found them crammed in the back of the closet. They are a wrinkled mess. I’m thinking, instead, I’ll wet them and throw them in the dryer.

When I was a kid, we lived in the project. We never minded calling it the project despite the connotation. It was sort of a small colony of like houses in one neighborhood. We started in a duplex up the hill around the small rotary. It had two bedrooms. My favorite part of that house was a small landing on the set of stairs going to the bedrooms. I also remember that kitchen. The table was against a window. There was never room for all of us. After my sister was born, we moved down the hill to a three bedroom duplex. I lived there through elementary school and most of high school. I remember the kitchen, bigger than the other kitchen but still small. The table didn’t fit all of us. The freezer always had a build up of ice. The stove was against one wall while the fridge was beside the sink. My bedroom was upstairs in the back of the house.

One of my most vivid memories of that house was when my father defrosted the freezer. He’d put a pan of hot water in the middle hoping it would soften the ice. The scariest part was he’d take a knife and jab the ice hoping to break it into pieces. We all knew that somehow he’d cut himself. My father was never handy.

Despite the blue sky and the sun, today is winter. It is only 35°, and, with the wind, it feels much colder. I’m glad I get to continue my hibernation. I only stepped outside this morning just to get my paper and yesterday’s mail. That will be it for the day.

Yesterday I was not a sloth. I vacuumed the whole downstairs, polished and dusted. Today I will recuperate.

When I was a kid, my weekdays were regimented. I got up at the same time every day, my mother being the alarm clock. Breakfast was either cereal, oatmeal or eggs, whatever my mother wanted to make. I always drank cocoa. I never had to choose my clothes for the day. I just put on my uniform. I walked to school. We had pretty much the same subjects every day at the same time except art and music which were less frequent. The times for lunch and recess never varied. At the end of the school day, we lined up to wait for the dismissal bell. I walked home.

The strange part of all of that was I was never bored because every day felt different to me. I got to meet up with my friends, learn new things and have afternoon adventures. Life was filled with possibilities. I always knew I could do and be anything.

In Ghana, my weekdays too were regimented. I had the same breakfast every day, two eggs, toast and coffee, bad coffee but I stopped noticing after a while. I did have a choice as to what I wore, but it was always a dress. I wore sandals. I taught four English classes every day. Lunch was cut up fruit. Dinner was yam and beef in a tomato sauce and sometimes roasted chicken, cooked over a small charcoal burner, my stove of sorts. During the afternoons, after classes, I read, planned lessons and sometimes napped. The only change was on market day when I walked to town to shop.

I was never bored in Ghana. How could I be? I was living in Africa. I was surrounded by the most amazing colors, smells and foods. I had Ghanaian friends, and I had my students who often visited in the early evenings. I was an oddity being white.

Now, I don’t care if I am busy. I don’t care if my days are similar. I am enjoying being a sloth most days. Life is still filled with possibilities.