Today is a dreary day, a damp, foggy day. Yesterday it rained, and everything is still wet. The forecast is for a warm day, a 60° day, and I’m hopeful. I did have a wonderful surprise, a spring surprise, when I went to get the papers. It drove the dreariness away. My hyacinths have bloomed. The garden has pink, purple and lilac flowers. This morning my garden is a delight.

My father always planted flowers in the small garden in front of the picture window by the front door. Usually they were pansies. They looked like a Disney cartoon, a musical with singing and dancing pansies. All the flowers have faces and are wearing bonnets. Their colors are bright yellow, purple, pink and blue. They have skinny legs. They have high pitched, squeaky voices and sing of spring.

Yesterday morning was busy. I had my uke lesson, went to the dump and shopped at Agway. Yesterday afternoon I took a nap. As for today, my dance card is empty.

I always think of winter as stubborn, resolute maybe, and quiet. Spring is loud. The mornings are filled with bird songs. Yards are being spring cleaned to the sounds of mowers and leaf blowers. They always start early in the morning. The kids down the street wake from their winter hibernation. They shoot baskets at the hoop in their front yard. I can hear the bounces of the basketball on the street and the kids’ voices when they score. The younger kids ride their bikes up and down the street. The drabness of winter disappears. The gardens scream color.

I love when I can open the windows to let the sweet spring air blow away the stale air of winter. The house smells clean and new.

When I shop this time of year, I always buy yellow dafs, the harbingers of spring. They brighten the kitchen and the den, the two rooms where I spend the most time.

Spring is sweatshirt weather. The jackets and fleece are put away for another year. Even on a coldish day I won’t go back to winter garb. Corduroy has had its season. I’m wearing sneakers instead of my winter Uggs. Yesterday it was my tie-dye Converse high tops.

This morning I’m wearing sandals and socks but in the house where only I can see them. I always think of socks with sandals as an odd combination. The socks are winter and the sandals are summer. The wearer should pick one or the other.

Though it may be a cloudy day, it is warm, 59°, and it may hit 60°. Spring is in the air today. It is sweatshirt weather.

When I was a kid, I lived in the same town where I was born. We lived in a duplex in the project. The project was loaded with kids, a few my age but most around my sisters’ ages. There was a parking lot at the top of the hill, but no one parked there so we used to skate on the empty lot. Back then my skates were attached to my shoes and tightened with a key. I never wore sneakers when roller skating because the skates didn’t stayed attached to the sneaker sides. I used to love the feeling on the soles of my feet through my shoes when I skated on the tar in the lot. Sometimes I was brave enough to skate down the sidewalk from the top of the hill to my house, halfway down the hill, but if I went too fast, I’d get scared and throw myself on the grass beside the sidewalk, but once in a while, despite my heroic efforts, I’d fall on the sidewalk. I’d scrape my knees or my elbows or both.

When I was young, I’d eat things I’d never eat now, and now I eat things I’d never have touched back then. Sardines roil my stomach if I see them now in the open can side by side head to tail. The idea that they were a go to snack for me gives me the chills. I’d munch them on Saltines. On Fridays during Lent we didn’t eat meat. On some Fridays we’d have formerly frozen fish sticks and fries. I remember the crispy fish sticks were white inside. I have no idea the sort of white fish they were, and I don’t remember their taste. I don’t eat frozen fish now. I can’t even remember the last time I did.

My palate expanded, especially in Ghana. I ate goat, fish with heads, hummus, Guinea fowl, Indian food and local foods like cassava, garden eggs and plantain. On my trip through South America, I ate ceviche and in Ecuador I ate what I found out later was guinea pig. In Finland I just pointed at the food I wanted as I didn’t speak Finnish, and the second language there is Swedish. Most of the time my eyes chose well.

If you’ve been around a while, you know I don’t beans except green beans which aren’t really beans to me. I find kidney beans disgusting. Even the name is disgusting. Baked beans, nope. Lima beans are gross. My chili never has beans. Retired beans look like something expelled by a baby at one end or the other. I don’t even sing the bean song.

The sunny day today and the pretty day today are wrapped by the cold day today. Right now it is 46°, but it’s a cold 46° driven by the wind. I had to close the backdoor as the wind was coming through the dog door. Today is what passes for early spring on Cape Cod.

When I was a kid, we used to cross the field below my street as a shortcut to school. I’m not sure it was much of a shortcut, but it was a straighter route. I remember crossing the field on windy days. The wind went up the cuffs of my coat and billowed my sleeves. We’d spread out our arms and let the wind take us. It felt like flying. We giggled the whole time.

The best of the early spring was the morning. The darkness had disappeared. We walked in the light. The air was crisp and smelled of grass and flowers. The birds sang. We always talked in whispers. We’d get to school and wait in the schoolyard. We stood in small groups. Girls were on one side, and boys were on the other. The bell would ring, and we’d all quietly get in line then walk into the building. In the Harry Potter film The Deadly Hallows Part 2, there is a scene where all the students walked in lines to the hall and stood there quietly while they were confronted by Snape in his hunt for Harry. The first time I saw that scene, I was reminded of our lines and the quiet and the nuns in their Snape roles. They even wore black.

The desks in my first few grades didn’t have tops to be lifted. Everything was stored in the opening at the end of the desk facing me. To find anything, I had to bend my head down so I could see into the hole. Often I had to move a book or two to get the book I needed. Speed was of the essence. We were being watched.

Our lunch boxes were stored under our seats. In the early grades I had lunch boxes with TV characters on them. I still have my Mickey Mouse Club lunch box. In the fourth grade, I went to patterns. It was a linear change governed by age. I remember my fourth grade lunch box looked like a tartan. In the sixth grade I started carrying a brown paper lunch bag, the ultimate in lunch time sophistication. I used the brown bags until I graduated from the eighth grade.

Today is a bit of a nothing day, a prime sloth day. I haven’t anywhere I need to be. I have nothing needing doing. I’ll stay in my cozies. I’m hankering for a cup of hot chocolate though I always still think of it as cocoa.

“Rain, Rain, go away. Come again another day.” Today is ugly. It is windy, dark and rainy. I got wet when I went to get the paper. I wore my sandals instead of my slipper socks. It is the warmest day in a while, a wasted warm day. It is already 52° and will get a bit warmer. I will look longingly out the den window.

My mother loved April Fool’s Day. She got my sister every year even though my sister knew it was coming. She always called me and gave it a try, but I was wary because my mother was slick and believable. She was the April Fool’s Day master.

I have no lists for today, nothing on my dance card. My house is cozy against the rain. I’m wearing my flannel pants, slipper socks and my Red Sox sweatshirt, my red one.

I have stuff to iron. The wrinkled clothes have been sitting around for a while in piles both upstairs and downstairs. My iron is well over forty years old. It was a house warming present back in the day when most stuff needed ironing. I used to set up the board in my den so I could watch TV while I ironed. The original board is gone. I don’t remember where, but I do have an antique wooden board I bought to use outside on the deck as a serving board. I also a small portable board. Neither board has been used for ironing in years, maybe eons.

When I was a kid, I would have hated the rain today. Saturday was my day to roam. I rode everywhere. I remember the horses in the pasture on Green Street. I used to ride through the woods, up the hill and pass the water tower, the shortcut to get to the field. The horses always stopped by the fence so I could pat them. Once I thought to ride them bareback so I climbed the fence, but the horses wouldn’t come near me, a good thing given my penchant for falling. I used to bike to the zoo and walk my bike among the cages. I’d ride around Spot Pond toward the pool then up the hill to the square. I’d bike home in the late afternoon, plunk down in front of the TV and wait for supper, for the official, universal Saturday night supper of hot dogs, beans and brown bread from the can.

Today is another lovely day, sunny and bright and warmer than yesterday but still a bit chilly. Showers are predicted for later. Nala was out for a long time earlier lying in the sun in the backyard. She has a favorite spot. Henry’s favorite spot is my bed.

I think spring is taking hold of me. I’m doing the oddest chores. Yesterday I went through my Bolga baskets and cleared a few things. I cleaned the shelves in the fridge and tossed out of date condiments, some really old condiments. I polished odd spots here in the den and moved stuff around to make the room look less cluttered. Now the clutter is still here but mostly hidden. I’ll make maps.

When I was young, I believed in holiday magic. I never questioned rabbits laying eggs. I never thought about the Easter Bunny delivering all those baskets. If I had given any thought to it, I think the magic would have disappeared. We colored eggs. We hunted for them when I was really young. Once I found the golden egg. We went shopping for Easter clothes. When I was little, I dressed up in fluffy dresses, white gloves, patent leather shoes and hats with ribbons. We all wore about the same outfit. I think it was sort of a little girl’s Easter uniform back then.

My Easter basket had green grass on the bottom. It stuck to candy I’d started eating but put back into the basket to save for later. We always got a chocolate rabbit. The ears went first. The jelly beans were big. I think they all tasted the same. We got those hard giant looking eggs with white middles. They were strewn in the grass with the jelly beans. Peeps, yellow Peeps, were in the basket too. They were still mushy. We’d get a new stuffed animal and a coloring book and crayons. I remember getting a yo-yo once which I never mastered. I got Jacks. My mother taught me the game. She was unbeatable.

Easter dinner was ham with mashed potatoes and vegetables, probably peas and corn and maybe asparagus for my dad. My mother decorated the table with a paper tablecloth, and we used paper napkins. I thought the table was always beautiful.

In the afternoon, we usually went to my grandparents’ house in East Boston. The tribe was there. My grandmother always gave us Easter treats, and if we bothered my grandfather, he’d send us away with a dime, big money back then.

I haven’t bought Easter clothes in too many years to remember the last time. I have a spring looking dress with flowers, and I’ve worn that out to dinner. I also have an Easter fascinator. It is a round white hat with a flowered border around the middle. It has multi-colored feathers stuck in that border. Every time I have worn it to dinner, it gets noticed, for good reason!

The morning is damp and overcast. Last right it rained, and it will rain again today. It is in the low 40’s, but the dampness gives a chill to the air. I need a few groceries so I’ll venture out later. Bread tops the list.

When I was a kid, I thought bread only came in white. The bread was soft, and jelly used to soak through. I could take a small bit of the bread and roll it into a ball for throwing. I suppose it was Wonder Bread, the favorite back then. I liked it toasted best.

Today is a muse-less day. I seemed to be stuck. I even washed a little of the inside of the fridge this morning and threw away some expired bottles of pickles. It looked as if I was collecting gherkins.

I remember a few pictures in my geography books. One was of a man harvesting coffee beans. He could have been Juan Valdez’s grandfather. The other was of Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado Mountain in Rio. I remember it was huge, and his arms were straight out. That geography book was a book of dreams and hopes.

On my first full day in Ghana, I took a picture from the second floor of the dorm where I was sleeping. The picture is of palm trees and the tops of family compounds. In the forefront of the picture is a bush with red flowers. Beside the bush is a small paved road which ended in a dirt rut. One house is under construction. I used to send my film home to be developed as there was no place in Ghana to do that. My parents got the first look at my slides. I suspect they didn’t find this slide all that interesting, but to me, it was a picture of a new world, one I hadn’t imagined, one with exotic palm trees. The houses all had tin roofs. Everywhere was green. That picture and the bus picture of us heading to the airport are favorite pictures. One was leaving for Africa; the other was arriving.

The morning is lovely. It is already 50°. The air is still. The sky is clear blue, and the sun is bright, strong. As for today, I have no plans. My dance card is empty. I don’t even have any chores. My house is clean, and, ta da, my laundry is done.

When I was a kid, my mother had the wringer type washing machine. It was in the cellar. She had no dryer. She hung the laundry on the line in the backyard. I remember winter wash on the line. It froze straight out. On warmer days, I remember seeing my sisters walking between the white sheets, and I can still hear my mother yelling.

My mother always used the same big pan to cook turkey. It was blue with small white dots. I can close my eyes and see the browning bird in that pan on the oven rack. I remember my mother pulling out the rack to baste the bird. She always ate a small piece of the crusted stuffing.

I still have friends from my childhood. They live in my old town. We go back as far back as grammar school. One friend and I went to the same grammar school, high school and college. We don’t see each other often, my old friends and I, but that’s okay between friends. Distance in time means little.

I still have a pair of saddle shoes. I found them in a small shoe store piled with shoe boxes on every wall. The owner was an old man who knew exactly what was in every box. In Harry Potter, Mr. Olivander’s wand store reminded me of that shoe store.

My father used to tell us scary stories. He introduced us to the man with the hook. In my dad’s story, a couple was sitting in their car in the woods when they heard on the radio that a patient with a hook had escaped from a hospital. He never told us why the couple was in the woods or that the hook man had escaped from a mental hospital. He told us out the couple got scared by the news and left. When they got home, they found the hook was hanging from the door handle of their car. That story scared the heck out of me.

Today is a lovely day. The sun is bright in a deep blue sky, but clouds are predicted for later. The high will be 55°. Last night it rained for a short while and got chilly from the dampness. That’s the way it is this time of year: a warmish day and a chilly night.

The garden is in spring mode. The tips of the daylilies are taller. The dafs are closer to blooming. Even the pebbly looking tops of the purple hyacinths have appeared in the front garden. Every day we’re closer to a riot of colors, to sweeter smelling air.

Today will be a quiet day, a stay at home day. I have a couple of chores to ignore. I have a new book to read. Nothing else needs my attention.

Sunday mornings remind me of my dad. He was up early to go to mass as he was an usher, the basket passer. I used to go with him sometimes. He’d smile at me when I’d throw my dime into his basket. We’d go get donuts after mass. When I was older and lived on the cape, I’d visit for the weekend. My dad would make breakfast. He always used the cast iron frying pan. He always made fried eggs, easy over, and crispy bacon.

In Ghana, every place you stay gives you breakfast. Usually it is eggs, toast and bad coffee. Sometimes they’d be a bowl of fruit and maybe porridge. In the Peace Corps hostel, we got corn flakes first. In Bolga, it was the usual. Only one place actually served real coffee and milk. That was in Beyin on the coast at the far western side of Ghana, near the border with Cote d’Ivoire. The hotel was right on the water. Sand and palm trees were all that was between my room and the ocean. The owner used a French press. Milk was in a small pitcher. I was in heaven.