Keep the Coffee Comimg

The morning is cloudy, dark and muggy. It is in the high 70’s where it will stay all day, but the breeze, luckily, is a strong one. It is coming from the south. There is a 59%’chance of a thunder shower later this afternoon. I do love thunder showers.

Summer rains are often gentle. When I was a kid, I’d stay outside in the rain. Getting wet was cooling, and my clothes dried quickly in the summer heat. I’d listen to the thunder and be amazed by the lightning. Thunder has a personality. Sometimes it rumbles while other times it cracks and seems to shake the house. My dogs don’t mind the thunder, but if it is loud, they check the ceiling. I once saw lightning hit the ground close to my house. It was jagged and looked like a kid’s drawing of what lightning should be. I sort of forgot myself in the excitement. I was standing under a metal overhang in the front of my house, but the lightning ignored me.

Some days just feel right. I felt that just about every summer day when I was a kid. I had no obligations, no chores and nothing I had to do except enjoy the day. At the playground, I had group tennis lessons a few mornings a week then my coach decided to give me individual lessons the other mornings. I loved tennis. I loved smashing the ball. The rackets were wooden. A wooden frame was attached to the rackets to store them and keep them from warping. The coach brought the rackets. My favorite had a red shaft. At the courts, the air was filled with the sounds of rackets hitting balls. It was a distinctive sound. During the day, I’d do crafts, play horseshoes and checkers. In the afternoons, after lunch, we had softball games against the other playgrounds. I was a pitcher and a first baseman. We won more than we lost. Every rainless summer day was filled with fun. I always slept well.

Last night I had a fluffernutter for dinner with extra crunchy peanut butter. I slathered the white bread with Marshmallow Fluff on one side and peanut butter on the other. The Fluff oozed a bit out the sides, but I caught it with my tongue. It was like keeping ice cream from melting down the cone. Both are feats at which kids excel.

I will be mostly lazy today. The only thing I need to do is vacuum. The balls of fur strewn about the floor are too many to ignore. I have noticed spider webs around the house, especially in the corners and joining one thing to another. I make sure the spiders are elsewhere before I clear the webs. My to-do list has nothing else.

The days are still delightful. Right now it is wonderfully sunny and morning cool at 73°. The nights have been in the high 50’s or low 60’s so sleep comes easily. I know the hot days of August are coming closer so I will revel in today.

On July 20th 1969, Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on the moon. It was televised, but I didn’t see it. I was in the middle of my Peace Corps training. It was live-in time. I was staying in Bawku with a Ghanaian family, my new family. My group was the smallest language group. We were learning Hausa. We met every day for lunch and more language instruction. On this day, in 1969, we ate lunch sitting around the radio listening to a reporter from the VOA, the Voice of America, describe the moon landing. We had to imagine. People were glued to their TV’s. They saw. We heard.

During my 2+ years in Ghana, the Peace Corps tried to keep us connected to what was happening at home. Every week they sent us the New York Times Week in Review. I read it, but the news seemed remote. My life was centered around learning a new language, adapting to living in a very different country, eating strange foods and fighting homesickness. The events were disconnected from my reality. I was in Africa. I shopped in the market every third day. I bought my chickens live. I hoped my eggs hadn’t been sat on by a hen. I hoped they were good eggs. I bought meat from the very dirty meat market sold by a man in an equally dirty apron. The meat was wrapped in banana leaves. I stopped noticing the dirt. It just was. My showers were always cold. Life was centered around my school where I lived and worked and my town. I lost track of the rest of the world. I was delighting in my new world.

My dance card is pretty much the same as last week’s. It is uke heavy.

Last night the rain was, at times, torrential. It drummed the metal top of the barbecue. The back door was open so the kitchen floor below it got soaked. The dogs looked out the door and back pedaled away from the rain. A lovely morning has followed the storm. It is sunny, and the sky is an amazing Crayola cerulean blue without a single cloud. It is 72°’, but a strong, intermittent breeze makes it feel cooler. Tonight will go down to the 50’s. Today is the best sort of a Cape Cod summer day.

Ukulele gets me out of the house. Without it I would be the consummate sloth. I have outside and inside clothes. Outside clothes are presentable. Inside clothes are comfortable and sometimes don’t match. I just grab whatever clothes are handy. That they often clash is no never mind. The dogs don’t care if they do. They are my only audience.

When I was a kid, I had to wear dresses or skirts to Sunday mass. I wore a uniform to school, a skirt and a blouse and regular shoes, not sneakers. The first thing I always did when I got home was put my school clothes away and put on my comfy clothes. In winter I wore girly jeans, ones where the zipper was in the front pocket, and a long sleeve jersey. I wore what once were white sneakers. They had pointed toes, the style back then. I was never a fan of going to mass and having to sort of dress up made it even a bit more miserable. In Ghana, I had to wear a dress every day. I had no really comfy clothes, but I didn’t mind. That was the custom, and my dresses were beautiful, made from native cloth, and dresses were cooler than pants.

I can’t even remember the last time I wore a dress. I used to wear one out to dinner every Easter. I have two spring like dresses, both with tiny flowers. They are in the back of my closet. I suspect they are quite wrinkled. I can’t think of a time when I’ll have to wear them again.

Sunday dinners were always my favorite meals of the week. They were special even on an ordinary Sunday. My mother always served a roast. She’d stuff the chicken. She’d place pieces of onion on the top of the roast beef. I usually tried to steal a piece of that onion. Her mashed potatoes seldom had any lumps. She’d serve them with a big melting piece of butter in the middle. When I’d get my potatoes, the melted butter would ooze down the side, and I’d fill the serving spoon with those butter covered potatoes. A pile of peas finished out my plate.

On my dance card is a uke concert tomorrow, Tuesday and Wednesday and my usual practice and lesson. It is a big outside clothes week.

The morning is delightful. It is breezy, sunny and cool at 72°. I had to shut the window behind me because the breeze felt a bit chilly. The high today will only be 80°. Tonight the temperature will go down to 61°. That’s light blanket and snuggle with the dogs weather.

I have to do a few house chores. The fur tumbleweeds are back and the plants need watering. I’d make my bed, but I suspect I’ll nap later. I went to bed in the wee hours but woke up early anyway. I enjoy the single digit late night hours when my house is the only one alive, the only one with lights, but I also enjoy the early mornings when the birds are singing and everything else is quiet, a conundrum of sorts.

I was young when we spent a Saturday on a lake with our neighbors, Janet and Buddy. Around the lake was grassy. I remember at one end of the lake was a snack bar with window service. With two families we were many so we settled at a couple of picnic tables beside each other. They were the closest tables to the water. The lake had a slide into the water and one of those old time pulley zip lines with a stick which you held to with your hands while gravity moved you. My brother and I went down the slide over and over. It was so much fun when the slide shot us into the water. My father did the pulley line and held on to the stick until almost the end of the line when he dropped into the water. Janet, our neighbor, was a big woman. She decided to try the zip line. We and just about everyone else watched her. Janet grabbed the stick, jumped off from the land and promptly fell into the lake. It was not pretty. A plume of water like a waterspout shot up when she hit the lake. She disappeared for a bit then resurfaced. She was fine. The crowd was entertained. I can still picture the moment she hit the water. For an unknown reason, this one day, this small event, has been tucked into my memory drawers for a long while. I always find it strange what stays.

I am sitting in the dark trying to keep the heat at bay. It is already 80°. The morning haze has disappeared. The sky is blue. The air is quite still. It is a quiet morning. The dogs are napping. Henry still limps, but he is no longer in pain. He is back to himself. He does his usual circles waiting for me to open the door. He jumps up and down while waiting for his food. He smiles again.

Strangers talk to one another in lines at the supermarket, and the weather always starts the conversations. It is a safe conversation starter. On Tuesday a woman at the nurse practitioner’s office, a woman I was just meeting, mentioned to be that this heat is better than shoveling snow. She was quite old, older than I am anyway, so I figured she was speaking proverbially. I doubt she ever shovels. I mentioned I preferred the winter mostly because it is easier to get warm than it is to cool down on a hot day. That was the entirety of our conversation. My father always said there was something about me which invited conversations. He didn’t see that as a compliment. It is no coincidence that when learning a new language, any language, the first things we learn are the conversations, the hellos, the how are you’s, the ice breakers. In Ghana, language was often an impediment to conversations, but when I used Hausa to greet people, I got smiles and responses. The Ghanaians were always surprised a white woman could speak Hausa.

When I was growing up, families were mostly the same with multiple kids, fathers who worked and mothers who stayed home. Just about everybody had only one car, the family car, which fathers drove to work every day. My mother didn’t learn to drive until we moved to the cape where driving is a necessity as nothing was close, and there wasn’t any public transportation. We became a two car family.

A couple of summers, I went to Girl Scout day camp. It was at the scout cabin in the woods, Camp Aleska. I waited on the corner for the camp bus. I brought my own lunch. The days started the same, raising the flag at the morning ceremonies where we sang and recited the scout pledge. The days were filled with activities. The cabin was surrounded by trees, mostly pine trees and the air smelled amazing. Below the cabin was a wide trail where we hiked. It was always shaded by the boughs of the giant pines. Two mornings a week we took swimming lessons at the town pool. I already knew how to swim, but we had to go. Many days we did crafts, some using pine cones we salvaged from the woods. We made popsicle stick crafts. We used Elmer’s glue to keep the sticks together. The glue clumped, and, sometimes my fingers got stuck to one another. We learned to make some campfire foods, like hobo stew which we cooked over the charcoal fire pit. I loved hobo stew. The days always ended with us lowering the flag and folding it until the next day.

I have an empty dance card today and tomorrow. On Saturday I have a full day of uke, lessons all afternoon from a well-known ukulele player, Jim Beloff, and a concert in the evening by him. I can’t remember the last time I had a full day of anything.

Hot! Hot! Hot! It is already 83°. For some that is relief, but for us, it is too hot for July. It will stay hot the rest of the week and may hit 90° on Thursday. Idleness is the best way to spend the days, to do nothing but sit down, drink something icy and read.

I remember when I was eleven and made the vow to travel. Though I didn’t know anyone who traveled much out of New England, I knew I would. It wasn’t a hope but an expectation. Once afternoon I spent the day at Logan Airport just watching the planes. In those days the roof of the terminals was an observation spot. The planes were all props, and I remember how much the props spun. I’d watch the planes in the sky until they were too far away to see. I knew one day I would be on one of those planes looking out the window watching the land disappear. My first books were Golden Books. My mother read them to me. She’d point out everything in all the pictures and ask me what they were. Mostly they were animals, baby animals. Some animals wore clothes. Hats were big. I remember Chicken Little in a straw hat wearing a shawl with lace. The animals talked, regular conversations. My mother read me nursery rhymes. Humpty Dumpy was also wearing clothes. I remember his yolk on the sidewalk after his fall off the wall. It made perfect sense to me that all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put him back together again. Jack and Jill fell down the hill. The baby in its cradle fell down after the bough broke. The snoring old man woke up and hit his head. Goosey Goosey Gander threw an old man down the stairs. The nursery rhymes were dark, but I really didn’t notice. It was the rhyming I loved, the sounds of the words. I learned new words like Jack’s crown was his head, a bough is a branch and a lady’s chamber is her bedroom.

I moved on to fairy tales. I wanted the goose Jack stole from the giant, the one that laid golden eggs. Like Hansel and Gretel, I’d push the witch into the over so she wouldn’t eat me. Rumplestiltskin is still a favorite. Disney cartoons had me reading Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. I really loved the witch with her poison apples. She was scary and had all those warts.

My first real books were classics. My mother read us Robinson Crusoe. I imagined living alone on a deserted island. It piqued my sense of adventure. To see footprints in the sand would have been mysterious but amazing. The Bobbsey Twins were easy to read. They came from a rich family and traveled. They had hired help, Dinah and Sam. In the first books, they spoke in a dialect I had trouble reading. The twins solved mysteries. I loved the mysteries. I remember riding the school bus and reading Little Women, a Christmas present. My mother gave me the best Christmas presents. I read all the Little Women, Little Men stories. Books do that. They lead to more books. How wonderful that is.

The morning is already 79°. It is also humid, but we do have a strong breeze spinning the air. Regrettably, today is the start of a really hot spell. We’ll get into the high 80’s and, by Wednesday, the low 90’s, uncommonly hot for July here. I am so glad I now have a fan.

Henry is still limping, but he seems to be in less pain. He gets his pills and spray twice a day. I hide the pills in food, but he tolerates the direct spray. Yesterday he did his usual barking at the door, and he slept on the couch beside me for a while last night, all Henry things he hadn’t been doing. The vet did say the limp could take as long as five weeks before it goes away.

When I was a kid, my world was filled with so much to do. My neighborhood was a kid’s paradise. In the summer, the small field of grass below the hill near my house got high. It always turned brown. It was filled with small grasshoppers. I remember chasing them and trying to catch them in my hands. I also remember the brown guck they’d leave on my hands. We thought it was grasshopper poop. We never kept the grasshoppers. It was the hunt and chase we loved. The summer swamp was spotted with algae and had sewing needle bugs flitting across the water. We thought they’d sew our eyes. Trees surrounded the swamp on three sides. On the longest side, a small canal led further into the woods. I don’t know why, but I never looked for the end of those woods and how far the swamp went.

Blueberry bushes along a hill path filled with berries. We never collected them but rather ate them off the bushes. They were big, juicy berries.

What sticks out in my memory is the trunk of a dead tree with one branch still connected to the tree but lying on the ground. It was beside the end of the path to the swamp. We never walked around the limb on the path but climbed over it instead. Kids always take the most interesting way, not the easiest.

My favorite summer lunch back then was a bologna sandwich. My mother bought bologna in a roll so I had to cut it into slices, and I never cut it well. It was usually thin on one side and thick on the other. We always had Wonder Bread which was so soft it sort of fitted around the slices so you could see the lumps. I slathered the meat with yellow mustard. I had to hold the sandwich with both hands.

On my dance card this week are my usual uke events, a concert on the Hyannis green tonight and one in Brewster on Wednesday with songs of the sea music. I have my practice and my lesson. The special event is this Saturday, the Uke Fest with two lesson workshops and an evening concert. It is a busy week.

Yesterday morning I dropped Henry off for x-rays on his leg. The house was quiet while he was gone, no barking and no nails clip clopping on the floor. Nala and I slept while he was gone. I was able to pick him up at 2:15. The vets told me they could find only some swelling in the soft tissue. She said he didn’t even limp while he was there. He was also tested for Lyme disease, but we won’t know until next week. Right now he seems to be comfortable and is sleeping on the couch. He is taking pain pills and is getting a spray for his infection.

When I was a kid, we did mostly day trips for vacation. Going away was rare as it was expensive, but we did have one memorable vacation, to Niagara Falls. We got to stay in motels for the first time. We ate in restaurants or at McDonald’s. While at the falls, we had some excursions. We dressed in those ugly yellow slickers and walked under the falls. That walk was a historical thing, a family thing, as my father had taken the same walk with his parents and his two sisters. They even dressed in the same sort of slicker. I remember laughing at getting sprayed by the water. It was exhilarating. My favorite memory is about my father and Madame Toussauds’ Wax Museum. He went up to the wax teller and told her 4 adults and two children. He was ignored so he told her a second time, much louder the second time. Two old ladies were sitting on a bench watching and laughing. When he realized the teller was wax, my father was totally embarrassed. I loved it. There was a chamber of horrors at that museum. It was wonderfully bloody and macabre. It was my favorite part, after my father of course.

We went home through New York staying one night on the shore of Lake Ontario. I walked to the lake shore and remember watching a tiny wave hit the shoreline. It just seemed so small, used as I was to the ocean, but I hadn’t expect to see even a small wave on the shore of a lake. My father decided to drive home through the night. My mother was not happy. The four of us slept the whole way home. I suspect my mother might have napped as well. We arrived home in the wee hours, my father exhausted and my mother grumpy.

The heat is on. It has returned today and will hang around a few days. The humidity is at 76%. This afternoon we will have a rain storm which will morph into a heavy thunderstorm, but, for now, we have sun.

Henry has been limping for a few days. I knew he had to go to the vets, but I just didn’t have the money. I arranged to get some and off we went. Henry got checked, and it was decided he needs an x-ray. That will be tomorrow. Meanwhile, he is in pain so they gave him an ejection and he’ll start taking pain pills today. Also, he has a yeast infection. I won’t even describe his reaction to the spray on his groin. It wasn’t pretty. I am still aghast at the cost so far, and they have yet to diagnosis him.

This is the final installment of staging, the first step in Peace Corps training. My friends and I ditched a few sessions and did the tourist bit in Philadelphia. We went to the Museum of Art and pre-dated Rocky on the steps. We immersed ourselves in history, Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. We went to the top of the William Penn Building. On one of the last nights, the psychologist I mentioned invited a few of us to dinner. It was a loud, fun evening and a last hurrah of sorts. The night before I left I called my parents to say good-bye. My mother cried. It broke my heart. I told her I would write almost immediately as I had no way to let her know I had arrived safely. I spoke to my father. We took a long time to say good-bye.

The next morning we left. Think about 120+ people with 80 pounds of luggage each and loading buses. It took a while. I remember the excitement. It was palpable. We boarded a TWA charter. The plane was full. I don’t know why, but I remember I sat towards the back. We flew over the cape. I remember the arm jutting into the sea and the water sparkling. Later, we had some food and many drinks. I think the drink cart was in perpetual motion. The film they showed was The Love Bug. That insignificant detail has stayed in my memory drawers all these years. We stopped in Madrid for refueling and a new crew. When we got back on-board, my seat belt was jammed, another strange memory which still hangs round 57 years later. After we flew out, the drinks began again before dinner two or three. We flew over the Sahara. I still remember the view.

We were exhausted when we arrived in Accra, but the excitement was greater. I remember walking out the plane door into the brightest sun. It was hot. The air smelled lush, of greenery. In the airport, we were greeted by Peace Corps and a Ghanaian official. We listened to the welcomes and had a libation of hot Fanta, the orange one. We then loaded the luggage and took off in buses. I snapped a few pictures of kiosks along the roadway and women in colorful cloth. I then promptly fell asleep and missed the long ride to Winneba, our first training site. What I remember most about arriving is the awe. I was in Africa.

I have a concert today.

We had a couple of days of rain then came the perfect day. Today, though, is hot at 84° with humidity making the day uglier. I have a new fan, a gift from my sister, so let the heat can come.

I have lived alone for most of my life. I’ve been mostly okay with that, but there are times I am lonely for conversation. I talk to my dogs, but they just listen. It is not a conversation but rather a soliloquy. I’d be gobsmacked if they talked back to me. When I do call people, I really don’t have anything spectacular to talk about. Mostly I just chit-chat about my days, unexciting as they are. The other day I chatted to my friend Peg about my uke events for the week and going to the dump. I added a bit of excitement to the narration by talking about how crowded the dump was. She listened patiently. We usually discuss the weather. She lives in New Hampshire so the weather is different, an exciting edge to the conversation. She tells me about her garden. I am always envious of her flowers and her vegetables. We talk doctors. Never did I envision that doctors would ever be part of any conversation of mine.

I left you at Logan the other day when I told you about the start of my Peace Corps journey so let me continue. I got to my seat in the plane and tried to put away everything I had carried with me. My seatmate wanted to know if I was running away from home. When I told him I was going into the Peace Corps, he bought me a drink. In Philadelphia I shared a cab to the hotel with another volunteer hopeful. I had seen some guy surrounded by luggage and asked. We were at the hotel Sylvania. I checked into the hotel, left my luggage then checked in with Peace Corps. I gave them my missing information and received my packet with the schedule and some per diem. I met people in line who over time would become good friends. It all started that evening. We met the staff, heard about Ghana, got an overview of the week and felt overwhelmed. Scheduled were lectures, slide shows, a one on one with a shrink of some sort, a dental checkup and a yellow fever shot. We were given addresses and had to find our way to the dentists assigned to each of us. Mine was a bus ride or two away. It was the same with the yellow fever shot.

I took some time alone by the fire escape and read an evening or two. I decompressed. I saw a movie I don’t remember. I do remember walking back to the hotel. I loved the interview with the psychologist. He worked at BU. He had a huge book of what he needed to ask and observe and gave it to me to read a bit. He walked me to the elevator, put his arm around my shoulder and said Africans liked big women.

That’s the end of today’s installment. There is only a bit more before our flight to Ghana.