The humidity is oppressive. The air is so damp every surface feels a bit wet. A slight breeze just pushes around the thick air. The house is dark. Unsurprisingly, rain is predicted. It is 74° making the air feel a bit chilly. Tonight will again go down into the 60’s. June’s weather is quirky.

The dogs and I have a morning ritual. When I stir, they greet me with kisses. They get pats and scratches then leave to wait for me on the stairs. If I don’t come, they return to bed. If I do, we all go downstairs where they wait at the door for me to open it. I put the coffee on and get the newspaper. Yes, I still read the newspaper. I love reading it and doing all the word puzzles. When they are done outside, Henry waits at the door for me to open it, and Nala strolls in on her own. They get treats, a dog biscuit each and one other small treat. I take my coffee to the den and read the paper. The dogs nap. There is comfort in rituals.

I found The Mona Lisa disappointing. She was dark and tiny. David was impressive, every part of him. I was amazed to walk inside Notre Dame, but I was dazzled by the walls of stained glass windows in Sainte-Chapelle. They were jaw dropping. I had dinner at the Eiffel Tower. The views of the city from every window were amazing. Though the show was all in French, I enjoyed the music. It was winter when I arrived in Rio. Copacabana Beach was desolate. I took two cable cars to the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain in Brazil. From the top I could see the city and beyond. I remember seeing a submarine heading toward the harbor. Christ the Redeemer on Corcovado Mountain was exactly as I had hoped. It was the picture in my geography book of the back of the statue with its arms extended. The statue stood at the top of a tall mountain from which you could see Sugarloaf and the city spread below.

Africa never disappointed me. I think it was because I didn’t know what to expect, and everything I saw was like nothing I had ever seen before. The first morning after my arrival I stood outside my room on the second floor and could see the ocean, palm trees and family compounds with rusted metal roofs and smoke rising above them. I heard sounds I couldn’t identify. I could smell the thick greenery. Everything felt unreal, almost dreamlike. I stood there for a while taking in the first of what would be the most amazing experiences in my life.

The weather is perfect. It is 79° and sunny, but the breeze is strong and cooling. The leaves seem to dance, a gyration, a spinning up and down. The nights have been perfect for sleeping, down to the 60’s. If I could control the weather, this is the day I’d make.

I have a black and white picture of me standing against a tree. I remember it was taken the summer we vacationed on Islesboro, Maine. We stayed in a secluded house close to the water. There was a short pier and a rowboat upside down on the sea grass. I was ten. The angle of the picture makes me look tall, exaggeratedly tall. I am wearing shorts, a blouse and a visor, a white visor. I wore that visor every day that summer. I loved it. I wore it everywhere, inside and outside, which is strange as I never really liked hats. Having to go to church was painful enough but having to wear a hat to go made it even worse. Perfect irony is I now have a hat collection, and I have several baseball type caps. I think of those caps as the ancestors of my visor.

I have seen so many wonders. When I was a kid, the wonders came every day. I remember walking to school and seeing small sheets of thin ice over puddles. Crystals shined from the ice. Sometimes I could see the reflection of the sun, blurred and small. In the winter, the dew froze on the grass. I loved the cracking sound when I walked across the lawn, across my father’s lawn. The colors of the trees in fall were amazing, red and yellow and orange. We ironed the leaves in wax paper to preserve the color. I’d cut the paper around the leaves to use as bookmarks. They were forever fall. The sidewalk on the way to school was overhung with branches. I remember the buds of the leaves at the start of spring sprouting from those branches. They were furled. I watched the buds grow into tiny leaves then get big enough to shadow the sidewalk. The murmuring of voices on summer nights carried from house to house. I’d sit on my back steps and listen. They sounded almost ethereal.

I have seen many wonders in my travels, but I expected to see them. It is the unexpected which still stops me to look, to hold and to wonder. Wow is all I can say when the sky at sunset is covered with reds, oranges and pinks. The colors seem to dazzle. Morning fog draws me to the deck. Birds singing to greet the day still makes me smile.

I am glad I still see the miracles of every day.