The day is wonderful. It is 74° which will be the high today. Tonight will go down to the mid 60’s, perfect for sleeping. It is breezy. Clouds are predicted but no rain. I have more house chores today. I seem to be on a cleaning frenzy. I hope it passes quickly.

When I was a kid, summer didn’t start on any date. It started when school ended. The last day of school was a half day. We returned text books, cleared out our desks and got our final report cards. When we were let loose, it was a cacophony of screaming, of pushing each other to get out the door. We’d run down the pathway papers in hand. We were filled with the joys of freedom and of summer hopes and expectations.

In Ghana, school holiday also started in June. Buses usually waiting in the lorry park to fill with passengers came to the school to pick up students heading south. Trunks were loaded on the tops of the buses. I remember students with their heads and arms out the windows screaming goodbyes. They were as joyful at the end of school as we always were. That was my time to travel, to explore more of Africa. Even now, so many decades later, it still amazes me to say explore more of Africa. I think my eleven year old self, the age I was when I vowed to travel, would be thrilled and pleased almost beyond measure.

I joined the drill team when I was ten or eleven. We learned our maneuver all winter in the armory upstairs, usually on a Tuesday evening. I got teased because I used to do a bit of homework when there was a break. I’d bring index cards filled with vocabulary or history I needed to learn. Summer was drill competition time. Our first contest was usually in mid June under the lights in Everett. I remember being a bit nervous when moving from the inspection line to the ready line. One year, the person standing beside me panicked. She said she couldn’t remember a single step because we were at the wrong end of the field. She meant in practice we started at the opposite end of the field. I told her everything looks different under the lights. She believed me. She had no trouble remembering.

My dance card is empty until Tuesday.

The rain is coming. The wind is cooler and getting stronger. The clouds are dark. It is a storm coming from the south. The rug is on the floor to protect my newly washed and polished kitchen floor, but I may have to shut the door to keep the rain out. This is a lazy time of day for the dogs who are lying on each side of me on the couch and are napping. I always envy my dogs.

My dog Duke was never allowed on furniture. He knew the rule, but he also knew out to get around the rule. He’d stretch his body across the beds but keep his back paws on the floor. He slept on the couch at night, but he jumped off if he heard someone coming down the stairs in the morning. Duke never got caught.

When I was a kid, the closer we got to the end of school, the more effort it took to pay attention. We had end of the year exams, but nothing really depended on them. We had a longing for summer.

I used to ride my bike to school more as the year ended. I left my bike in the bike rack. It was wooden, painted green and under the trees on one side of the schoolyard. It had a slot for each bike. No one locked their bikes. They weren’t fancy bikes back then. They had no gears. They had pedals with back brakes. I remember biking through sand and jamming on my brakes to slide on purpose. We used to attach playing cards, sometimes bent in half, to the spokes with spring clothespins. The cards made a flapping sound, a rhythmic sound as the wheels spun. I lived on a hill, and it took me a while before I could pedal the whole way. I used to get so tired I would stand up hoping to get more distance. I remember how the pedals got heavier and heavier, but I also remember the joy of triumph when I finally made it all the way.