The sun is bright, the sky blue and the small breeze refreshing. I woke up from my hibernation just before noon. I had gone to bed when morning light was making its appearance. Nala woke me up. She was at the bottom of the bed crying. I figured she wanted out so I dragged myself out of bed and opened the door. She ran outside. Speaking of Nala, I did guess that the mouse motel trap which had gone missing from the kitchen had been stolen by Nala. I ventured another guess and figured a mouse was inside when Nala saw it so she took the whole trap to the yard. She knows to hide her swag. I was going to look for the trap, but it rained for a few days and then I forgot. Last night it reappeared in the hall. It was dirty inside and out. One end was partially opened and the plastic on the bottom of that end door had been chewed. I think it was the mouse trying for freedom, but I’ll never know its fate.

This is one of those where is my muse days. I’m watching a video of a street market walk in Accra. These are local markets, and every day is market day. It is loud, a babel of voices. Most are speaking Twi or Fante. Tables line the sidewalks. Aunties are selling their merchandise. If you want yams, rice, tomatoes, fruit, onions, ginger, carrots, cloth, pots and pans, clothes, baskets, buckets, palm oil, kenkey, canned mackerel, spaghetti, peppers and so much more you can shop at any table after table selling the exact same goods. Mostly women walk in the small spaces between the tables while carrying goods or buckets on their heads. Cars are carefully driven in the streets made narrow by the tables on each side of the road. In another market the tables are three deep along the sides of the railroad tracks. Goats are sleeping between the tracks. The train doesn’t run there any more. People are rummaging through piles of used clothes. When I lived in Ghana, they called the clothes obroni wawu, translated as dead white man’s clothes.

I have a busy uke week. I also need to do a dump run, vacuum the upstairs, wash floors and polish furniture so dusty I could sell advertising space on it. I think I just saw my sloth walk down the driveway with a suitcase in her paw.

The day is perfectly lovely. It is 80° with a strong breeze from the north. The den is dark and cool. This is a busy week for me with ukulele just about every day, four concerts, practice and a lesson.

I found a book in the back of my bedroom bookcase. Finding it was happenstance as I was looking for something else. The book, Dorothy Lamour and the Haunted Lighthouse, had been a stocking stuffer. What made this book special was its publishing date, 1947, the year I was born. The book was published by Whitman Publishing, the company in which I invested my weekly 50¢ allowance when I bought mystery books like Trixie Belden and Donna Parker. I started reading my find. The book is dated but readable. The pages have yellowed.

My father used to tell us stories. They involved men with hooks instead of hands and things that go bump in the night. I was not so much frightened as wary. A strange noise in the house gave me pause. I listened but nothing ever came of it. The wind banging against the windows had my imagination running wild, andI was alert for one of those things that go bump in the night, but I never saw anything. When I walked home in the dark, my footsteps echoed on the sidewalk, and, just in case, I would check behind me. No one was ever there. At some point, when I was older, I didn’t notice the sounds anymore. I didn’t look for shadows. I stopped being wary.

I still have a strong imagination. My coffee maker is a Black and Decker. You lift up the top to add the coffee grounds and the water. When the top is up, it looks just like Darth Vader’s helmet, black and with the same shape. The good thing is it doesn’t talk or make breathing sounds.