Last night it rained, and I missed it. I am a lover of rain. A metal barrel holding the birdseed is outside my den window. The rain taps the top of the barrel. It plinks in a small rain but sounds like drums or thunder in a heavy rain. My house in Ghana had a metal roof. During the rainy season a soft rain sounded like small pebbles hitting the roof. A heavy rain was tremendous, loud and overwhelming. I’d sit in my living room and just listen to the music of the rain.

When I was a kid, I always got wet walking to school in the rain, mostly my shoes and my hair got soaked. My coat, not a raincoat but a long coat, covered the rest of me. My shoes sometimes bubbled at the toes. My hair dried faster. I loved school on a rainy day. The classroom was lit by hanging pendant lights but was still shadowy, dark in places. I liked to watch the rain hit the tall windows, windows so tall only a hook on a long stick could reach to open or close them. When the windows were closed, the rain drops would roll down from the top until they disappeared. I watched covertly.

A spawn of Satan has pushed one of my clay pots to the deck where it broke. It is a grey spawn who dines al fresco at a long feeder. He eats upside down. I always wish I had a slingshot. To think, when I was a kid, I loved feeding the squirrels in the Public Garden. They came right up to us to get the peanuts we had bought. We squealed in delight. I was young, naive.

Many of the appliances in my house have reached the pinnacles of their lives. My washing machine was the first to go to its proverbial heavenly reward. I started leaving my clothes at the laundromat to be washed and dried. The other day I decided to hand wash some clothes as the bags of dirty clothes were filled and towering. I brought the clean clothes to the dryer. I checked in a while. They were still wet. It took three long cycles before they dried. My dryer is dying. My fridge too needs help. It doesn’t stay cold enough. These appliances are old. I just wished they had staggered the ends of their lives.

My dance card for the week is uke filled. I had a concert yesterday and have a few more this week: today, Wednesday and Friday. I also have practice and a lesson. I never imagined my life would revolve around a musical instrument with four strings.

Today is cloudy and feels damp. It will be around 75°. My sister and brother in law just left. They came down in the early morning so my brother in law could fix my weird electrical problems. He did. All my house is lit.

I have never had expectations for Sundays. The rest of the week was mine, sort of, while Sundays revolved around family. When I was a kid, during the summer, it was often a beach day. During the rest of the year it was a visit my grandparents day or just a stay around the house day. The best thing about Sunday was dinner. It was my favorite meal of the week. The worst thing about Sunday was it was the day before Monday when everything sort of changed. My father left early for work and usually came home late, after dinner. We had school.

I always thought nuns were a bit mysterious. Because of their habits, I could only see their hands and faces. They wore black with a few white accents on their wimples. They wore clunky tie shoes, also black. They also wore giant rosary beads around their waists. I always thought of the rosary as a sort of early warning system. The beads clinked together when the nuns walked so we could hear them coming. Nuns moved in herds. None of them traveled alone. They had made up names like Sister Hildegard and Sister Redempta, actual nuns I had. I never thought of them as regular people. They were their own species.

When I was in Ghana, I’d fill up a Jerry can, attach it to the back of my motorcycle and then take a ride in the bush on tiny roads, more like pathways, some just dirt and others laterite. I was always a point of interest to any Ghanaians I saw. They stopped and stared a bit. I guess they seldom saw a white woman riding a motorcycle on a back road. I’d ride until my gas was low then I’d fill the tank and head home. I loved those rides. I was surrounded by savanna grass and fields of tall millet and corn. I saw singular compounds, no villages. Goats and sheep stuck together and were free range. Women were walking along the side of the roads carrying stuff on their heads. On market days some toted tomatoes or yams or corn. I always felt part of the world around me yet by myself.