The morning is lovely but already hot. It will be in the mid 80’s. I’ll be doing deck work while the back is still shaded. On my to-do list cleaning the chairs sweeping the deck. The potted flowers are beautiful. Their colors are popping after yesterday’s rain. Nala loves lying in the shade on the deck.

I am always amazed at how quiet my neighborhood is on Sundays. There are kids on my street, but they disappear every Sunday. The quiet reminds me of my childhood Sundays when everything was closed, families went together to church and Sunday dinner was special. My bike stayed in the cellar. We hung round the house. I’d read the funnies and watch movies. My father sat in the chair by the picture window and read the paper. My mother was in the kitchen making dinner. The menu always included a roast of some sort, gravy, mashed potatoes and a veggie or two. It was always the best dinner of the week.

During the summer we stayed up late on Sundays. The rest of the year my mother used the pretext that Monday was a school day so we had to go to bed early. I begrudgingly went. I’d try to read a little, but my mother would keep telling me to turn out the light and go to sleep as if I could fall asleep at will. I hated Sunday nights.

I have favorite books. When I was a kid, I loved The Wind in the Willows. I loved Mole, Ratty, Badger and Mr. Toad, but I loved Mole the most. I still have my copy of the book. When I read Little Women, I loved the March family, especially Jo, the renegade. The book was a Christmas present. It was a Whitman book with a hard cardboard cover and a colored front of Jo sitting on a lounge and reading. I read that book twice. Robert Lewis Stevenson’s novels were on the favorite list. I read Treasure Island first, but I remember when we went to Maine one year for vacation. There was a small room off the kitchen with wicker furniture and a bookcase filled with books. A Child’s Garden of Verses was one of those books. I read it from cover to cover then read it again. It was as if my life had been captured in poetry, my imagination tapped and my dreams brought to life.

The sloth in me is strong. I have to get moving.

A beep a bit back announced rain would begin in 23 minutes. The timing was just a little off. The rain started in fifteen minutes. I could hear the pings of the drops hitting the metal barrel on the deck. The rain was heavy, but now I can hear individual drops. The forecast is for a day of rain in the high 70’s. I just crossed washing the kitchen floor off my to-do list.

When I was a kid, a rainy Saturday was devastating. My bike stayed in the cellar and I stayed home. I’d head to my bedroom, a quiet place, with my book. I always had a book. I’d lie cozy in bed and read by the bed-lamp hanging off the headboard. Sometimes the sound of the rain lulled me to sleep.

When I was in the sixth grade, I made my first promise to myself. I would travel and see the world. I had no doubt about it. I even named it after a classmate who used to go to England to visit family, the Barrett disease.

Canada was my first foreign country. I was sixteen when we went to Niagara Falls. We stayed in a motel for the first time. We ate in restaurants or had picnics as we traveled. We took the walk under the falls. All of us were dressed in yellow slickers. We went to the wax museum. We saw the falls at night lit up with beautiful colored lights. We stayed in a huge cottage on the shore of Lake Ontario. I walked across the street and saw tiny waves lapping the shore. I remember the Eisenhower lock on the St. Lawrence River. That whole trip was amazing, and I haven’t ever forgotten it. It was the first fulfillment of my promise.

My second country was a huge leap from Canada. It was Ghana. I still remember the excitement when I was boarding the bus to leave staging in Philadelphia for the airport. I remember we flew over the cape. I took a picture, a sort of good-bye picture. I remember landing in Madrid for a new crew and refueling. I remember landing in Accra, but I don’t remember much of the bus trip to Winneba. I fell sleep. I remember my first morning in Ghana with such clarity. I stood outside my room on the second floor of the dorm and looked at the palm trees, the greenery, the roofs of houses and the hills far beyond. I was mesmerized by the unfamiliar. I had fulfilled my promise in the most spectacular place.

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