Today is a lovely day, an almost perfect fall day. The sun, missing for a while, has returned. Its light glints through the trees, and I can see blue sky through the oak branches. It is 67°. Lately Nala has come into the house from the yard with wet fur. Today her fur was warm. She had been lying in the grass soaking in the warmth.

This is a slow uke week. Last week it was four events: a practice, my lesson and two concerts. This week I have no concerts. We are starting a new book, cowboy music.

I have a short to-do list. I need to water the plants and wash my kitchen floor which is covered in muddy paw prints.

My sister and I always contend we grew up during the best of times. We could roam. I always think we were probably the last of the roamers. I’d get on my bike and be gone the whole day. My mother never worried. I’d walk home in the dark from drill, and my mother never worried. I never worried either. She had given us her motherly warning about never accepting candy from a stranger, and I didn’t, but the only time that warning kicked in was in a subway station. I was with my uncle, two years older than I, and my brother. We were going to the MDC pool near the science museum. I was standing by myself when a man approached me. I remember he had bad teeth, rotted in the front. He had a hat. That’s all I remember about him. He told me if I wanted candy I needed to follow him. He was the one person I had been warned about. I got scared and ran to my uncle and told him. He didn’t believe me, but I was safe so I didn’t care what he thought. When I was older and thinking about it, I figured that man’s mother had never gave him the candy from stranger warning or he would have known my reaction. I never told my mother until I was an adult.

I like to sift through my memory drawers to see what I might find. That subway incident was never lost. It has always stayed with me.