The sky is light blue and cloudless. The sun is eye squinting bright. A slight breeze stirs the air. Everything is quiet. Today is a lovely day.

When I was a kid, Sunday was sacrosanct. The churches were filled. Everyone was dressed in church clothes. Women wore skirts or dresses and hats. Men wore suits, white shirts and ties. The stores were all closed except for small, corner stores which sold essentials like milk and bread and the Sunday paper. Sunday was family day. It was Sunday dinner day, the most formal meal of the week.

My grandmother, my father’s mother, was a terrible cook. She cooked bland food. Spaghetti sauce was a can of stewed tomatoes poured right out of the can on to the pasta. My father’s bland palate reflected his mother’s lack of cooking expertise. To him, garlic belonged only on garlic bread and shrimp scampi, nothing else. Asparagus came from a can and bent at the middle. Hummus was wallpaper paste, a review gleaned from looking at it, not tasting it, as he judged food by looks. For him, the simpler the food the better. Give him roast beef, mashed potatoes and maybe corn, niblet not creamed, and he’d be in food heaven.

In Ghana, on Sunday, my students attended a service on school grounds, in the cafeteria. For it, they wore their Sunday school cloths: three piece dresses, a top, bottom to the ankles and a wraparound the waist piece. Each of the four classes had its own cloth pattern. Sunday was also visitors’ day. Students would wear their own dresses. Photographers came and took pictures. It was also the day Bill, Peg and I bought dinner from a chop bar by the lorry park. Translation: a small shed like spot with maybe a table or two and a few chairs which was at the parking lot where all the busses waited for riders before they left for other places. The food was cooked out back. Mostly we bought fufu and soup. Translation: the slightly sour, spongy dough made from boiled and pounded starchy food crops like plantains, cassava and yams — or a combination of two or more — in a very large mortar with a pestle. The soup was whatever was on the stove: light soup (nkrakra), groundnut soup (nkate nkwan), palm nut soup (abenkwan), green vegetable soup (abun abun), egusi soup and more. I was an okra stew fan. Fufu was eaten with your right hand. Your hand got a bit messy.

Today, I’ll probably have hot dogs. I took a pack out of the freezer. I figure I’m not violating New England cultural norms by eating hot dogs on a Sunday. I didn’t have any last night.