The morning is pleasant, cool and sunny. It is 66°. Outside is calling. I’m thinking it is time to clean the deck furniture, to start the day outside with my morning coffee, the paper and my dogs. I love the look of the backyard this time of year, early summer. The trees are laden with bright green leaves. They dance in the breeze.

My deck is high off the ground like a treehouse. I sit at the table under the umbrella and watch the dogs romp in the backyard. Nala is prone to a zoomie or two before she collapses on the grass. Henry mostly walks the yard. After a bit, both of them usually join me on the deck. They lie down. I just sit.

By the time this time of year came round, I was done with school. The days were too pretty to sit inside all day penned at a desk. I longed to be free. We got out fairly early in June. The last big hurtle was end of year tests. I always did well. The last day of school was a half day, a wasted day. We sat around until we got our report cards. The grades were hand written on the cards. On the back my mother had signed each term that she had seen the grades. On the bottom was promoted to grade and then a line for the number. I don’t know anyone who was not promoted, but who knows.

When I was five, my aunt gave us Duke, our first dog, our boxer, as a present. He was the runt of his litter who came from a breeder in our town. He had been bought then returned because the first owner did not know what to expect. Boxers are unique dogs. They stay puppies until they are about three. They love to play. Nala still carries her stuffed elf around the house. They are smart dogs. They are also stubborn and sassy. Boxers are wonderfully protective. When Shauna, my first boxer, was at my mother’s house, the man from a siding company came to show her house siding colors. Shauna immediately got up and stood beside my mother. The man wanted to know if he was safe. The only problem with boxers is they don’t have long lives. Gracie lived to be twelve, the oldest so far of any of my dogs. Duke died when I was a sophomore in college. My mother was with him. It was, up to then, the worst day of my life.

Close to two this morning, the thunder started. It began as a rumble then heightened into cracks, some overhead. I saw the lightening out my west facing den window. It wasn’t spectacular, but lightening doesn’t have to be, small is impressive enough. The rain was heavy for a while then softened. Outside is mostly dry, but under the dense trees I can see the still wet leaves and moss and smell the damp. It is 73°. We have sun and blue sky, but rain is predicted for later.

Yesterday my sloth went into hiding because I got a burst of energy around 11. I ended up cleaning the kitchen, except for the floor. I washed the counter and everything on it. I cleaned behind the small appliances, the wooden drawers and the jars, dusted the picture tops and the shelf and scrubbed the stove top. I took out the utensil holder from the drawer, emptied it, washed it and cleaned the flowered oil cloth underneath it. But wait, I wasn’t done. I vacuumed all of downstairs and cleaned the bathroom. That was when I realized I had lost my mind. I staggered to the den to sit down until this dreaded cleaning frenzy passed. My breathing finally slowed. My sloth reappeared.

Summer was the noisiest time of the year. When I was a kid, my house was a duplex in a row of duplexes which went up and down the street. My house was at the bottom of a grassy hill, and more duplexes were spread across the top. The back side of all the houses, the kitchens, faced the hill. In the summers, all the screens were in the windows, and all the storm doors were replaced by screen doors. They were wooden doors which slammed when kids ran outside. All summer kids played in the yards. They ran through cold sprinklers and screamed. Mothers communicated by yelling out back doors. Everybody knew when dinner was ready. The murmurs of night conversations could be heard. TV’s blared. Even an argument could be heard by the whole neighborhood, and everyone listened.

Ghana was always noisy. On school grounds I could hear my students’ conversations in a variety of tribal languages. The morning chore for students was sweeping the yard, and the swish of the grass brooms outside my windows sometimes woke me up. I could also water hitting buckets so students could take bucket baths before class. Mostly women passed by the back of my house on the way to market. They chatted. Sheep baaed and goats bleated. Roosters greeted the morning.

I live in a quiet place now. Once in a while I hear my neighbors talking on their deck and the basketball hitting the road when the kid does the street shoots baskets. A car goes by every now and then. At night the sound of people disappears. The birds and the insects take center stage. Henry is often the noisiest.