Though it may be a cloudy day, it is warm, 59°, and it may hit 60°. Spring is in the air today. It is sweatshirt weather.

When I was a kid, I lived in the same town where I was born. We lived in a duplex in the project. The project was loaded with kids, a few my age but most around my sisters’ ages. There was a parking lot at the top of the hill, but no one parked there so we used to skate on the empty lot. Back then my skates were attached to my shoes and tightened with a key. I never wore sneakers when roller skating because the skates didn’t stayed attached to the sneaker sides. I used to love the feeling on the soles of my feet through my shoes when I skated on the tar in the lot. Sometimes I was brave enough to skate down the sidewalk from the top of the hill to my house, halfway down the hill, but if I went too fast, I’d get scared and throw myself on the grass beside the sidewalk, but once in a while, despite my heroic efforts, I’d fall on the sidewalk. I’d scrape my knees or my elbows or both.

When I was young, I’d eat things I’d never eat now, and now I eat things I’d never have touched back then. Sardines roil my stomach if I see them now in the open can side by side head to tail. The idea that they were a go to snack for me gives me the chills. I’d munch them on Saltines. On Fridays during Lent we didn’t eat meat. On some Fridays we’d have formerly frozen fish sticks and fries. I remember the crispy fish sticks were white inside. I have no idea the sort of white fish they were, and I don’t remember their taste. I don’t eat frozen fish now. I can’t even remember the last time I did.

My palate expanded, especially in Ghana. I ate goat, fish with heads, hummus, Guinea fowl, Indian food and local foods like cassava, garden eggs and plantain. On my trip through South America, I ate ceviche and in Ecuador I ate what I found out later was guinea pig. In Finland I just pointed at the food I wanted as I didn’t speak Finnish, and the second language there is Swedish. Most of the time my eyes chose well.

If you’ve been around a while, you know I don’t beans except green beans which aren’t really beans to me. I find kidney beans disgusting. Even the name is disgusting. Baked beans, nope. Lima beans are gross. My chili never has beans. Retired beans look like something expelled by a baby at one end or the other. I don’t even sing the bean song.