Today is jaw-droppingly beautiful and warm. The clear blue sky extends from one horizon to the other. It is a cool blue, an azure blue. I don’t see a single cloud. The sun is so very bright it glints through the trees in the backyard and highlights the trunks and branches. Right now it is 62˚ and may even get to 65˚. I’m going out as a day like today shouldn’t be wasted inside the house. The dogs know that. They stay outside playing for a long time. They come back in panting and looking for water and a treat then go back out again. It is almost their morning nap time.

Today is Earth Day which I knew nothing about at first as I was in Ghana where, for Ghanaians, every day was Earth Day. They wasted nothing. Everything was used and reused. My sandals had soles cut from tires. I didn’t leave shoe prints. I left tread marks. Meat was wrapped in newspapers or leaves. Rice was sold in cones made of newspapers. Beer bottles were filled with palm or peanut oil. Small kiosks sold almost everything in cans including instant coffee, evaporated milk, mackerel, margarine and butter. The used cans scooped water from buckets or village water holes. Bread was sold without wrappings. Eggs were never in crates. They were sold one by one. I never saw plastic back then.

When I returned to Ghana, much had changed. The Ghanaians still reused what they could, but there was trash, stuff thrown everywhere on the ground. Most of the trash was empty plastic water sachets.

Ghanaians have never learned to recycle useless trash, and there are no barrels to collect it, but that is beginning to change. Organizations and groups have begun finding ways to recycle even the plastic water sachets. My shower curtain was made in Ghana. Its back is a sheet of water sachets which makes crinkling noises when I get out of the shower. A Peace Corps volunteer fashioned soccer nets from those sachets. Small boys collect them from the streets and the markets and are paid per sachet. Ghana is taking its first steps to conserve, to finding ways to eliminate the trash. I’m thinking they just need to return to the old ways which are now the new ways to save our Earth.

Today is another pretty day with lots of sun and blue sky, but it is only 52˚ and won’t get much higher, perfect weather for errands, and I have three.

When I was a kid, I learned truths from my mother. She told me I had to wait an hour after eating before going back into the water. If I went in any earlier, I was courting disaster: cramps and drowning. I remember sitting on the sand impatiently waiting for sixty whole minutes. I wondered about 40 minutes or 50 minutes, but my mother wouldn’t budge.

I never swallowed watermelon seeds. I didn’t want a garden growing in my stomach. Actually, I was okay with this as we spit out the watermelon seeds in contests of distance. I was never a good spitter.

Okay, I admit I was obedient in the days before Christmas. I didn’t want to get on Santa’s naughty list. If I crossed the line, my mother always reminded me Santa was watching. I never questioned how. I figured if Santa could fly around the world in a sleigh pulled by reindeer, he could watch me.

My tongue turned black when I lied. If I checked in the mirror, my tongue was always the right color. My mother explained only mothers could see black tongues. Later I realized that covering my mouth with my hand was a dead giveaway. My mother did not have magical powers.

Carrots gave me better eyesight which was great because sitting too close to the TV would make me go blind as would reading in a dark room by flashlight.

We were warned about swallowing gum. It would stay in our stomachs for years. Seven years seemed to be the norm.

I never believed that holding toads would give me warts. That brown cows were the ones who gave chocolate milk made sense to me. I never believed spinach would make me strong despite Popeye’s endorsement. I always thought my mother was being a bit sneaky and trying to get me to eat spinach. Even now I am not a spinach fan though I’ll tolerate some in a salad.

I didn’t cross my eyes or make horrible faces. I didn’t want my face to freeze. When I was in the eighth grade, my nun told us somewhat the same thing. She told a story of girls who weren’t Catholic who stuck out their tongues at the altar in church. Their faces stayed that way until they converted.

I never went blind, no watermelon garden or a giant rubbery ball of gum grew in my stomach. I didn’t drown if went swimming right away after I ate. Thanks to my mother, I avoided the perils and pitfalls of childhood.