The morning is just perfect. The sun is shining. A small breeze is blowing. It is only 77°. It is quiet. I hear only insects and birds. My den is dark as the sun doesn’t hit it until afternoon. The house is cool. The coffee is hot. The dogs are asleep in their usual spots, Henry on my left and Nala on my right. I can hear them breathing, the deep breathing which comes in sleep.

My street is small. There are eight houses. Only two of them have the original owners, mine and the house down the street. In three of the houses, the original owners have passed away. The other houses were sold and the owners moved. Some have been sold twice, but each time, good neighbors moved into those houses.

I have a pin hat. It is a baseball cap covered in pins, so many pins there is no room left on the hat. Most of the pins I bought on my travels. Others were given to me, and I haven’t been to every place. Many of the pins carry memories. I have some from Santa Fe, where we, my mother and sisters and I, went for a short holiday. Two of those are Fiesta 2003 pins, one is a Texas pin and another is from the Alamo. I have a First Night 1989 pin. My mother and I did first night in Reading, the next town over from where she lived. One says I saw Sue at the Field Museum. That is from my trip to Chicago when I was Massachusetts assistant principal of the year. At the museum, a man was chipping Sue’s bones to clean them. Sue is the largest, best preserved T-Rex. From that same trip, I have several McDonald’s pins from McDonald University, where McDonald’s hosted and feted us.

I have favorite pins, the ones with so many memories: Costa Rica from a family trip, the Football Hall of fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame from a trip with friends in Cleveland of all places, a Boston Marathon pin, San Diego Zoo, Colorado and New Hampshire where family and friends live, a PanAm pin, a World Series pin from when the Sox played Colorado, Iceland, Columbia and so many more. Two of the pins I love more than others. One says Dia de los Muertos and on it are two skeletons wearing sombreros and smiling at each other. The other one is Killer Klowns from Outer Space with some of the scariest of the clowns on it.

I have had no occasion to wear my hat. Maybe I just need to make one.

I choose this song as we play it on our ukuleles.

The weather has changed. It is cooler. The low today will be 63°, amazing. A cool breeze is blowing in from the window behind me, the north window. The day will be mostly cloudy. The sun pops in and out but doesn’t stay. It is a lazy day.

When I fill out forms and my year of birth is requested, I find myself scrolling further and further down the list, but there are many years earlier than mine, a longer scroll, which I find somewhat comforting.

I seldom wear a dress any more. I used to wear one out to dinner on Easter, but I don’t go out anymore so my dress sits in the back of the closet. Actually, I have two dresses, one for Easter/spring and another for fall/winter. I’m covered for any event. I had a teacher in high school who wore suits. She had two. She alternated. When I lived in Ghana, I had to wear dresses every day. I had brought dresses with me as I knew ahead of time I’d have to wear them, but in a short while I had my dresses made from Ghanaian cloth by a seamstress. I’d buy cloth in the market and when I traveled. I have none of those dresses, but I have some from my trips back to Ghana. They were made by a seamstress in the market.

My grandmother was a terrible cook so my father had peculiar ideas about food. Spaghetti was pasta with a can of stewed tomatoes on top. For him garlic was only okay for garlic bread and shrimp scampi. He preferred canned asparagus. What was funny was if he didn’t see you using garlic in a different dish he’d eat the food and not notice. His eyes, not his taste buds, were the final arbiters on whether or not the food was edible. Once I used the same bowl to mash potatoes which I had used for mushrooms. A few bits of the mushroom ended up in the potatoes. My father was not fond of mushrooms. He wanted to know what the bits were in his mashed potatoes. I told him the potatoes came from Eastham. He ate them.

I have a small chore list today. I need to vacuum both upstairs and downstairs. I don’t want to, but I must. The dust balls of dog hair rise into the air when I walk anywhere in the house. It is almost embarrassing. I do sweep every other day downstairs, but the dust is never ending. I tried to brush Henry. You’d have thought he was being abused. He got away from me and ran upstairs. He stayed there for hours.