Today is already warm, and the cats have found the sun streaming through the door and are stretched out on the mat. Gracie is having her morning nap and is noisily snoring. As with Pippa Passing, “All is right with the world.”

I fell when I was in New Hampshire. The soles of my shoes grabbed the stair rugs, and I was most careful until I wasn’t. My left foot stepped down but my right foot stayed put. As it was unexpected, I went down hard, hit the door jamb with my face, scrapped my foot and wrist and slammed both of my knees. My glasses flew off and one lens went into hiding. The glasses saved most of my face but the left cheek and over my eyebrow hit the wood. Today, two days later, my knees, especially my left, are still painful. Getting up from a sitting position is the worst, and I do yowl a bit but I’ll survive.

Falling isn’t new for me. I started when I was around four or five with a fractured wrist, got a sprained ankle when I was a bit older, fractured my shoulder, fell down the inside stairs and the outside, knocking myself out both times and badly sprained my ankle again on the mat by the front door. There are probably more, but those are the highlights.

I had a wonderful time in New Hampshire, but I was glad to get home.

When I was a kid, we went on very few stay-away vacations. I remember Vermont and the huge white house with the porch. It was across a rural highway from a lake. We had to be watched when we went swimming as there was a drop off to deep water not that far from the shore, but there was plenty to keep a kid busy in the woods and in the stream running by the house. I remember the time in Maine, in Ogunquit, at the smallest cabin in a host of cabins. I remember seeing naked people sleeping on a blanket in the dunes, how cold the water was and how boring the vacations were. The vacation to beat all vacations was to Niagara Falls. That was the first and only time we stayed in motels. I remember it all: the falls, the Eisenhower Locks, Lake Ontario, Madam Tussaud’s and eating at McDonald’s.

I am forever thankful for the vacations when we stayed home. My parents took us to museums, and I am still attracted to museums wherever I travel. Beaches, learning to body surf from my father, my mother’s packed lunches, and learning to skip stones are some of the best memories of my childhood.