As promised, here is today’s post done by hand inspired by The Master. Please notice the footprints on the paper. 

“RED!” Kojo answered without any hesitation.  He marched with the rolled up butcher paper tucked under his arm.  After taping one side to the wooden floor, he watched as the other end rolled back to its original cylindrical state.  He rolled the free end back and forth filled with the excitement of a scientist on the cusp of a new discovery. 

We taped the other end to the floor.  He paused a moment to capture the papers sudden static state. With the sound of silence, he moved his feet all over the paper to the music in his head. The paper began to crinkle happy to be moving again.  

I took the cap of the red marker off and asked him to lay down. It took several minutes before he surrendered to stillness. As soon as he saw the marker approach his arm, he jumped up to get a better look.  I did my best to outline the moving target laying below.

“Is that me?” He asked following the series of red marks on the paper.  “Where’s my head?” I pointed to the strange pear shape attached to the rest of the blob.  

“Now let me trace you.”

I laid down on the hard wooden floor a bit dizzy from the movement. The ground seemed so much more uncomfortable for me than him. My body felt heavy and lifeless. He opened the red marker and I braced myself. He started at my head and I flinched. He circled my body and then began to scribble round and round close to my ear. 

“That’s your hair.” His nose was now marked red over his satisfied smile. 

I got up slowly and then opened the paints, rolled over some brushes and pushed the can of jumbo colored pencils closer to the paper canvas.  

I watched.

The bamboo brush crushed under his weight into the pink paint block. He rubbed it round and round before brown caught his eye. He hopped the brush to the new color and watched as the pink disappeared under the brown paste. Heavy with paint he turned to the paper and moved his arm in almost perfect arcs. The white paper was slowly disappearing under him. 

He tried the big brush, square brush, hard brush and soft brush.  He took mental notes of each experience. His palette was now an autumn landscape and the blocks of paint had no visible boarders. 

“Can I try the drumstick brushes?” 

I had no idea what he was referring to but inspired by his focus, I quickly located two rhythm sticks. I dipped one in blue paint and the other in yellow.

I watched. 

He began to drum and the paper played along capturing a bit of paint with each bang. He refilled his drumstick brushes several times. To his left, the paper filled with yellow, to his right, with blue and somewhere in the middle, a quiet green appeared.  

I found corks, a stamp, an old plastic tiger and left them for the artist.  He never once stood back to ponder or contemplate his next move, criticize the color palette, or wonder when he would know when the painting was done.  Rather, he was completely involved in the feeling of the wet paint on his hands and on his tools, the smell of the spongy brush, and the weight of the brushes as he spun them on the canvas.  

I watched and felt such an honor to be in the presence of a master.  

Tomorrow, I will write my slice by hand with a big red marker but not without dancing all over the paper first.

Today I picked up a brown paper bag from Kojo’s preschool.  Play dough was carefully wrapped in newspaper, dried flowers had been selected and placed in a small ziplock, small pots of red, yellow and blue paint had been poured into tiny pots, and each had a small label with suggestions for activities. There was a bottle of bubbles and some blue balloons with no instructions attached.

 “What’s the Coronavirus?” Kojo asked after dinner. 

It was first time I had heard him say that word. We had not been talking about anything related at the time. Although the word had floated around him during conversations with family and friends, we had not addressed it directly with him. 

I had not consciously communicated how uncertain the world feels right now. I never mentioned that we share a border with China where thousands of people were sick and hospitals were overcrowded. I didn’t reveal why his school had been closed for a month and he didn’t ask why he couldn’t go with me to school to pick up the brown bag that sat in front of us. 

The sound of rain brought me back to the present and the question still waiting for an answer. We saw flashes of light behind the curtains and then the sound of thunder. Kojo is not a fan of rain, yet. He’s frightened of thunder and desperately wants to know who makes it. He hasn’t accepted the answer, “Well, no one, really.” We have a book called Storms and he likes to look at the images. I used to think that thunder and lightening were so difficult to explain.

I will find a way to talk about the virus to our three year old. I’m an educator and have experience finding metaphors for complex ideas but it won’t be easy. We looked at the brown paper bag on the table pondering the difficult decision ahead of us. 

What should we do first?

“Lets’ play Rocket, Mommy!” Kojo said with his eyes wide open. “You be Lucia and I’ll be Noe.”

I had been politely turning down his invitations for play all morning. “Once I finish unpacking,” I said. 

“After what?” He asked wanting to understand exactly when our role play session would begin.

“After I empty this entire suitcase,” I responded assuringly. 

While I folded clothes and sorted socks, he patiently crafted a rocket out of a pen. I watched several launches and participated as much as possible between trips to the closet and laundry room.

“Look, all empty,” I said as I lifted the limp bag off the floor. 

He decided that we would be flight attendants instead of astronauts remembering his long flight yesterday. I was happy to have a new part to play. Although I enjoyed being the intelligent, problem solving Lucia, I thought it might be fun to try out a new occupation. 

As usual, I let him take the lead.  He slowly outlined the scene and before long, we were serving chocolate milk and pizza to a young boy traveling with his mom and dad. We had to take out the pizza and bake it in a makeshift stool oven. The lid of my face cream made a fabulous vessel for the chocolate milk. 

Lola, our unsuspecting cat, transformed into Captain Lola.  She flew our plane safely and steadily from the cockpit on the balcony. The young passenger was lucky enough to get a tour of the cockpit and meet the pilot. 

After putting out a small fire on the plane and rearranging some items in the cargo hold, I convinced Kojo that we had to take a break for lunch. I helped him take off the vest he had put on to put out the flames and we walked downstairs to the kitchen together. 

I became Mommy again and he was “just a boy” as he puts it.  When he gets a chance, he loves to play Mommy and assigns me to be the baby. If my voice becomes too normal when conversing, he’ll remind me to speak “baby language” again. He’s a tough director to work for and knows what he’s looking for in his actors.  There’s no room for improvisation.  

He loves the magic of being able to step out of his three year old self into an exotic role as parent, astronaut, manager or flight attendant. Through role play he gets to explore limits, recycles phrases he’s heard and uses his body in new ways. I often get to see a vision of myself when he plays Mommy. 

When Kojo’s Daddy arrives home, I realize that I too enjoy stepping into different shoes. I get to play wife and a variety of other roles throughout the week. We role play all the time. 

As this first day of March begins, I get to play writer. I get to sift through the day’s mundane events looking for precious gold. I get to decide who and what to highlight and what emotions or events to discard. I can pretend for a while that what I say or think actually matters to anyone else. 

Today I want to thank Juliette who brought the Slice of Life Challenge to our Community School in Accra. It is because of her that I was forced to record my stories on most days this month. Often, I wrote quietly typing by a small lamp by the front door trying my best not to wake anyone. Kojo is a light sleeper and senses when people are not where they are supposed to be. Lola loved the opportunity for quiet time to sit and purr on my lap soaking up the heat from the computer screen. Inevitably, Kojo would wake up at some point running down the hall with his eyes half closed and his hair standing in a mess in search of his missing mommy. The story would sit half-written until he had fallen back asleep. I would write the rest or revise what had already been written in my head while I sat watching him sleep again.

I am thankful to Juliette who has helped me find a place for my stories and has allowed me to pack up a piece of Ghana to take with me. Kojo, Kojo Daddy, Lola and I will be leaving this red-earthed, warm and fertile land in a few months. Kojo came here when he was three months old. He was serenaded by Celestine and Grace who sang to him in beautiful harmony the songs of their youth from the Volta region. He was fed milk that tasted of groundnut soup, pineapples and papaya. He was given the name Kojo because he was born on a Monday. Vovome rolls off his tongue easily.

We have countless photos of our time here in Accra. We’ve been carefully collecting them to show him when he’s older. Until this opportunity to write every day in March, I never realized how many moments cannot be captured in a simple snapshot added to a growing cameral roll. On March 30^th, I am content knowing that my walks with Kojo in Abelemkpe will live on. After all, Kunga would have never agreed to be photographed. You can’t hear the woody pods looking at a picture of a Monkey Thorn tree and Evon and Grace’s beauty lie in their movement not in a still image. The stories I have written are also self-portraits. I hope that when Kojo is old enough to read these he will see the beauty in both the story and the story-teller.

Thank you, Juliette, for challenging me to write everyday.  Thank you to Radutti, Tenkoranmaah, Kelsey Corter, Amanda Potts, Karpenglish, Edifiedlistener, Terrierol, Anita Ferreri, Pia Allende, Marina, Sylvia and the Slice of Life Community who stayed up late with me commenting thoughtfully on my posts and sharing the splendor that exists in other neighborhoods of the world. Thank you to Abbayayo, Ton Ton & Stryko for complaining when a new post was not waiting for them to enjoy with their morning coffee.

Finally, Kojo Daddy, thanks for lovingly renaming our sofa arm chair by the front door The Blog Chair.

Right as we passed, he stepped out of his dusty, black Toyota and smiled. “Hello, my boy. How are you? Where are you from?”

The conversation began and Kojo was captivated by the broad space between his two front teeth and the distance between his wrinkled eyes. The grey hair atop his head seemed to be growing at different rates which made the outline of his head a bit blurry.

“How do you like Ghana?”

I told him how lucky we felt to be surrounded by caring people. I explained how walking slowly here feels safe because everyone knows everyone and looks out for each other. There was a kindness radiating from him that invited me to keep talking. “Do you live here?” I asked.

“This isn’t my house. I’m visiting my brother’s wife. She’s been a widow for a long time now.”

Kojo and I still had questions but we said our nice-to-meet-yous and see-you-agains and continued on our walk. 

On our way back from visiting the deserted digger filled with rain water, we saw him again at the back of his car with a few older boys who were helping him empty the trunk. There were bottles of water, cases of juice and boxes of soda. He stopped me.

“Come here, please.” He waited to continue until the trunk was empty and the boys had gone inside.

He then proceeded to deliver his story. “I have brought drinks for the upcoming family meetings. You see, my brother’s wife has just lost her son unexpectedly. Tonight, she must tell her grandson what has happened because he doesn’t know yet. She’s been keeping it from him until today. I am here to be with them. Others will be coming from far away to start making arrangements for the funeral.”

The news hit me heavily. We had stopped many times to stare at the dog sitting on their roof not knowing the stories that were unfolding inside.

He didn’t ask for anything from me. His story was simply too heavy to sit inside him alone and so he gave me a small piece of his sorrow. I imagined how that young boy would react upon hearing the news. Would he scream and run, sit shocked and still, or cry loudly into his grandmother’s arms?

Here, people take care of each other. No one is ever really alone. Soon, there would be other family members arriving, distant relatives alerted and they would all deliver the news to their neighbors and friends. Each of us would carry a bit of the burden and the load would be lifted ever so slightly from the young boy, his grandmother and the kind old man with wide eyes and bushy hair that stopped me to ask about my son.  

Hurriedly we walk anxious to hug Kojo Daddy when we get home. When we get to the gate, I am still undecided whether to share the man’s story with him or carry my part of the load all on my own.

The call to prayer begins so faintly. You have to be still and stop breathing for a moment to sense it. Kojo hears it first. His face is wet with sweat and marked with his own dirty fingerprints from playing ball on the oiled stained concrete.

“It’s late now.” he says.

I recognize my own voice in his. That’s what I say when we are out and it’s time to start heading home. It’s usually my reply when he asks to walk down another street or visit somewhere that is too far to go-and-come before dark.

I wonder what time feels like for him. I can tell that he has begun to read some of the signs around us.

Kunga’s flip flops are discarded and he is leaning comfortably in his chair.

The fire is burning on the empty lot next to the goat on the corner.

The woody pods from the fallen tree are making music in the evening breeze.

Mayaa’s tailors are brooming the colorful scraps of cloth from the day’s work.

The smell of bread from the bakery is rising from it’s brown walls.

Evon is tirelessly braiding the top rows on her last customer’s head.

The girls are gathering at the water post with their empty plastic containers.

Margaret and Frida are working together to carry the heavy fabric display case inside.

The street lights are sparking and turning on dramatically one by one.

Majid is leaving his guard post and Patrick is lacing up his black boots.

The kitchen window is wide-open and Kojo Daddy is preparing dinner.

The white-clad singers have closed the back gate and the small church is quiet.

The bats pepper the sky and force our contemplation upward.

We start walking back home without saying a word to each other. I wonder what time feels like for him.

Two large piles of dirt, one grey and one brown, change shape daily. They sit in front of our noisiest neighbor. Metal against metal. Hammering, pounding, sawing, sanding. Massive music from petite speakers.

From our bedroom window we can only see a metal structure slowly rising from the trees that block the rest of the action. When we pass, the numberless grey gate remains stubbornly closed. The sounds only provide vague clues to what mystery lies inside. If no one is around, we dance to the music mimicking the playful rhythm. We accept the unknown and then move on.

Today, without notice, the most remarkable clue appeared. From two welded iron poles hangs the most delicately crafted sign. The name KAGYAH is carefully cut from a metal slab positioned perfectly on a piece of cherry wood. Underneath, in all lowercase letters the word “bespoke” is burned into the wood. Balancing on the other side is a craftsman’s collage of coils, circles, and keys surrounded by a series of carved lines. Another piece of polished wood stapled together by an iron star dangles like an encore underneath.

Bespoke means custom-made, tailored or personalized. It’s the opposite of mass-produced or ready-to-wear.

To our delight, a light turns on that illuminates the letters from behind. It was worth the wait. It seems that this sign was specially made for us.

There is a street we walk on just to see the dog on the roof. It doesn’t seem so strange now because we’ve seen it so many times. We use “dog on the roof” as a location marker as we decide whether to take a left or keep going straight at the junction. 

He is there today sitting on the warm clay tiles. I lift Kojo up so he can see his distant gaze. His head looks as if it is floating in space. A few people pass us by as we stand looking. No one seems to find his presence as magical as we do. The rest of his body is hidden behind the slope of the roof’s surface. He sits remarkably still although he recognizes our attention.

There are many stray dogs in the neighborhood. Kojo doesn’t yet recognize the difference between those that are loved and those that are lost. From where we stand, we don’t notice the fear or despair in the dog-on-the-roof’s eyes that we see in the others we meet. 

I wonder if the occupants below notice the footsteps every evening as he somehow gets onto the roof and finds his sunken spot. He rests there without sliding down with nothing but the birds to watch out for. From there, the evening activity in the neighborhood is his to enjoy. The smells that reach his canine nest must deliver many fresh stories each night. 

We look again in his direction to let him know somehow we understand. We don’t want to give his secret spot away so we nonchalantly look at the many dog-less roofs around us and continue on with our walk.