One week to our vacation in Cape Cod - this year I will be riding out with Kevin to a cottage Maria had booked in February. I have been thinkin a lot about last summer in Wellfeet. Last year we had decided for the first time in many years to get small, individual cottages right on the water, rather than a big house we all shared in town. I was sharing with Maria the first week, and then moving into the cottage that Sabra had rented for the second week, when Kevin would be joining Maria. Ria first suspected a problem when her lease included an item that read: "Tenant shall not cook bacon or pork products in the house or on the grill." "What the hell does that mean, Ma?" Ria questioned as she read it to me. "I guess we can't have bacon and eggs, or hotdogs or sausage and peppers", I answered and we both kind of snickered. We got to the cottage and Maria had already received several e-mails from the owner, asking her to check on and care for her "prize" flowers. They were the first things we saw as we walked on the deck, an assortment of dried out, dead flowers in the sun and plants in two inches of water on the shady side. Then we went into the cottage....amazement. Maria said, "I don't remember there being all this STUFF in the picture on the internet." Stuff was right. Every inch of available space was covered with knick knacks, trays, tacky vacation type souvenirs, the fireplace was filled with wood and there was wood piled high near by even though it was 80 degrees outside. The kitchen had no counter space that wasn't covered with crock pots, filled with spoons, pencils, everything imaginable. Utensils hung from hooks all over the kitchen walls as did pots and pans and barbeque items. "Where's the refrigerator?" I asked Maria as we stood in shock. "Here it is, Ma, here in the hall." Well, we unpacked the car - the kids ran to the beach only steps away, and we thought, "this isn't too bad, it IS right on the water." After a beer, a look at the beach, the realization that we were on vacation in the most beautiful place in the world, and we started to see things in a better way. "Look at this lamp, Maria" I said holding up a three foot white plastic duck that was the lamp in my bedroom. "That's nothing, Ma" Ria came out of her bedroom holding a large light in the shape of an electric bulb. "Who the hell would buy this shit?" we asked each other, over and over. "Looks like someone went nuts in the dollar store," commented Maria and it did. The living room did NOT have a couch, instead it had a wooden Adirondeck type outdoor oversized chair. Maria started her magic. She got two quilts and covered the "couch". There, that's better. Things began to come off the wall, as Maria shoved them into the closet. The wood was all taken out of the house, and put in an empty firebox on the deck. There, that's better. And it got better and better in the days that followed as slowly we shoved things under the beds or added them to the dumpster in the yard. The flowers even looked better as Maria arranged them, watering the dried out ones and caring for the drowned ones. The best night was one when Maria got acting up....came out of the bedroom with the electric light bulb, turned it on and said to Tony, "Hey, Tony, I got an idea!" "Look at me, I'm Uncle Festus!" And, the vacation that started out so thinly, got better and better. "Does everybody want bacon?" Ria asked, pulling out a large frying pan. "We sure do" and the bacon flowed. Maria could make anyplace a home, anyplace welcoming and full of life and laughs. This year will be different, but I can't imagine we won't be laughing at memories of the past and making a few of our own.

Maria's birthday fell on Father's Day this year. It also did on her first birthday, as I recall. It seems the holidays have followed Maria, she died on St. Patrick's Day, buried the day before Easter, then we had Mother's Day and now finally her birthday. I think we're done for a while..phew. We, as a family, have gotten together on each of the above days. Family...Sabra made a video for us at Christmas "My Crazy Family" and it started with a quote by Anthony Brandt: "Other things may change us but we start and end with the family". Just think about that for a minute...start and end with the family. I started with Bucky and Gob- my father. My father was and still is a hero to me. He could sing like Bing Crosby, we could whistle (hardly anybody whistles anymore), he could do a perfect swan dive, which he always preceded with the sign of the cross, he could ski with a grace and movement that was beautiful to watch, he could fish and clean the fish and even eat the fish after one of Bucky's failure in the kitchen. He helped us with our math, could spell any word you gave him and knew carpentry. But his greatest skill, his legacy, was his photography. He could capture the faces of children better than any other photographer I have ever known. His pictures fill our albums, boxes and boxes of pictures that document all the events in our lives. Everywhere he went, he had his camera with him. I remember at his wake, my brother Bob suggested that we put a camera in his hands, to make him look more normal. That was my father - that was my family. I ran across a quote that "family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future" (Gail Lumet Buckly) Boy, I believe that. I look in the mirror and I see my mother looking back. I look at Paul's boy Ian and I see a picture of my father at that age. Henry reminds me of Sabra and Rachael looks so much like Maria did at that age. Family. Erma Bombeck said "The family. We were a strange little band of characters,.....loving, laughing, defending and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us." That common thread. What is it? Could it be love?

Slowly, slowly life is coming back to normal. But there are so many unexplainable happenings which of course we all attribute to Maria. Laura went to see a psychic who told her that Maria would come to me in flowers in strange places. First of all soon after her death I saw an early violet growing out of the gravel in the driveway. Then my Christmas cactus began to bloom again (it still has blooms). A heavy late frost killed all the wisteria buds on the Bird's Nest deck, but the wisteria that had climbed the nearby maples survived, and wisteria filled the trees. Now a clematis is blooming high in the apple tree, one plant with two completely different flowers. The day that Maria died, as we were all waiting in our cars in her driveway, a piliated woodpecker (the big bright red headed one - like Woody Woodpecker) casually flew from tree to tree right near the driveway. They are usually shy and not often seen. Then as Sabra drove us to Rachael's graduation, a piliated woodpecker landed next to the road, just as we drove by. Now, I have a piliated woodpecker smashing up an old stump in the back yard. Yesterday, I got within a few feet of him. He was throwing dirt and sawdust all over and I laughed out loud at his antics. Laura was also told that sometimes unusually large "critters" are seen after a death. Hers was a giant spider "big as a mouse, Ma" and when Sabra was at the grave a robin had a worm so large, that Sabra had to go and check to see what it was. Also, electronics have been affected, especially with Sabra...computers, her printer, her telephones and even her dining room light. My sister Maureen has a stuffed toy dog that says "I love you" and it began repeating the phrase (with no one turning it on) when I phoned her a few weeks back. She said it hasn't done it since. Today, I can't open my e-mail....and I just told Maria to go back to flowers for me - I want to read my mail.