After Maria's memorial last week, Paul and I were sitting in Sabra's yard, sipping drinks and watching the others dive into the food. Paul turned to me and asked, "Ma, will you just come and look at furniture with me?" I knew just what he was talking about. They all want me to get rid of my couch.

I bought the couch and the gray reclining chair (which they also want me to get rid of) 24 years ago when Maria was pregnant with Rachael. We went to Sears together and she helped me pick the couch out...a light brown fuzzy couch, with three cushions and fashionable buttons decorating and forming the cushions and the back of the couch. 24 years is a long time, but I love this couch. It fits me like a glove.

Other people have remarked on the couch. When my brother visits he tries to avoid it because of the difficulty in rising from it...you kind of sink in. And it was even featured in a film that Sabra made for me, called My Crazy Family. The segment on the couch is titled "Defending the Couch" and is simply Laura, Sabra and myself (sitting on the couch) talking about it. It goes something like this:

Laura: Ma just wants to keep the couch because Emily (the cat) died on it.

Me: No, Emily died on the chair, she jumped up and her claws got caught, and that did her in.

Sabra: How about the time the rat was hiding his food in the couch?

(Several years ago we had a varmint in the house that was stealing cherry tomatoes off the kitchen table. I accused Timmy and he really couldn't deny it, because sometimes at night he just eats anything he can get his hands on. Anyway, I was looking for something that might have slipped in the couch, and my hand came in contact with something soft...the cherry tomatoes. Sure enough, soon after we caught a rat in a hav-a-heart and that was that story.)

Me: That was years ago, and nobody else has hidden food in the couch since.

Laura: It just looks so bad Ma.

Me: Well, how about Timmy's gym shorts hanging over the stove, the hanger attached to a family picture? Or the paper plate that is covering the old stove pipe hole? Or, those awful curtains that I got from Mary because she couldn't pay rent?

Laura piping in: Or the lawn furniture I'm stting in. (A director's chair, another rent payment from Mary.)

Sabra: But what happens when people come to visit?

Me: Who ever comes here but you people? And, do you think if I called Angelo (my neighbor, now in Heaven), asking him to come over he would say, "I'd come over but you have THAT COUCH.

It's pretty funny dialogue and was made that many years ago. I remember when they were going to deliver the couch and chair. Kevin's cousin came over to take the old couch (that was in pretty bad condition), but he and his wife carried it out like it was a treasure. Sabra was probably about 16 then, and she said sadly "I had a lot of good times on that couch" and I added "Me, too" , just as sadly. That's what it is about the couch. I sit on it every morning, put on the news and drink my first cup of coffee. At night I eat supper on the couch, drinking a beer and go from the couch to the bed. A nice full rotation...bed...couch...bed. Every one of my grandchildren (except Jer and Liz) has taken a nap on it, sat on it and laughed. Our last memory of Maria is sitting on that couch with Solomon, laughing about cheese farts the afternoon before she died.

So, unless somebody sets the couch on fire, or something terrible lives in it, I think it can make a few more years..at least until Rachael is 30.

Well. St. Patty's Day has come and gone, a glorious day with kites flying, bubbles blowing and the kids running with kites and just chasing each other. I expected someone to run into a gravestone and lose some teeth, but that thankfully didn't happen. There was quite an ensemble, all of the family, Rachael and her boyfriend Myles, Jer and Gabbie, Rachael's friends and Maria's friend Carol and her husband. Yellow crocus were blooming on her grave, the only live flowers in the cemetery and three vases of flowers were filled in her memory. Jer's pink tulips gently brushed against the stone, near the words "Not lost, gone before" and that is how it felt - we didn't lose her, you couldn't lose Maria, she will be with us forever.

I did remember something Zach said last year to me...a year after she died. She was buried on March 22, Shane's birthday. Zach was remembering that day and said, "Last year, Shane had a terrible birthday. We had to go to a wedding." I looked at him, wondering what he meant, and then I realized he mixed up wedding with funeral. And I had to laugh. Some weddings certainly turn into something else. Humor was Maria's legacy and that too goes on.

I've been feeling low lately, a combination of the time of year, not good results from the knee doctor and just a somethings not right feeling. I was even writing imaginary gloomy blogs about Amazing Grace and the sad sound of the geese returning. Then today, three things turned this around. First my horoscrope (don't laugh) "Just because you have a tendency toward theatrics, doesn't mean you'll sign up for misery....Go where the happy people are." Then a woman, Barbara from Georgia, a stranger to the family, wrote to teamria blog "sharing your loss and your joyful memories makes each of you stronger". And finally, the piliated woodpecker was right outside my window and hung around in the back yard for a long time. So, I'm replacing the sad sound of Amazing Grace with some of my best memories of Maria and the family.

And most of them have to do with Cape Cod. Maria was like the Tazmania Devil on the Cape, chauffeur, grocery shopper, beach packer upper, etc. She was at her best when something went wrong, like the toilet getting clogged - a big problem when there are more than a dozen people using it. Maria would get a gleam in her eye, put a big pot of water to water to boil, find the plunger and be off to rid the clog. "I learned everything about plumbing from the old man", she would say, pouring the boiling water down the toilet, plunging, more water, plunging, until you heard a victory cry "Shitter's working".

The same with setting up the umbrella. The beach winds on the Cape are often strong, sending unbrellas dangerously spinning at helpless, unsuspecting beach goers. Maria had a way with the umbrellas, they never got free when she put them in. First, she would find the right spot, not too many stones, then she would get into a deep knee bend, gripping the umbrella pole and twisting her body and the pole round and round, going deeper and deeper. Ria had beautiful legs, a strong dancer's legs, nothing weak about them, and that umbrella would be in for the whole day.

Oh, sometimes we laughed at ourselves. Once, when Rachael was about ten, Maria opened a beer (no alcohol on the beaches) and Rachael started to yell "Lifeguard, Lifeguard, my mother's drinking a beer". Ria smacked her hand over her mouth, and promised to drag her up the dune and leave her in the car if she didn't stop. One time Atticus and Regina were acting up, and we kept yelling at them, Atticus, Regina, Atticus Regina. A group nearly by (probably with alcohol) started to mimic us, but they said Sparticus, Regina Rex, Sparticus. It made us laugh too.

Just driving to the Cape in the car with Maria was an adventure. One time we stopped at MacDonald's so that Maria could nurse Regina, who was having a fit. We were sitting in the car, waiting for Regina to fill up, when an oriental woman backed her car into a parked car. Straightening the car, she ran into a car in front of her. People all came out to see the commotion and the woman started to yell at her kids in a heavy accent: "See what you make me do! You make me have accident! You make me have two accidents!" Maria and I laughed at that for the next two hours.

There were a lot of laughs the year that Regina and Ava were in the same class. Ava had moved to Red Hook, but Maria assured me that they never put two people from the same family together. That was until Ava and Regina ended up in the same class. Every day after school there was another episode and one I remember well involved Ava standing up and saying in a loud voice (and deep voice, she sounded like Gravel Gerty) "Eat it like a French Souffle". Well, nobody knew what that meant then or now, but she kept repeating it, until Regina couldn't help herself and she stood up and yelled "Eat it like a French Souffle". Maria said the teacher just said sadly, "Girls I wish you wouldn't say that any more"and sent home a note for Maria to help her enforce stopping the dietary comment.

Maria could make you laugh about anything, about Kevin's workers complaining he was too hard on them..."Mr Kevin, I am a man, I am not an animal", about the plumber, she knicknamed Whistling Willie who gave all his instructions to his crew by whistling (nobody understood English). About the cat that threw up all the time, even in their Christmas manger, and peed on their clean clothes. Ria knew where the happy people were, they were in her head laughing at life's little problems, seeing the humor in everything.