2013 welcomes the cicadas.  They started to come out last week in small bunches, then the cold stretch of weather, but now in the heat they are coming out in groves.  Sabra has been taking pictures of them in  every stage - coming out of the shell, hanging upside down all white except for two black dots like eyes, and then the red eyes.  Yes, the little girl that used to capture wooly bears in her big purse, now captures them on film.  The Kingston Freeman printed two of her pictures of the cicadas right on the front page "photo by Sabra Ciancanelli".

But she doesn't stop there - when ants were attacking one still in the shell, she threw her coffee on them and moved him to safety.  When she read that they need high grass or something to climb up to rid themselves of the shell, she put sticks in the grass for them to climb up.  She even helps some of the struggling ones get out of their shells - a regular cicada midwife.

They ARE amazing - I myself can't get enough of them or am tired of seeing them hanging upside down in the early morning - that's when they emerge.  The trees are full of them at seven or eight in the morning, and then in a few hours, they are the black cicadas, starting to fly.  Birds are having a field day, especially cedar waxwings, waiting in the trees, and when they see one fluttering by, as if in a drunk stupor, swoop down and easily pick them off. 

So it's a regular jungle out there  - as in the song that starts the Monk show....I myself think of them as religious symbols - rebirth, souls leaving their old shell of a body, to go to a better place, mate, die, eggs go underground for SEVENTEEN years, and then the cycle repeats. Why don't I remember this from the past 5 times this has happened since I have been with them on earth?

Memorial Day used to be held on May 30th, that was until they changed all the holidays to a Monday for a three day weekend.  Memorial Day, May 30, 1915 was when my grandparents were married, so I still think of that day as special. 

I have a clipping from the newspaper when they had their 50th Anniversary.  It says they were married in Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church, the ceremony performed by Rev. B. Mateye.
The article goes on to tell about their 50th celebration in the Knights of Columbus.  "Some 90 friends and relatives attended the fete.  Congratulations were sent by President and Mrs. Johnson and Sen. Robert Kennedy."  I remember when Poppy got the mail and saw a letter with the President's seal on it.  He yelled to Grandma, "Bad news, I think I just got drafted."  The article went on to say that on Jan. 10 they were among the 50-year wedded couples presented awards by Francis Cardinal Spellman.  Attending with them were their children and two granddaughters.  The two grandchildren were Barbara and me.

It was cold, the dead of winter and St. Patrick's was packed with couples and families of the couples married for 50 years.  Afterwards we went to a church, St. Vincent de Paul (I thought that was where they were married, but it must have been their local church.)  I was pregnant, and after two girls, asked for my wish that Grandma said you do when you go into a new church that you have never been in before.  So I wished that I would have a boy and if I did I would call him Vincent Paul.  When Paul was born, I weakened and reversed the names.  Anyway, after that we went to Poppy's sister's house for lunch.  And it was delicious.  I especially remember the rice, a golden yellow, with such flavor.  How do you make it so yellow? I asked and Mrs. Peepa (that was kind of her name) answered simply "Goose Fat".  Barbara and I looked at each other, our eyes large. 

Anyway, I remember the Anniversary Party too- I was large with Vincent Paul not-to-be and the place was packed.  I happened to sit near the Resicks, family friends of my mother's family for years.  Their son had been killed in World War II, a handsome young man, I think his name was Billy.  Anyway his brother told us this story that has stayed with me for all these years.  They had sent home the body of his brother, in a locked coffin, and it was set up in the living room, as it was done in those days.  Anyway, he said he heard a noise that night, after everyone was asleep and he came downstairs and found his mother with tools, trying to open the coffin.  She just wanted to see him, make sure it was her son.  A touching story, and appropriate for Memorial Day, whenever you celebrate it.  Happy Anniversary Grandma and Poppy. 

My neighbor was cutting his grass just as my soap opera was starting.  I glared at him for interrupting my show and noticed he was drinking a beer.  His wife had told me he bought this lawnmower because it had a beer holder on it.  Anyway, it reminded me of something else, a time at Cape Cod, maybe almost twenty years ago.  We were at Newcomb Hollow, and Maria and I had just opened a beer...something the sign said was not allowed.  Rachael yelled "Lifeguard, lifeguard, my mother's drinking a beer" and Maria grabbed her, putting a hand over her mouth and dragged her up the dune to the car.  That was when you could put a kid not obeying in a hot car for punishment.  And Ria wanted to punish her for saying that.  But that's the way Maria's kid were - unpredictable.

This bought me to another time.  Chrissie and I were on an IBM bus tip to Bronx Zoo with Jer and Lizzy.  We sat way in the back of the bus, we knew there could be trouble.  There was some, we were right next to the bathroom and at one point Jer pushed one of the kid's books I had bought along to amuse them under the bathroom door.   But that was nothing compared to what happened next.  Jer suddenly jumped up, ran down the aisle and screamed "the bus driver's not driving the bus, the bus driver's not driving the bus".  Everyone turned.  The bus driver looked in the rear view mirror, I could see his eyes as I grabbed Jer.  No one would make eye contact with us after that, and we tried to remain in control until we got to the zoo.

Later, at the zoo, Chrissie and I relaxed, each ordering not a pint but the really large beers.  We were sitting on a bench with maybe four other people near the bison exhibit.  We looked up.  Jer was watching the bisons, and imitating their actions.  He tossed his head, one foot went back, one foot went front, and then he charged.  Chrissy and I had no time to save ourselves, and he attacked and threw our beers flying in the air, all over the over bench sitters.

But that brought me to Lizzie and one morning in Spring, when her father dropped her off at Clay Hill Road, and she was sitting on the porch with me while I enjoyed a cup of coffee.  Suddenly, she jumped up and stood on the sunlight that was on the porch floor and started to sing "I'm walking on sunshine, oh yeah, walking on sunshine".  She was maybe three years old and I was amazed - one that she knew the words, two - she could apply them.  Thank you - Jer, Rachael and Lizzy for all the wonderful and exciting moments you have given me.

Mother's Day - when Bucky died, Anne B. of Bailey's in Tivoli told me "not a day goes by I don't think of my mother" and I find that this is very true.  Our Mother, Bucky, is not an easy person to forget, even for a day.

I took a class on siblings this Spring, mostly about rivalry in the family, and a lot of this trouble was caused by a parent liking one sibling more than another, and being stupid enough to say it.  Once in a while, one of us would ask Bucky, "Who do you love most?" and her answer was always the same - "I hate you all equally."  Quite a good answer I thought while I listened to my classmates complaining about their sisters and brothers. 

But then there was the gentle, motherly side of Bucky, who would say (I think from an old Latin story) "These are my jewels" meaning us six kids.  Bucky didn't have much jewelry, other than us kids.  She did have golden earrings, a gift from our father, who would sing a song about giving golden earrings to his love - I think a Nat King Cole song.  She never wore a necklace or anything around her neck.  She used to say, "I must have been hanged in another life, I can't stand anything tight on my neck."  That was another thing about Bucky, she would come up with those sayings and somehow we believed her.  So Bucky didn't care about jewelry, or clothes, she was happy in an old loose house dress.  In the sixties I made her pant's suits and she started to wear pants then.  Bucky wasn't one for makeup either, she used to have a tiny compact filled with rouge and maybe a lipstick tucked in her purse.  When I was little she used to always  carry a bottle of salts, "in case I faint" but I never remember her fainting.  She would uncap the bottle to let me smell and the smell was strong enough to wake the dead.

I remember when she died, Maria and I went to the house.  Plans were being made for her funeral and Bob and Diane were looking for clothes.  Two blouses were out but they weren't sure which would fit her.  Maria grabbed the shirts and took them into the bathroom to try them on.  She said, "If one of them fits me, it will fit Grandma."  And that's how it was decided.  The funeral home gave her the makeup she had never used.  Her brother Ed thought she looked beautiful and remarked she looked like a "young Ma", their mother.  But I will always think of Bucky as wearing the loose house dress, safety pins attached for any emergency, throwing a comb through her hair, racing to join Grandma who was in the car, tooting impatiently for her to come out the door.   Happy Mother's Day Buck.

Today I was snipping grass around the front yard when I spotted a clay clump, almost an inch high, too high to be made by a worm.  Then I saw more, hundreds of them in the soft dirt under the bird feeders.  When I picked one up, I saw a perfectly round hole formed in the clay, empty.  What could have made these?  I picked up one and took it to Timmy who was mending the deer fence - he had scared a turkey in the garden, and the turkey flew right through the netting.  He examined it, then followed me to the tiny village of lumps.  The first one he picked up was NOT empty.  There was a squirming cicada nymph in it.  UGH.

This is it - it's been 17 years since the cicadas have come up.  The last time I remember my nephew Patrick's son was here, probably 3 or 4 years old, and held his hands over his ears.  "Stop that noise", he demanded.  Yes, cicadas are very noisy.  I just looked them up in Wickipi (or whatever that internet dictionary is called).  Cicadas are the loudest of all the insect sounds.  They can cause permanent hearing loss if directly out side the eardrum.  (Bucky would have loved that.)  They are eaten by birds, sometimes squirrels and people in China.  They have to come out of the ground after all those years, a distance which varies from one to eight feet deep.  So what Timmy and I saw this morning was their exit tunnels. 

Apparently, when they come out, they climb a tree, and shed that skin and emerge as a full size cicada.  So be warned - they are coming.

Well, it finally feels like spring.  Juncos are gone and the turkeys are trotting all around the house.  We started work on the gardens, Timmy in the vegetable, me in the St. Francis' flower garden.  I can't garden like I used to.  I hoe a little then sit down on the ground and break up the clods of clay that have formed over the winter with my bare hands.   They don't call it Clay Hill Road for nothing.

Sitting on the warm ground, breaking up the clay with my fingers, I remember when as a kid I would help Poppy in the garden.  We lived on Falconer Street, a hill, so the garden was on a tier higher than the house, but not as high as 17 Falconer, next door where I lived.  Poppy had made a dirt strainer, an old screen mounted on a frame and I would help him sift the garden dirt until it was as fine as sand.  "Ready for planting now, " he would determine and put in a row of green beans.  Some different from this soil.  My kids used to make clay balls, form the balls with wet clay and let them dry in the sun.  A weapon of mass destruction when flung at someone.  Anyway, gardening is a meditation that takes you many place, from grandfathers to school kids.

Red Hook Elementary has a garden and Sabra and Tony volunteer there on Friday afternoons.  Sabra says the kids love, love the garden and get a lot out of seeing the flowers and vegetables grow.  Funny when you think about it, when I grew up everybody had a garden.  Probably a throw over from the war and the Victory Gardens.  No matter the size of the yard, there was always a part set aside for tomatoes. When we lived on Beacon Street where many Italian families were, they would bring out a fig tree that they had kept in the house all winter.  Hot peppers were in their gardens, with hundreds of tomato plants, growing to be canned for a winter meal. My sister Barbara told me about her neighbor who would hang geraniums upside down in the cellar, not even in dirt, and in the spring plant them and they would come to life.  Talk about reincarnation!  I never had much luck keeping plants over the winter, except for my Passion Flower that Mickey and Sue gave me years ago.  About two weeks ago, it started growing like crazy, sending out tendrils that reached for the window and light.  Yesterday, I told Timmy to put it on the deck, hopefully it can stand the cool nights.  I had too.  It was like watching a caged animal trying to escape. Hopefully, the Juncos were right and spring is here.