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.

Yesterday was hot. Driving in the car, I suddenly realized it was almost summer. What happened to Spring? I'm not stuck in Holy Week anymore, now I don't seem to know where I am or what day it is. I know it's almost the end of May because I have to get my car inspected and the "service engine soon" light is on, and they will not inspect it with that little glitch. I've been praying that it would go out - that worked last year, but nothing so far. What day is it? is harder than the name of the current month. My Uncle Joe, in his late 80's, goes to Castle Point for check-ups. The sanity test they give him is (1) What day is it? (2) What month is it? (3) What year is it? and (4) Who is the President? He passes each time, giving the right answers to the first three and to the fourth, he responds "that asshole" and they let that slide. Today is Wednesday, May 28, 2008 and it is the birthday of Rachael, who is 22 today. I write the birthdays on the calendar. It is my little ritual on New Year's Eve to get the new calendar and the old calendar and transport the names and birthdays to the new year. Each year is different, new babies, new weddings (I like to remember the anniversaries as well) and sometimes losses. I enjoy sending cards. When I was a kid, my father's Aunt Sadie would send a birthday card to each niece and nephew and inside the card would be a dime. Somehow that made a lasting impression on me and I am almost obsessive about getting cards out. I wonder how Aunt Sadie remembered all those names and dates and what had started down that road. And I wonder how crowded my calendar will be in the coming years. But lately I don't ponder on what day of the week is it. Instead I get these memories of things in the past that stick in my head. Today it is that cans use to come with a key to be used for their opening. Coffee had a key that you unsnapped from the top of the container and fitted carefully into the tab and slowly, slowly and carefully wound the key around the top until it came back to the start and the lid was released. Sardines had this key as well and I'm trying to think if anything else had that magic key to open it. To get the date right, all I have to do is point the mouse at the bottom of this screen. What foods used to open with a key is a little harder to find.

In Sunday's New York Times there was an obituary that ended with the words: "He wanted to be remembered by asking that you read anything written by Aldous Huxley". This gave me a lot to think about. What if the person had been a joker and wrote "anything written by James Joyce". I don't know about you, but I have tried time after time to read Joyce and I can't do it. I've never read "Brave New World" either, but I think I will look for a copy and see if it is readable. Myself, I would say read "anything written by Anne Morrow Lindberg". She is my favorite author and I have every book she had ever written. Some of my favorite quotes from her are as follows:

"Don't wish me happiness, I don't expect to be happy, it's gotten beyond that somehow.
Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor. I will need them all."

"There are no happy days, just happy moments."

"Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way."

Now you may think those quotes are gloomy, even downers, but I see her common sense and realistic view of life coming through them. Who, without drugs, has ever been happy every minute of an entire day? Even with help, no one can be happy all the time. After Maria died, I wondered if I would ever be happy again, really happy. Then I thought of the movie "It's a Mad, Mad World" and the final scene when everything has gone wrong with their quest for the money, the men are all in traction in hospital beds, and Spencer Tracy says he'll never laugh again. Then in storms Ethel Merman and slips on a banana peel and they all start laughing, laughing so hard they can't stop. I catch myself laughing now and then, sometimes at my grandchildren and sometimes at things I am remembering. Today on television they were talking about cruises and I remembered a cruise Timmy and I took. It was the Captain's party and everyone was dressed up and a photographer was taking pictures as you entered the ball room. You had to wait in line for the photo shoot and finally Timmy and I had our turn. We stood stiffly in front of the camera and the photographer, unhappy with our pose, directed Timmy in a beautiful poetic Jamaican accent "to put your hand on the lady" . Timmy, always the comic, grabbed for my tits and the photographer said excitedly "No, No, not there!" Well, almost twenty years later that memory came back to me and I laughed. I don't think you can stop laughter.

Maria loved to laugh. She would probably have advised "read anything by David Sedaris" her favorite author. His Halloween story of the neighbors trick or treating or his Dutch version of Christmas Eve would make anyone laugh. Maybe after I read Huxley, I will look for Sedaris.

Happy Mother's Day Bucky - a salute to my Mother. I remember my childhood very vividly mostly because of Bucky. I didn't know it then, but Bucky was different. She would let my sister Barbara and I put on iceskates and "skate" on the living room rug. She would put on a Danube Waltz record and we were Sonya Hennie skating in circles, doing dips to the music. One snowy day I was in the house sick, complaining that I was missing all the fun of playing in the snow. Bucky opened the kitchen widow (we lived upstairs over my grandmother), scooped up a bowlful of snow and put it on the kitchen table. She pulled out cookie cutters, little bowls, spoons and I got to play in the snow. I loved the Curious George book and we took it repeatedly out of the library, until the librarian told us this was the last time, other people had to have a chance to take out this book. Bucky muttered, but had a plan and she took the book home and pulled out her typewriter and copied the entire book. We didn't need to borrow the book, she would read from those pages and it was as good as the book to me. I had a small painted turtle from the circus and he was always escaping from his bowl. Bucky had a solution, and tied a piece of thread still attached to the spool to the turtle. Now, she said, all we have to do is follow the thread and we can find him anywhere he goes. Unfortunately, he went under the rug and somebody stepped on him. The turtle survived, but he had blood red eyes for quite a while. Bucky grew morning glories inside the living room windows. She put up strings and the flowers climbed the window, amazing to me. Bucky could knit and crochet. She put crochet trim around handkerchiefs, and made rag rugs, using a giant wooden crochet hook. She let me make the strips for the rug, cutting up strips from old clothes and I would sew up one side, using her pedal sewing machine. For our birthday parties, and we each had one every year, she would take tissue paper, a glass ash tray, and folded the paper in a certain way until it made a perfect candy holder, which she would fill with colored mints. When my father would bring home a "It's a boy" cigar from work, she would light it up and let us all take a puff. We would all laugh, puffing away, handing the cigar from kid to kid...there were finally six of us. But the best, the very best, were her stories. She had tragedies, comedies, histories, you name it - stories about everything. And it didn't matter if we heard it before, in fact it enhanced it...we knew what was coming. Bucky had six kids but she knew how to treat herself good, with reading, with playing solitaire in the morning until she won a game, with sunning in the back yard. She was dramatic, Daddy would call her Sarah Bernhardt, and shocking...at Christmas she would put on her bathing suit and sit in front of the Christmas tree and Daddy would grab his camera and get a picture of this. Even her name, all my friends call their mothers, Mommy, Mom or Ma, I was the only one who had a different name for my mother. God Bless you Bucky, I love you with all my heart , this Mother's Day more than ever.

Seven weeks today and Maria is still in the front seat of my brain. You, me, any of us that knew Maria knows what I mean. For example, Henry pulled out a toy box today and there was one of those little white bears that had been a part of my Christmas, was it four years ago? Maria and Helene had gone to a Museum and had run into "Fluxus" and then Maria had developed the idea of a fluxus Christmas gift exchange. We met at her house in Germantown and all drew names, I think it might have been after Thanksgiving dinner. I got Paul and Helene and Maria got Timmy and me. Well on Christmas I got a note with a white bear attached, with the only Fluxus instructions was that there were five more bears hidden around Tivoli. Now this bear is only about 2-3 inches long and Tivoli is an area of one square mile. Well, we found one in a bush down at the river, a regular stop on our Sunday walk. Weeks later another one was found on Sengstack Lane, tied to a pussy willow bush. The third one was hard and Maria gave us a hint that it was close to home and Timmy found it in one of the maple trees in our yard. Weeks went by and another bear was found...this one might have been by the water tower - I've forgotten exactly where it was. Now it was into March and there was still one bear at loose in Tivoli. "Give me a hint", I begged Maria and she said it's hidden in a place you like to go to. I looked at her and asked, "The Black Swan?" and that smile gave her away. That night Margaret and I went to the Black Swan, a local Irish bar that used to serve great fish and chips. Margaret and I bent down, looking under the tables and chairs, searching behind the pictures, trying not to look too conspicuous. Finally, the bartender asked us what we were doing and I said, "Have you seen a little white bear around here?" He wasn't even surprised, just opened the cash register and reached in and pulled out the bear. "It's been here for months. I wondered who put it there." Margaret and I had big, black wonderful Guinnesses to celebrate and I called Maria when I got home and told her all the bears were back together. Now, how can you ever forget a girl like Maria?