May 1st was the last day I saw juncos, those little caped birds that mean winter is here. They all left at once, and on the first day of May. The cat birds have come back and the rose breasted grosbeak, so it really must be spring. Thursday was Cinco de Mayo and that always makes me think of my last days at IBM. It was on Cinco de Mayo that still another offer of an early departure from IBM came around. This one seemed to be made for me. You had to be a certain age, 49, you had to have 9 years of work at IBM and you had to be willing to "bridge" for 6 years until the time you would have had a total of 15 years, which was the earliest you could retire at.

Cinco de Mayo, my last name at that time was Ciancanelli, so I kind of sang Cinco Ciancanelli, a few times, and e-mailed my manager that I wanted to take this last offer. Who wouldn't? IBM was going down the toilet, grown men were crying in their offices, the older workers were hiding in bathrooms to avoid the talk with their manager about taking retirement, the young workers were afraid that they would be the first to go. Rumors were all over, this department was going to Texas, this one was being dissolved. No problem, Cinco Ciancanelli is going out the door. Oh, my manager tried to talk me out of it. They had just put me through three years of programming school, wanted to get their money worth, and of course I was an older woman, one of the statistics the government liked to see in corporations. But I took the bridge. My last day the main desk called me that I had flowers, and I went there to find who would have sent me something on my last day. Sure enough, it was Maria, with a note that said"To Ma, the Captain of her ship". As I returned to my office, one worker seeing the flowers said, "Did you get a promotion?" "No," I replied, "I'm leaving -it's my last day." And it was one of the best feelings I ever had.

It turned out to be a good decision in so many ways. And the money I got up front paid for a big house in Cape Cod that I rented for three weeks, with everybody we knew coming and going.

Then there's Mother's Day. I would be told to stay in bed - the kids were going to make me breakfast. My bedroom is right over the kitchen, so I could hear the fighting and arguing, while I waited. Then they would come up with a tray...a dishcloth covering a pizza pan, a cup of tea, toast with jelly in a little cup, and flowers in a small vase, usually apple blossoms from our apple tree. Then they would all sit on the bed and watch me eat. The toast was cold, but I ate it, the tea too sweet, but I drank it and when I was finished, they said "We're starving - can you make us crepes? Happy Mother's Day everybody.

Yesterday I went to the Stations of the Cross for the first time in many years. When I was a kid I remember going with Grandma Burky. The church was packed, waiting for the priest. I remember her looking at my hands, dirty from playing outside, and frowning and shaking her head. You should have clean hands in church. Then the priest came out, with beautiful robes, and an altar boy on each side, each with an enormous candle that took both of their hands to hold upright. They moved slowly down the center aisle, stopping at each station, singing, praying and sprinkling incense. Nothing like that last night.

First of all there were only 10 of us in the church - 10, my first surprise, no full church, no anticipation. Then only one priest came out, no altar boys, no incense, no robes. He started out by saying that there cannot be an bell ringing on Holy Week, he even said he disconnected the outdoor bells so he wouldn't make a mistake. I knew from Ria dying on Easter week that we could not have any music at her funeral, so this was no surprise. Then the priest, elderly with a heavy accent, slowly walked and stood in front of the first station. We each had been handed a booklet with the prayers and recitings for each station, so we opened them and started. As we went from station to station, there was one refrain at the end of our recitation that was always the same, "do with me what you will". It had been a hard week, I'm down with a bad cold, then Laura went into the hospital and had surgery, and I was too sick to even go and see her. Sabra kept me informed and Laura and I talked on the phone, but that's not like being there...do with me what you will, kind of says it all. We cannot be and do everything that we want to, and we certainly don't know what lies ahead, day by day or even minute by minute. But do with me what you will, takes a lot of pressure off. Stations of the Cross, so different from my memories 60 years ago with Grandma, but boy, worth every minute of it. Happy Easter everybody.

March is fast coming to a close and that makes me think of two things. The first one is fishing season, April 1st is the official start of the fishing season. Daddy loved to fish and after we moved to Tivoli he would come to our house and go to a stream in Elizaville he especially liked. When we were kids we would help him get this bait. He would take us to Legion Pond in Glenham (now a car dealership) and he would put his homemade net in the water. It was square, as I remember it, two to three feet in diameter, and lined with a fine netting, maybe an old curtain. It was at the end of a long stick, and he would put the net in the water, letting it sink. Once it was deep enough, we would throw little pieces of bread over it, and the shiny minnows would appear, a feeding fenzy. When there were enough of them, Daddy would quickly jerk the net out of the water, and the trapped fish would be carefully put into a pail of water. Another place he got bait was on the creek near Texaco by a dam. There were a lot of rocks in the water, and he would carefully lift one and there would be a crawfish exposed, a little lobster that he placed into his special baitbox, a small wooden box with a screen top, so you could watch the crawfish in their new home. Daddy would bring home his catch, if it was a large trout, he would place it next to a ruler and take its picture, no "fish story" here. The second thing is April Fool's Day. About sixteen, seventeen years ago Timmy got me really good. It was a Friday, like this year, and we were both going to work, Timmy left before seven and I went about eight. Before he left, he put a lottery ticket on the kitchen table and said, "I didn't have a chance to check my ticket. Would you find Wednesday's paper and check the numbers?" Then he left for work. I did a few chores and then I noticed the ticket on the table and dug through the recycled papers until I found the one that listed the winning draw. I checked the first number, it matched Timmy's, the second number, the third number. My heart was pounding, every number matched. Timmy had won the lottery! It was too early to call anybody, then I remember Paul left for work around seven. I called him up, my hands shaking. He answered the phone, sleepily, I think I woke him up. "Paul, I screamed, "You have got to come over and check the numbers, I think Timmy won the lottery, he matched every f.... (I let that slip) number. Paul answered generously, "That's great he won Ma, nobody deserves it more," and said he'd be over as soon as he got dressed. I checked the numbers again and again, and then I looked at the date. It wasn't for last Wednesday, it was for the coming Saturday. Poor Timmy, he matched the numbers, but not the date. I called Paul not to come, and then I realized that I had been fooled. He knew I wouldn't check the date, just the numbers...Poor Timmy really got me good. Well, anyway, I thought, now I know how it feels to win the lottery, and I did. Happy April Fool's Day.

Happy St. Patrick's Day. Next week my classes start and one of them is titled "Dystopian Works", we are reading books about the opposite of Utopia. And Japan is a good example of this right now. But let me tell you what I read last night. I was reading Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury and this passage jumped out at me. "Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there. It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away." And a little further on "Grandfather's been dead for all these years, but if you lifted my skull, by God, in the convolutions of my brain you'd find the big ridges of his thumbprint." Now Maria left a million things, kind letters, an "invisiblity cloth" for Timmy to wear to family functions, a book for me titled "How to be a Guest at the Bird's Nest B&B", a collage of Mothers- Grandma Burky holding Bucky, Bucky, holding me, and me holding Maria.... I could go on and on, you probably could add something to the list if you knew Maria, because that was just the way she was. Three years is a long time, and it is a blink of an eye. Today is a beautiful day and I am going to wish everyone I see Happy St. Patrick's Day. God Bless. Rest in peace Maria.

Well today would have been my mother Bucky's 95th birthday. Maria loved Bucky and I think she was a lot like her in many ways. When Maria was in College a lot of her essays were about her childhood memories of Bucky and staying with her on Falconer Street, sleeping on the back porch, looking for Mr. Chase's hidden money, etc. I recently found a letter Maria had written but never mailed to her cousin John...she wrote "You remember how Grandma used to walk Poohbear - she'd always say, "Who wants to take the dog for a dump? She had a way with words!" Maria had captured Bucky in a nutshell - she had a way with words.

We could all add to the list: (1) After the fourth of July, the summer is over, (2) Show me an engaged girl, and I will show you a future bride, (3) you shit in one hand and wish in another, you know what you get first. My brother Bob remembers these two: "I know someday I will wake up dead", and a recurring dream of hers where she would wake up and say I was dreaming I was choking on a peach pit. She never could stand clothes that were too close to her neck...she would explain, "I must have been a dog in my other life, I can't stand a tight collar."

Well Happy Birthday Bucky - we miss you wisdom and your wit.

Today I was at Agway buying birdseed, when I walked in on a conversation between the cashier and her customer. "The news was so bad this morning," she was saying, "I don't know why I bother to put on the Today Show." He agreed and added, "It's only going to get worse with the unrest in the Mid East, terrorism you know," nodding like he knew we were going into RED ALERT at any moment now. The thing is that I was thinking these exact thoughts this morning. Why am I starting the day off with all this terrible news? Today's morning show was filled with graphic pictures of the victims of the earthquake, bloody, writhing in pain, and I thought back to 40 years ago when I would get up and have a cup of coffeee, not with the tv, but with the radio.

I had a little black portable radio, battery driven that picked up an AM station in Kingston, WGHQ. The radio sat on the kitchen counter, close by, while I made the kids' breakfast and packed their lunch bags. Bill Skilling was the show's host and he gave the news, the weather, and played music. The music was always the same..."Breaking Up Is Hard To Do", was played every morning - I don't know if that was a reflection of someone on the show, or the only record they had at the studio. The best part of the show came on 5 minutes before the hour. Bill would read the school lunch menus, making appropriate voices and sounds to go along with the food. For example, hamburger on a toasted roll would be said in a Jackie Gleason voice. Desserts were always good for a laugh, especially fruit cup, which he would pronounce, and then put his thumb in his cheek and make a ccccuuuupppp noise. That was the way to start the day, laughing with the radio, no visuals, nothing more dramatic than thinking of canned fruit mix being served to the poor kids as dessert.

I should have known back then that the newspaper and tv weren't for me. The songwriters were telling me so. Simon and Garfunkle said, "I get all the news I need on the weather report."
And really, that is all that I am interested in. Don McLean said it also, "Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn't take one more step." Timmy is always telling me I need a "News Fast", go a week or two without the news and see what happens...like a fruit juice fast or that cayenne pepper lemonade fast that people use. Maybe I'll try that, or see if I can find a radio stations that reads the kids' menus today.

Well this is the first weekend in two months that there is not a zero reading or snow predicted. Hooray! I've been spending my time mostly watching the birds and the neighbors. The neighbors are like the fable the ants and the grasshopper. We (Timmy and me) are the grasshopper, fiddling away our days, while the ants (the neighbors] are working hard. Wayne has a big yellow shovel, a long roof rake shovel, a snowblower, and a little go-cart mobile that has a plow on it. He can use all of these almost at the same time, removing methodically the snow from his house and yard.

Last week our other neighbor Tony did something I have never seen before. He hitched his son Christopher in a harness, tied a rope to it, tied the rope around himself, and they both went up on the roof. Now this is a high roof, steep pitch, therefore the rope on Christopher who had a roof rake shovel and was clearning off the roof. Now this made me laugh, because I remembered a story from my childhood where the husband and wife trade jobs, and the husband does everything wrong, including putting the cow on the roof, so he doesn't have to take the cow to the pasture. Then he tied a rope around the cow and himself. Well, the story ended with the cow falling off the roof, and the old man going down the chimney. This didn't happen across the street, but the tension and drama lasted most of the afternoon. Better than the Superbowl.

So February is dragging on. I tried to think of some good that has come out of this winter - hard to do when the pipes froze in the garage, had to all be replaced, cabin fever doesn't even describe it - and a trip to the Post Office is all I can say happened in my journal. But then I thought of one thing - no mice. Usually, in the winter, they come in the house and Timmy is trapping almost one every night. No mice. They can't make it into the house through all the snow. I think I would rather have mice than this winter.