Tomorrow is Saint Patrick's Day. I have been thinking today of all the good St. Patty's Days I've had. I remember one just before the Iraq War started. Maria, Patty, Margaret and I were sitting with several other people on Bailey's porch - a warm night. The Mayor was there and like a typical politician, was going from table to table. At our table we exchanged Irish jokes and then I said "Let's get Tivoli declared a Peace City" and he moaned and said, "Oh, no Linda, don't start that". Then a year later we celebrated at the Black Swan, sitting around a table in a crowded room, drinking Guiness, Maria, Patty, Me and others I can't remember now. But my favorite St. Patty's Day memory goes back probably 28 years ago when Maria had Jer as a baby and was living with Kevin's mother. I had asked her if she wanted to go to Bailey's with me for St. Patty's Day and she jumped on it, asked Mary to watch Jer for the night --she planned on spending the night at my house. I picked her up after work and we were soon on our way to Bailey's. Now only once a year did they open the back room making Bailey's double in size. The juke box was playing Irish music (nothing special for the occasion, it ONLY had Irish music on it) probably Danny Boy and we ordered beers and tried to find an empty seat. The only seats were at a table filled with young guys - I especially remember Benjie Sosta as being there. He had a Tivoli kid reputation and several years later died in either a car or motorcycle accident. We sat down, Ria grinning broadly at probably her first night out after having the baby and took a sip of her beer. Now, Maria could never drink. A half a glass of beer and she would be silly, so I wondered how this would go. Benjie was making us laugh, calling to Lillian the beer maid, "Take the hill, Lill" because she was wearing a green hat that looked like an army helmet. He leaned in close to me and asked in a low voice"Do you woof?" Ria gasped, choking on her beer. I looked at him and said, "I don't think so." Maria explained that to woof you have to drink the whole glass down at one time. NO, NO, I don't woof. But that did put us all in the right mood. Erin Go Braugh flags were passed around, more green hats, green plastic leis, and the music got louder and louder. A good time was held by all. The next morning I woke up Maria to take her back to Mary's house. She said "I'm not even going to get dressed. I'll give Mary a good show." So I drove her home and she got out of the car, wearing her bath robe, a green hat perched on her head, several leis and waving a green flag. I thought I saw the curtains move as she yelled out to me from the front steps..."Happy St. Patrick's Day Ma". It is my best memory of the day. I bet she and Benjie and Patty are getting ready to woof tomorrow. Happy St. Patrick's Day and God Bless us all.

Boy, it has been a while - I think I was stuck in February doldrums. Now it is March. Timmy has a riddle "What's the only date that is a command?" Answer: March forth. That's what the cold does to you, strange chemical changes to the brain. My mother told me that my first sentence was "GaGa, Nana, brrrrrr" which translated to Grandma, I'm cold. 65 years later, I'm still stuck in the I'm cold mode. Clothes don't seem to make a difference- two, three shirts, two pairs of socks, still cold. When I was little, still living in my Grandmother's house, Barbara and I slept in an attic bedroom, without heat. I remember my mother ironing the sheets before we hopped under the covers. GaGa, Nana, brrrrr. I wasn't kidding. School was cancelled today because of the snow storm. Rarely, do I remember school closing, and if it was closed we were advised by the firehorn going off in three threes, the signal for school closing. Today you look on the internet or tv. Oh, the television weather people love a storm. You would think it was the end of the world coming, their pointing out the approaching low, the expected number of inches, and oh, yes the wind chill which is always near zero in our area. Today is my mother Bucky's birthday. I can remember a warm March 2, taking a walk with the kids down Clay Hill Road in the dark of night, hearing the peepers, feeling Spring, feeling the joy of the damp air with that earthy smell that signals Spring. Last year was cold too. Laura was married on Leap Year Day, a cold day, and Maria drove us to Catskill for the ceremony. It was a wonderful time, an alligator cake made by Maria, with a bride and groom alligator, the bride wearing a veil. We all had good food, laughs at Liz's son Zander eating everything he could get his hands on, and then Laura and Michael left to catch a train before noon to the city and on to Florida. On the way home in the car, Maria looked excited and said, "I got an idea. Let's go wait at the Tivoli Railroad tracks and wave when their train goes by"....she was so pleased with the idea, but we all poopooed it, too tired, why would they look out the window, etc. , etc. So we talked her out of it. But that memory is sticking in my head, why didn't we just go along with her, it would have been fun just to see the train go by anyway, so we could tell people what a crazy thing we did. But we didn't. Yesterday I went to the railroad tracks, driven by that memory. "Maybe I will see an eagle, or even wave to some newly weds going by in a train", but no eagle, no train went by and I drove home. Cold, just cold. Gaga Nana brrrrr.

A few more thoughts on suffering. As my sisters' comments indicate, Catholics are taught about suffering too, but for them, it is a way to get into Heaven and enjoy eternal life. Of course if Adam and Eve never ate the fruit, there would be no suffering to begin with...God wouldn't have condemmed them and the rest of us to pain, work, labor and toil and all those good things. Anyway, Aunt Lillian's prayerbook says that "out of suffering comes all good" and "suffering was the lot of all saints". (Was it St. Francis who wore a horse hair shirt next to his skin as a penance? ) "Suffering has a refining influence upon our character and tends to free us from selfish motives and purifies our aspirations". "Every sorrow, every trial can be turned into a blessing". Well, I don't think Buddha would say that - he said "Suffering is an illusion." But as Catholics that is how we are taught. "Thanks be to God, my rheumatism is much worse today!" Just another way to look at it. Now Maria thought all our trials, all our suffering and pains in this life were brought on by something we did in another life. Atonement for unknown sins. She often would call me, saying dramatically, "Ma, I don't know what I did in another life, but it must have been terrible." I remember one time she called, after an especially bad day with the kids, motor bureau, bill collectors, etc, and said, "Ma, I think I finally figured out what I did in another life....I was Hitler." We laughed and after that, whenever things were really bad, she would repeat that she must have been Hitler, that was the only explanation for her sufferings. Well, enough on suffering. It's snowing, cold and frigid - the house only 60 degrees. Makes one not mind putting on the horse hair shirt.

January has been hard on the Learning Institute's classes at Bard. I wanted to take Buddha's Four Noble Truths, but the classes kept being canceled, rescheduled, so I ended up only attending two...I guess I only will find out about the first noble truth, something I already suspected. Our instructor presented us to Buddha in a strong Italian accent. He had a nervous little habit of giggling at what seemed the most inappropriate times, which surprised me but made me smile more than once. The 1st great noble truth to get back to it, is "suffering" and we suffer said Buddha, because we get too attached to life and that is why we suffer. "Greatest pleasure gives you greatest pain" (giggle). I remember Aunt Lillian telling Maria, "I never knew the pleasure of having children," here she looked knowingly, "but I never had the pain that comes with raising a family." Aunt Lillian must have known Buddha. Nietzsche was quoted by the professor more than once...my favorite, the familiar, "that what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger" (giggle). I have thought of that quote many times in the last months. But to get back to suffering, we suffer because of our physical wants, our mental wants, our attachments (greed) and our spiritual suffering, our hunger for eternity (giggle). He continued that our needs have dominated our lives, we need more and more...actually, we really need less and less. Here the professor referred to today's economy, our living beyond our means, and said we may learn the hard way to need less and less (giggle). Made me think of St. Francis and even Cat Stevens in his song "Moonshadow" and if I ever lose my eyes, if my colors all run dry, I won't have to see anymore, or if I ever lose my mouth, all my teeth both north and south, I won't have to talk anymore. Cat Stevens, like Aunt Lillian must have known Buddha. So here I am stuck in the house, the yard an ice skating rink, not able to find out the other noble truths, or how to get out of suffering, other than death (my giggle). Oh, well that what doesn't kill us....we're getting stronger every day in this January of below zero weather, snow, ice and cancelled classes.

This morning the thermometer in the front window read minus 12. The sun was not yet up, but already the cardinals were searching in the snow for left over seeds from the day before. The red birds are always my first visitors. Soon, the blue jays, sparrows, chickadees and more were arriving and I pulled on my boots, jipped up my coat, wrapped a scarf around my face, put on Aunt Lillian's hat and went out to feed the birds. My glasses actually frosted up, not steamed, but iced and my eyelids stuck together with frost. I filled the feeders, threw corn on the ground and hurried back inside. Sitting in the rocker in the window, thankfully holding my hot cup of coffee, I saw something I had never seen before. The sun was coming up, it lit up the trees, made the cardinals look even redder and the snow turned a golden color. Years back we had a nest of baby blue jays in the front tree and the babies were adorable, fluffy and fat, noisy and bratty, a handful for their poor parents. Anyway, these grown blue jays outside today were all fluffy, like baby blue jays, using this technique to keep warm. The rising sun had a strange affect on the blue jays, I swear they became religious. As the sun rose, they quieted down completely, left the food, found a branch and faced the sun...each of them did this. They were probably just trying to use the first sun for warmth, but I swear to God, it looked like they were praying. And they probably were in their own bird way, saying "look the sun, we survived that long, God awful night. Hallelujia". So I looked at the fluffy, for once quiet blue jays, thanking the sun or maybe just using the sun and I smiled. The news this morning was filled with pictures of the plane down in the Hudson River, people lining the wings, crowded together, having survived the crash while the plane slowly sank. One woman interviewed said it gave her a lot to think about, why did 155 people survive an almost certain death. She was quoted as saying, "There must be a reason we lived, something we must do before we do die". Like the birds, she was just thankful to be here another day. You can learn an awful lot from the birds.

Well, it's almost Christmas, the doubloon has been found, I might get to hibernate after all. Team Ria has been such a plus in our lives....the well wishers from afar have filled my heart. But, what a difference a year makes. Last year on this blog I wrote about our first Christmas on Clay Hill Road, when Maria was five and sick with a fever and she and I stayed up on Christmas Eve, surprising a mouse and laughing about it. Maria wrote on that blog..."one of my favorite memories..because I liked having you to myself on Christmas Eve." That was Maria. Years ago she had a bumper sticker on her car that read "Practice Random Acts of Kindness" and Ria intuitively knew how to do that. Her cards were always perfectly selected and she added the right words, whether in humor or in love. At her funeral my brother pulled out a birthday card she had sent him of an old man holding up an ugly animal, a giant possum, and inside she had written, "The critter on the front is probably the only animal that doesn't live on our third floor." We laughed at that together. Two years ago she gave me a prayer book for Christmas, and had inscribed to "Mom, A copy of Aunt Lillian's prayer book for you with all my Love, Maria" and that was Ria, not just love, but ALL my love. Since her death so many people have sent me cards with her words, always so appropriate and loving or told me of the little things she had sent to them at dark times of their lives. Last night I thought of her before going to sleep, as I usually do, but this time I said in my head, "Good night, Maria, wherever you are" and I had to smile because I remembered Jimmy Durante saying "Good Night Mrs Calabash, wherever you are" at the end of each of his performances. I looked it up today because I thought it must have been someone very dear to him to acknowledge her that way and was surprised at the story. Mrs. Calabash owned a restaurant that he stopped at in Calabash, South Carolina at an early stage in his career. He was impressed with her kindness and as he left he said he would make her famous one day. Her daughter said she didn't even know that she was talking with Jimmy Durante. And so it was that Lucy Coleman became the famous Mrs. Calabash announced in his routine sign off. I guess that just goes to show you that kindness can be repaid, and repaid in a dramatic way. Team Ria's crown will be used in a way that commemorates Maria's spirit of kindness and giving. So this eve of Christmas Eve, I say Merry Christmas and God Bless and Merry Christmas Maria, wherever you are.

Very exciting news...the doubloon has been found and Team Ria will soon be wearing the crown. Sabra has made a website http://www.teamria.blogspot.com where we will be posting information, pictures, etc. and more details of the actual finding of the doubloon by Michael, Laura's husband. Check out the blog for a video of Timmy, Michael and Tony searching the low tide at Catskill.