Another Mother's Day rolling in. Paul asked me on the phone "What can I get you for Mother's Day?" and my usual answer was birdseed or Fundador. Everybody knows what birdseed is, but Fundador is something special. Laura introduced me to it...a Spanish brandy. She would say FUN da dor....and it is fun. Fun to drink, fun to say. I have gotten into the habit of having a swig (or more) of Fundador before I go to bed. So, if I am going away for the week or even a night, I have to be sure to pack my FUN da dor.

A couple of years ago I spend a few days at the Lake with Paul, Helene and the kids in their cabin. The cabin is typical, loft upstairs with beds, no ceilings in the bedrooms, so everything is open and easily heard. I was pouring my nightly drink and asked Helene if she would care for some and she agreed. The only glass she had was a small character glass, but Fundador can go into anything. Anyway, Paul was upstairs reading to Shane and Zach, I had settled into my bed and Ian was getting a snack in the kitchen, when he spotted the glass, and thinking it was for him, took a big swig. All hell broke out....he clutched his chest, sputtered, fell on the floor, kicking his feet, muttering incoherently. Of course everyone could hear him, and Paul yelled down, "What's going on down there?" Helene answered "Ian drank my Fundador by mistake." Paul, puzzled screamed down, "What the %^&^% is Fundador? I ran out of my bedroom and by this time Ian had recovered and to tell you the truth we all had a good laugh at it.

Last year I drove Atticus and Regina to the Cape a day before we could get in our cabin. The ride was terrible, we got settled in the motel, and I thought, in a few hours, I can go to sleep. Then I realized...I had forgotten my FUNdador. I fell on the bed, saying words a grandmother shouldn't even think, when Atticus calmly stated, "Linny, I will text Rachael and she can bring it out tomorrow when she comes." And she did....the one time I realized both the importance of texting and careful packing.

I remember one time Laura and her boyfriend Art who were both working together as painters had too much FUNdador the night before. They suffered through work, then their car wouldn't start and they had to walk home. Laura said it felt like a tomahawk was sticking straight in her skull. I guess you can have too much FUNdador.

Bucky liked Seagram's. She would drink it out of a Mason jar. When she was very sick, and her doctor wasn't helping her out, she told him, "Time for me to see Dr. Seagram." The doctor had no sense of humor (or alcohol) and shook his head and said, "I don't recall hearing about a Dr. Seagram." I think I will use Bucky's line with my doctor....Well, time for me to see Dr. Fundador.

I'm getting to be more and more like Bucky. Talk about imprint, Bucky stamped us, tattooed us, marked us for life with her wonderful sense of humor and being. Thank you Bucky and Happy Mother's Day in heaven.

I've been hearing a lot about facebook lately, most of it not good. People being robbed after they wrote on their facebook "Oh so glad to be going to Florida for the next two weeks". Teenagers and even younger kids bullying and being mean..."Oh you look so fat in that picture you posted". Every now and then when I check my e-mail there's another person "wanting to be your friend". Now, I don't have many friends, but I don't think that is how I want to get them.

When I was a kid (long before the internet) we had autograph books that we would exchange with our friends. This was very popular in the 50's and I can still recall some of the verses that were written. We were about in the fifth grade and just starting to notice the opposite sex, so there were some suggestive ones at that time:

I love you much, I love you mightly,
I love your pajamas near my nighty.
No don't get excited, don't get red,
I mean on the clothesline -not in bed.

When you get married, and you have twins,
Don't come to me for safety pins.

Don't kiss by the garden gate.
Love is blind, but the neighbors ain't.

Tulips in the garden,
Tulips in the park.
But the tulips that Linda likes best
Are two lips in the dark.

We always hid our autograph books so our parents wouldn't read the above.

The pages of the autograph books were varied colors, so some kids would write on a blue page, I hope you are never the color of this page. Or on red "This is the color you get when you see (boy's name who is in the class). "

Some times the page would be folded over, and on the outside would say, "If you are beautiful, open this". Then inside it would say, "Stuck Up. That's getting a little close to Facebook. Or, "Open if you have a dirty mind" and inside "Ivory Soap." Corny, huh. But that's what the autograph book was for. Corny verses. Sometimes teachers would sign and they always wrote something like "Good luck as you continue your journey through school" or "You have been a pleasure to have in the fifth grade". I remember my art teacher, a beautiful young woman, Miss LaScala would always draw a figure, a girl for a girl's book, a boy for a boy's book and sign her name next to it.

That's another thing. You had to use your best penmanship because you knew EVERYBODY was going to read what you had written. Kids can type on the computer probably close to a 100 words a minute, but they can't write legibly anymore.

After you wrote your verse, signed you name, then you had to add: "Your's til Niagara Falls".
Or, "Your's til butter flies". Locally, we had "Your's til Bear Mountain gets dressed" or "Your's til Cold Springs".

Today it is all shorthand LOL, IMHO, WTF - for a two fold reason - older people don't know what you are saying, and it is quicker. IMHO - give me an autograph book anyday.

I am taking two classes in the Learning Institute this Spring - Family in the Bible and three plays by Eugene O'Neill. They are both worth while. Yesterday we learned about Joseph and his brothers and family. Joseph's story has its up and downs...thrown in a pit by his brothers, sold to slavery, became Head of the Slaves in the Phaoroah's home, thrown into prison, etc, etc. The teacher emphasized the unknowns in a life, nothing can really be planned, with a story his grandfather had told him.

A tailor and his Polish Magistrate are friends. One day the Magistrate drives by in his car and sees the tailor. "Where are you going?" he asks and the tailor responds "I don't know". The Magistrate's friends in the car laugh at this and the Magistrate, angrily asks again, "Don't make me look foolish, where are you going?" Again the tailor answers "I don't know". More laughs in the car, and the Magistrate says "Give me an answer, or I will have you thrown into jail." And, again, the tailor shrugs and says, "I don't know" so they throw him in jail. The next day the Magistrate visits him in jail and says, "Why wouldn't you tell me where you were going?" And the tailor responds, "Did I know I was going to jail?"

O'Neill wrote Mourning Becomes Electra, the American version of a Greek Tragedy. That teacher couldn't help himself and told us this joke: A man goes to his tailor, puts a pair of pants on the table, and asks, "Eumenides (You menda deese)?" The tailor responds, "Euripides?(You ripa deese)"

You can tell I love these classes. But the best thing happened last night. I was thinking about the story of Joseph, really a wonderful, entertaining piece, and I looked for Aunt Lillian's bible to see if this version matched the Rabbi's version he had told us in class. Now, Maria had inherited Lillian's bibles, several of them, so she had given one to Tim, a white bounded book marked with the American Legion seal. I had often referred to this book since many of my classes deal with religion, but last night I discovered something for the first time.

Glued in the front of the book was a spiritual leaflet, entitled Power for Living ... the First Step. Inside the pamphet were two pieces of paper. One was a note from Uncle Phil, a love note written on a scrap of paper, with a heart with an arrow drawn through it. I love you written in Uncle Phil's uneven handwriting.

The other piece of paper looked like it had been in a small pad and written in red ink in Aunt Lillian's beautiful penmanship was a poem - The Traveler by James Dillet Freeman.

Let me write it out for you:

She has put on invisibility
Dear Lord, I cannot see -
But this I know, although the road
ascends and passes from my sight,
That there will be no night;
That you will take her gently by the hand
and lead her on
Along the road of life that never ends,
and she will find it is not death but dawn.
I do not doubt that you are there as here,
and you will hold her dear.

Our life did not begin with birth,
It is not of the earth;
and this that we call death, it is no more
than the opening and closing of a door -
And in your house, how many rooms must be
Beyond this one where we rest momentarily.

Dear Lord, I thank you for the faith that frees,
The love that knows it cannot lose its own;
The love that, looking thru the shadows, see
that you and she and I are ever one.

A gift from Aunt Lillian and Maria.

One more note about our class. Joseph's story ends the Book of Genesis. The book starts with Adam and Eve and Cain killing his brother Abel. When the Lord asks Where is Abel? Cain answers "Am I my brother's keeper?" and with Joseph at the end of Genesis forgiving his brothers, and loving them in spite of the past, it answers the question...Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I like that.

Yesterday I stopped at our Agway store to buy birdseed and a mother and daughter were sitting outside the store, with three cages of baby rabbits. When I was making my purchase, the phone rang and the question was asked "Is the lady with the rabbits still there? Someone else wants to buy rabbits?" They are hard to resist, but then I remembered back when we had rabbits.

I don't remember where they came from, but Joel had made a hutch and two baby rabbits appeared, one almost all white, one with black spots - two males (or so we thought) Peter and Thumper. Then in June my sister Kathy said the class pet, a black rabbit named Benjamin, had not been claimed by any of her students. Would we want him? So Benjamin was added to the group. But when he was placed in the hutch with the other two, a terible ruckus occurred, so Benjamin moved into the house.

Benjamin liked to sit under the pot belly stove and amazing to me, he would only poop in the bathroom, on the bathroom rug. The fact that he knew what room to use, plus always the same spot was appreciated by me, the cleaner. All I had to do was carefully pick up the rug, then shake it in the toilet and voila, all done. Unless somebody didn't look where they were going and stepped on the rug. Then it was a different story.

One morning I went to the hutch and was horrified by a sight of tiny, hairless, dead baby rabbits. Thumper was NOT a boy. She apparently was amazed at what had happened and was pulling out her hair to make a nest, a little too late. To avoid another sight like that, Peter was moved onto the porch. There he quickly made a home in a large, leatherly reclining chair, a tossed out gift from Uncle Phil. We liked to point out that Peter made two holes in the chair, an entrance and an exit hole. "In case he was chased in by a predator, he had another exit, so he could escape safely", we would proudly explain. No explanation for a rabbit, a rabbit predator, or a large reclining chair on someone's porch though. Peter, unlike Benjamin, was not happy indoors, so everyday we let him out to roam the yard. Getting him back in at night was the problem. "Go put your shoes on, we have to catch Peter", I would tell the kids. It took all of us to catch him. He would run in circles, dart out of our hands. It usually took anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes to corner him. Paul was best at it - but Peter would retaliate as Paul got close. "He's pissing on me," Paul would yell, but knowing there was no rest until Peter was on the porch, would try to grab him anyway.

This went on for months, until someone from IBM wanted rabbits and came in a truck to take the three rabbits, hutch thrown in as well, away. He had two little kids with him, and they were so pleased with the sight of the rabbits. Like the army, it was "don't ask, don't tell" as we handed them over. The man took four boxes out of the truck, each one holding a large chocolate rabbit. The trade was complete.

The girls cried and moaned at the loss of their pets, but Paul opened up his candy box, settled on the couch in front of the TV and joyfully, contently grawed at the rabbit.

I never found out what happened to Thumper, Peter and Benjamin. But somehow, I bet it wasn't pretty. Happy Easter everyone. God Bless.

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.