Tony's mother Sybil died last night.  Years ago when Ria was a baby, she was quite sick and I took her to the doctor's office. When I left the office I met my mother waiting for me outside.  I was probably over tired from staying up all night with a sick baby, and I blurted out that I was afraid she was going to die.  My mother shook her head and told me "It's not that easy to die", words that Sybil proved.  She survived every downfall, broken hips, blood clots, infections, etc.  Sabra and Tony were with her yesterday and one nurse told them that she was a favorite "a real lady".  And she was.

Whenever she visited Sabra, she was carefully groomed, hair done, makeup done, jewelry, a beautiful girl in pictures. a beautiful older woman.  When she had to use a cane, she named it (a doctor had suggested that she would be able to remember where she left it, if the cane was named.)  So she named it Napoleon.  When she had to use a walker, it was decorated with colorful bows. 

Sybil was 94 years old when she died.  A real warrior.  A real lady.  Rest in peace Sybil.

Happy New Year - it's been a while.  I want to list the best of 2014, but first a question, a question I heard sung this summer by Judy Collins - "Who knows where the time goes?"  She talked about the song writer, Sandy Denny, a young girl of only 19 when she wrote the lyrics.  How was she so wise at such an early age?

Anyway, the best of the last:

April in Wellfleet with Laura for her 50th, joined with Jer and Gabi, the seafood, the beaches, the sand piled high from the winter storms, and then the snow, beautiful on the sand.

May the baby turkeys, 15 little yellow balls of fuzz, down, down in numbers, until seven remained, and returned daily, until you could barely tell the difference in size from the mother and babies

July, of course, the family excursion to Wellfleet, the new big house to explore, the animal in the attic, the above named concert, Crissy and the fundador, and the cocktail party at Rachael's house with the view worth a million dollars.

September with Paul, boys and Maureen at the cabin, raining, but still fun and a picture of Daddy on the wall to enjoy.

October was the Street Painting, with Atticus, Regina, Ava, Sabra and family and visit from Liz, Vivien, and Rob...and Michael to help with the Red Riding Hood.  Then the Oysterfest and a picture taken with my old friend Caleb, who looked and sounded healthy and happy.

November the announcement of a new great grandchild, to come in 2015 and in December a concert in the Middle School with Solomon's jazz group doing Autumn Leaves that brought the tears.

The best of course, is little Vivien, who came into this family two months early, tiny but complete and who now is big and beautiful and every picture posted of her brings a smile.  Happy New Year , we will never know where the time goes and what it will bring but we are starting our new adventure.

Timmy's big race yesterday, the only one he does now, because it is free for him....he scores well enough to qualify for the "elite".  He starts training on August 1st, no more beer, two trips to the gym every day, tries to eat less junk food, etc.  It is quite a sacrifice for an effort that lasted exactly one hour, 35 seconds - his time.  Coming in  84th  with over 1900 runners is quite an accomplishment.  The woman standing next to me at the finish line, saw Timmy, and said, "Here comes an old one."  And I told her that it was Timmy.  So he came in first in his age group, 65-69. 

The race to me is kind of like Christmas, all the preparation, all the shopping, the wrapping, the Christmas card list, the stockings to buy for, and then PUFF - it's all over, with just a bag full of ripped wrapping paper to burn.  And a feeling of relief.  And the race does remind me that Thanksgiving, and then Christmas is just around the corner.

We go to the awards ceremony that seems to take forever,. starting with female 15-19, male, 15-19, and on and on until he hits the 60's.  Vince runs the show, and actually got Timmy to run in it when he met Timmy at the Kingston Classic, and was looking for strong runners.  He yelled to Timmy at 7am when we got to Schenectady for the race, "Hello Mr. Haley" - that's the kind of guy he is, knows his runners and can tell a little about each of them.  So there was Timmy standing with the other two finishers, he was in the middle as the first one in, and pictures were being taken.  It looks like a lineup at the police station, and Timmy looks like the guilty one right in the middle.  An older woman (she had just won in the 65-59 age group) was sitting next to me, and I heard her say, "I like that Tim Haley".  Made me smile.  And Vince made a big deal of Timmy's time and saying how he runs every year and that he is from Tivoli. Nice way to finish up the race for the year.

So now on to the real Christmas.

Back again, Halloween has inspired me.  Last night I shared a beer with Maria, Margaret and Patty, all of us used to go into Tivoli, Baileys on the porch one year, and the Black Swan a couple of times. It just isn't the same without them.

I didn't even go up into town this year, but Sabra took Henry and said there was a man dressed like toast, that was standing in the middle of the road.  That gave me a memory of many years ago, when Tivoli became famous on Halloween, but not for any good reason.

Tivoli used to have a clean up day - it was great - you could put out anything, appliances, old furniture, etc, and they took it all to the dump.  But the year I am remembering, it wasn't carefully thought out.  Clean Up day came a few days before Halloween, and the local kids took advantage of it.  On Halloween night, it was a Saturday that year, the kids turned the center of Tivoli into a house.  There was a kitchen with a refrigerator, table, a living room with couches and chairs, and everything else that had picked up before the Village.  There was a picture in the newspaper of the mess, and as I remember, Laura and others were sitting on the couch, big smiles on their faces. 

Monsignor Kane was vivid the next day at Mass.  Driving to church, the town was in disrepair, an outhouse remained at the four corners, and toilet paper was hanging from every telephone line.  There was no sermon that morning, just how terrible our kids were, why weren't they supervised, how could a firetruck or ambulance get through that mess, on and on.  But actually, I was thinking about Halloween in Beacon when I was a kid.  We threw eggs, soaped windows, and tied threads across the road, tree to tree.  A car going through the threads made a terrible noise, and the drivers would stop and get out and look at their tires, while we hid behind the bushes.  Phone pranks were another thing we did:  "Is your street light on?" and after they came back to the phone and said "yes" , we would say, "Then blow it out."  That's when trick or treat really meant something.

I had to get my car inspected this week.  I said I'd wait for it since I burned out my knees last week at the fair.   (I used to walk into Red Hook and look around for an hour.)  So for an hour and twenty minutes I sat in Vin's auto window listening to country music playing loud on the radio.  Now anyone who knows me, knows I hate country music.  When I had my MRI, they asked what kind of music would you like piped in? and I answered, "Anything, but country."  And here I was, literally a prisoner of country music.

Timmy once said he was brought up on two kinds of music - his uncles and mother liked country and his father liked polka music, all polka music.  This made me think what we had as music growing up.  My first thought was Spike Jones...his music was classic - horns, hoots, bangs, whistles, all between jokes like:  a bear sleeps in his bear skin, he sleeps very well I am told, last night I slept in my little bear skin, and I got a heck of a cold. I just looked up Spike Jones on youtube and if you watch Cocktails for 2 with the City Slickers in a 1945 movie clip - I dare you not to laugh. 

Anyway, I was listening to the music, and trying to do SUDOKO - and then I heard the song about a man on a plane, it was to be his honeymoon plane trip, but he was alone and the refrain was "getting drunk on a plane",  Well, I started tapping my toe and you know, it wasn't that bad.  I looked that up too on youtube and it is done by Dierks Bently and the video is also worth looking at. I think I am being reborn at the age of 72.

Grandma Burky's birthday. Two pictures received from Beacon for the occasion - one of an old Grandma in front of a birthday cake and one dated 1942 of a young Grandma next to Poppy, holding a shovel.  1942 - Already one son Joe off to war and in the next year, when I was not even one, her other son Eddy at eighteen years to go to war.  I lived upstairs over Grandma, with Bucky, Daddy and Barbara and Bucky's letters to her brother during my first year of life make that time very real to me.  For my first birthday I got a pair of socks and a dollar from Grandma.  But I got a lot more than that.

My first memory is of laying in my carriage, in Grandma's downstairs, and she was reading her prayer book and would pass me pictures of Saints, probably Mass cards.  My first sentence was to Grandma - "Gaga (her) Nana (me) brrrr (cold).  I remember her dancing around the dining room table with an embarrassed Charles Miller at my sister's birthday.  I remember her ironing clothes with an ironing board leaning against that same table.  She taught me how to iron a man's shirt, back first, then both sides of the front and then the sleeves, which she would fold over the front of the shirt, making a flat invisible man.  I remember her home made chili sauce that would send a smell of tomatoes, cinnamon and spices all around the house.  I watched her can, and was amazed when she pulled out a canning jar from boiling water with her bare hands.  She could make a meal out of anything, would come up to 17 Falconer and clean out the refrigerator leftovers for her own meals.  And I remember going to Mass on Good Friday with her, as the wind whipped and she knowingly said "it is 3 0 clock, and Jesus just died". 

I think of Grandma a lot.  I too, have a prayer book next to the bed, stuffed with Mass cards of my family, friends, even people I barely knew.  I look at the picture, turn it over and read the name and the prayer and think a little of the person, their life and their death.  I think of Grandma when I go to church....she would look at my fingernails and if they were dirty, would shake her head in disappointment.  I think of Grandma when I make stuffed cabbage or pick tomatoes out of the garden.  I think of that 14 year old girl, all alone in a steerage boat, coming to America.  I think of Grandma in 1918 with the inflenza that killed millions of people, sick with Bucky in the crib next to her.  She lived over a saloon and sent Poppy down for whiskey, which she said saved her life.  (My fundador might do the same thing).  I think of Grandma when I see those hard Christmas candies, she always had some in a bowl in the dining room.  And I think of Grandma when she used to call to Bucky, "Lillush" time to go shopping.  Wonderful memories of a fantastic wonderful Grandma. 
Happy Birthday Grandma.

Let's talk about the vacation first.  And there were many firsts this vacation.  I will list them:
(1) 1st time we had a dog at Wellfleet.  What a smile to see him come out of the guest house in the morning.
(2) 1st time I rode out alone with just Ava.  Nice conversations.
(3) 1st time we had an animal living with us in the attic...noisy during a thunderstorm and Regina taped him making noise at night. 
(4) 1st time to go to a concert, heard Judy Collins, had tears as she talked about Pete Seeger while singing "Where have all the flowers gone?"
(5) 1st time Ria's bench was right in front of the Preservation Hall, facing Main Street, with a flower garden in front, and a statue of a mother and child to her left.  Nice to sit there every morning with the Cape Cod Times.
(6) 1st time Rachael and Miles and girls had a MANSION with a million dollar view of the gut.  Took my breath away.
(7) 1st time sharing fundador with Chrissy, but like Maureen, the laughs flew.
(8)1st time Zander spend a week with us.  Watching him down clam chowder was like watching a hot dog eating contest.

The rest was pretty much as usual, kids building sand castles, visit from O'Leary family, with an assortment of beers in a cooler, church on Sunday, but again, memories of Maria as the priest said we should "Practice random acts of kindness", the bumper sticker she had on her car for years.  The Wellfleet years blend together, all the same and always different.