13 days and counting - I think I'm almost done.  48 years ago when we had our first Christmas in Tivoli, my friend, my only friend in our new location, was Jane O, and she asked me if I wanted to exchange stocking with her at Christmas.  I never did stockings before, the Murphy's didn't do that, but I said sure, and bought a red stocking at the grocery store and filled it with little things, a comb, some candy, a cheap toy.  Well, Jane handed me a homemade stocking, shaped like an old fashioned high buttoned shoe, with fake pearls and lace on the outside.  Inside were all treasures, individually wrapped, sewing needles, a pincushion, homemade candies, each wrapped with different paper, even jingle bells on some.  Boy was I embarrassed.  But the next year, I redeemed myself, copying her lead, and ever since then I have given my kids stockings,  and these stockings are the most fun to fill. 

I use to use stockings and then as they overfilled, I used boxes, now I just buy Christmas shopping bags and fill them.  I buy stuff all year, filling a box in my bedroom and then figure out who gets what.  The girls all get fancy underwear, Maria used to get black underwear like Bucky liked, and Paul gets silly men's underwear with a Christmas theme.  I really like the pair I bought for him this year.  Little things, big things, I wrap most of them, a la Jane, and I usually go over to Sabra's to watch her open her stocking.  By then, I will have forgotten most of what I filled it with, so it's as much a surprise for me.  13 days and counting.  

The Christmas lights are on the front trellis, and I see their reflection on the ceiling of my bedroom after I shut the light off.  Trying a new audio for a break from the Woosters, I rented Neil Gaiman's short stories "Trigger Warning" and the title should have tipped me off.  Trigger Warning - short fictions and disturbances.  They are disturbing and after hearing them, watching the lights flicker on the ceiling is calming. 

On the night of March 17, 2008 I was lying in bed.  What a day the whole experience had been, I kept playing if over and over in my head, trying to make sense of it.  Then I yelled down to Timmy "Put on the Christmas lights" and he didn't even question my request, just went on the porch and plugged in the lights on the trellis which had never been taken down after Christmas.  Those light lit up the ceiling and I thought that now Maria could see us.  It made me feel closer to her and that was just what I needed. 

Winter is a dark and like Neil's stories, as the cover puts it, waits for us in the dark corridors of our lives.  Let there be light.  

I told you how our church in Tivoli closed.  Now I go to Red Hook, about a 20 minute drive and except for the extra mileage, I am enjoying it very much.  The church is packed and there are lots of little kids, which I have always found entertaining in church, dating back to my own experiences with my kids.  Paul would run the zipper on his coat like a car on a track, making the appropriate noises.  Sabra took the pencil and paper which asked "who would you nominate for sainthood?"  and she penciled in "My mother, for giving birth to me."

Anyway this past week, I had several kids to choose from and selected a little boy two pews in front of me.  He was about three and was with his father and an older woman, maybe Grandma.  The father was a large man and very attentive to his son. At 9o'cock Mass our priest calls for the kids to come up to the altar and answer questions about the homily.  The little boy, who was about three, started to go then changed his mind. He was carrying a stuffed blue rabbit, that had floppy legs.  His father picked him up when he got restless, and the boy put the rabbit on his father's head.  That large man with a rabbit whose legs flopped on all sides of his head, was the sight that did it to me.  I started to laugh, and the kid made eye contact with me.  Now I was caught - he knew he had an audience.

Church to me is being part of a community.  Mrs. R who went to the church in Tivoli and always sat  two pews in front of me, joined my pew this week.  The old man next to me held a rosary in his fingers, the first time I have seen that in years.  All the old people used to finger rosaries in church.  I guess it was like bringing a toy rabbit - something to do if you needed it.   It was a good day for a person watcher like myself, and even Saint Nick all dressed came to visit the kids. 

About a month ago I sent my grandson Shane a letter.  He goes to early college and I hadn't had a chance to say goodbye, so I wrote a letter, stuck in a few bucks, and sent it off.  A few weeks later I asked his father if he had gotten the letter, I wasn't sure if he still had that post office box number.   Paul said he would ask him and I forgot about it.

Then last week, talking to Paul on the phone he said that Shane brought home the letter for his father to read it to him.  I said is my handwriting that bad? and Paul said "no, he can't read script."  Now this blew my mind.  A kid in college that can't read script.  I talked to Sabra about it, and she told me they don't teach script in school anymore.  No penmanship, no three lined paper, with each letter just the right height, nobody is learning to write or read script anymore.  Just not taught in grade school at all.

I can just picture a class going to a museum and staring at the Declaration of Independence. I had a teacher once who would call sloppy writing "chicken scratches" "How do you expect me to read and grade you with all these chicken scratches?"  So these kids are staring at the 200 year old precious document and not being able to read a word of it - nor recognize the John Hancock signature.  All chicken scratches.  Am I nuts or is this crazy?

Back from my third trip to Wellfleet this year.  Stayed at the brick house condo - Beach Rose, across the street from Mayo beach.  We hadn't stayed there since 2008.  The year before I was working on an apron for a Christmas present for Ria, the days of the week, with a Black Mammy baking a cake, hanging up clothes, going shopping, going to church, it covered all seven days.  There was a Black woman staying in one of the nearby cottages,  beautiful woman that sang opera all the time.  Anyway I was so careful not to let her see what I was working on - didn't want to offend her.  Ria loved that apron and wore it on Christmas Day.

But this year there was something new, solar panels and a constant noise.  The first day we searched for the sound, the noise like a motor running, or a pump, or a hot water heater.  Timmy kept saying he couldn't hear it, but the next morning he said it had kept him awake all the night.  That is when I spotted the solar panels on the roof and we figured it out.  That was the source of our noise.  So that was different.  And at the Oysterfestival there were drones photographing the event.  That was different.  Every time one was spotted the audience turned away from the stage, lifting phones, taking pictures, waving to the little plane darting over our heads.  One man said, "Oh, God, I hope my wife doesn't see me - she thinks I'm in the office."

On the Cape, as at home, we were listening to P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster every night.  If you haven't read or heard these stories, you really have to - they make you laugh right out loud.  Anyway, I was working on my latest pillow on the beach, warm sun, bay as calm as a pond - my favorite thing to do, embroidery at the beach, drinking a beer.  A couple walked by and the man said, in a perfect English Wooster accent, "nice spot to do your stitchery".   Made me smile.  Stitchery. I think that must be what heaven is like, a warm sun, the sound of waves, a cold beer and some stitchery. 

A few weeks ago the reading at church was from "the book of wisdom" which I thought was amusing.  I mean who would want to hear from "the book of stupidity", or "the book of foolishness".  But then on the ride home I passed a house with a sign in the front lawn "Repeal the Safe Act".  What do they want?  "The Unsafe Act". "The dangerous Act", the "Kill the People Act"?

Last Friday Sabra went to Central Park to wait with thousands of people to see the Pope ride by.  Security was high, the fear in the back of everyone's minds was "Don't let some crazy person shoot the Pope".  And no one did.  No one even tried, as far as we know.  But you would have to wonder, if they had, would that make a difference in this country?  Killing movie goers didn't, killing first graders didn't, killing church goers didn't.  Would a Pope make the difference? 

This summer there is a show on television about animals going crazy, and I think it is happening here as well.  This morning there was a wood chuck ON THE DECK checking out the parsley in a pot that's been there since May.  Then I went to get the paper and there was a skunk right outside the door.  He looked at me and then calmly walked away, but that could have been a disaster.

Yesterday a piliated woodpecker screamed around the house all morning.  Now I always say, "There's Ria" but yesterday, I was saying "What's the matter Ria?"  Like Lassie, I expected the woodpecker to lead me to someone in distress.

I guess it's the heat - terrible humidity, and even the pool doesn't provide the relief you were expecting.  But the tomatoes love the heat, everyday there are more and more of them.  Today I put them in bags and leave them on doorsteps, little surprises for the neighbors. 

Next week I will be in Wellfleet again, kind of a last minute vacation with my sisters.  Then in October it is the Oysterfest and another week in my favorite place.  But lets not go to far.  First things first, get rid of Mr. Woodchuck under the deck.