Well, we went to the Rhinebeck Fair, the birds and the beasts were there. The big baboon by the light of the moon was combing his long black hair. The monkey he got drunk, he sat on the elephant's trunk. The elephant sneezed, and fell on his knees and that was the end of the monk...that was the end of the monk. The Rhinebeck Fair has been a part of our lives for the almost 40 years we have lived here. Each year the kids would get a job there and earn their money for back to school clothes. Paul went a few days before the fair opened and he and his friends had the job of assembling the rides. (That's enough to keep me off the ferris wheel.) Maria worked the lemonade stand, in fact that is how she met Kevin. I guess he thought she was cute, and bought a drink from here...see how things can start. She would come home the last day of the fair, with handfuls of one dollar bills, sticky from the lemonade, all bunched together. One of her favorite stories was when the young guy she was working with was cleaning up. The owner yelled to him "Watch out for the wires!" and he heard "wash the wires" and started to do so, while the carny had a fit. Sabra worked different booths, one time in a booth that you had to throw darts and break balloons. She was about 15 and my friend Chrissy and I were in that section of the fair looking for her. I grabbed Chrissy arm, stunned at what I saw, Sabra next to a carny, leaning over the booth, smoking a cigarette!! Her job next year was much better, working in the booth with costumes, where the fair goers would select a certain look and then have their picture taken dressed up. So, the fair has a lot of memories...this was the first year that we went without Maria, so that was a big difference. But it was like she was there is some ways...she had encouraged me to enter my embrodery last year, and I had entered three pieces, winning only a second prize for a pillowcase. This year I asked my sisters Barbara and Diane to loan me back the Christmas presents I had made them, aprons, and I won first prize for each of the aprons. Also, last year Maria had said to me, "Ma, you should enter your postcards...the winner wasn't half as good as yours." So this year I entered four of my Tivoli postcards, and won a blue ribbon for them. Thanks Maria. You just can't get away from that girl. Maria's clothes always had a certain very pleasant smell about them, different than most. Sabra asked Rachael what kind of detergent did your mother use and found out it was Tide, in the purple bottle, with vanilla and lavendar. Sabra started using it and I looked for it on the grocer's shelf and bought it too. So everytime I grab a shirt, or hang up clothes there is Ria's smell. The Fair, the laundry, my birthday. My birthday came and went last week. Last year Maria had a party for me at her house, a pirate party, and we all were dressed like pirates. I have the picture of us all, hanging on the wall, handy to the eye. And the thing I love most about the picture is that Ria and I are the only ones going "Arrrrrrr". That is a wonderful picture, a wonderful day, and a wonderful memory.

Gravestones, that's the latest item on my mind. Actually, it's not that new. We grew up on Falconer Street which ran both ways perpendicular to Washington Avenue. On the other end of our street was a large cemetery, one my mother often took us to on a walk. There we would search the stones for one with our name, or our day of birth, looking for a certain angel or checking out the resident's picture featured on the stone. Yesterday Sabra and I went to Maria's grave with a cardboard cutout of her proposed stone. When I write this, it seems a little bizarre, but actually it makes a lot of sense. The stone so far, will be 36" high, with 12" under the ground, 30" wide and 3" thick. So, we placed the cardboard "stone" up against the wooden cross that's there to see the height and compare it to Patty's stone which is right next to her. Then we went to the old part of the cemetery to see how it used to be done. When we first told the memorial man that we wanted an "old style stone" for Maria, he said, "It's about time to put an old looking stone up there on the hill." And, he's right. They all look about the same. When my father died, my brother looked for an appropriate stone for him. After seeing all the same stones, he asked, "Do you have anything in a sport motif?" and they found him an old book with a skier on a stone. Perfect. Now, the interesting thing is at that time, the skier stood alone in the cemetery as far as a sportsman theme. But, soon a stone with a man fishing appeared and then a golfer. Daddy was a tread setter. Maybe Maria will be one too. Recently a friend of Sabra's was on Martha's Vineyard and found John Belushi's gravestone which is an old style slate with skull and crossbones. I read that the stone is not near his body, for fear of vandals. But anyway, the old style stones are so interesting. Please look at www.capecodgravestones.com to see samples. Years back Maria, Jer and I did stone rubbings in the Wellfleet graveyard. She gave one to Sabra which is the one we selected for her stone. It can be seen on the website above..look for the name George Brown. It is an angel, young, with an hourglass on her head. I was drawing an example to show Timmy and when I drew the stone, putting the angel on the top rounded part, my angel's wings were too large, and the hourglass looked like a little hat. In fact the whole thing looked like Dumbo ready to fly. I laughed out loud, and asked "Hey, Ria how about you have Dumbo on your stone?"
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Well, it's been a while since I've written. First of all the vacation: the location was wonderful. Maria had found a cottage facing the beach and water, a beautiful spot. The weather was perfect, every day sunny and clear. The kids made crab houses, did gymnastics on the beach and got their feet cut up on the shells. Other than that, it was just too weird to be there without Maria. So, we'll go on from there. Today is Sabra's birthday and Paul follows in two days. They are 4 years apart. They were both conceived on presidential election nights....in 1964 -Johnson and Goldwater. Then in 1968 Nixon and Humphrey. In those days they banned the bars from being open during election hours and television only had a few channels that were all presidential coverage. I think in both those elections I had voted for the loser...Goldwater because I thought Johnson had something to do with Kennedy's assassination and then Humphrey because Nixon was just terrible. So, my candidates lost and I got pregnant because there was no tv and no open bars. My mother once told me that she became pregnant with me on November 21, the day that my grandfather, her father Poppy had lost the tips of his fingers in an accident at Harmon..I think a train wheel fell on his hand. I never asked her about the reason, but I have wondered. I do like it that Jeremy, Maria's son, was born on November 21st - 40 years to the day I was conceived. So we'll think today about births, not the other, but I did look up the title "Death Takes a Vacation", thinking maybe it was a mystery book I remembered my mother reading. But it came up as a movie...with this description,"The grim reaper decides to take three days off in a resort town". There, that would give you something to think about.

One week to our vacation in Cape Cod - this year I will be riding out with Kevin to a cottage Maria had booked in February. I have been thinkin a lot about last summer in Wellfeet. Last year we had decided for the first time in many years to get small, individual cottages right on the water, rather than a big house we all shared in town. I was sharing with Maria the first week, and then moving into the cottage that Sabra had rented for the second week, when Kevin would be joining Maria. Ria first suspected a problem when her lease included an item that read: "Tenant shall not cook bacon or pork products in the house or on the grill." "What the hell does that mean, Ma?" Ria questioned as she read it to me. "I guess we can't have bacon and eggs, or hotdogs or sausage and peppers", I answered and we both kind of snickered. We got to the cottage and Maria had already received several e-mails from the owner, asking her to check on and care for her "prize" flowers. They were the first things we saw as we walked on the deck, an assortment of dried out, dead flowers in the sun and plants in two inches of water on the shady side. Then we went into the cottage....amazement. Maria said, "I don't remember there being all this STUFF in the picture on the internet." Stuff was right. Every inch of available space was covered with knick knacks, trays, tacky vacation type souvenirs, the fireplace was filled with wood and there was wood piled high near by even though it was 80 degrees outside. The kitchen had no counter space that wasn't covered with crock pots, filled with spoons, pencils, everything imaginable. Utensils hung from hooks all over the kitchen walls as did pots and pans and barbeque items. "Where's the refrigerator?" I asked Maria as we stood in shock. "Here it is, Ma, here in the hall." Well, we unpacked the car - the kids ran to the beach only steps away, and we thought, "this isn't too bad, it IS right on the water." After a beer, a look at the beach, the realization that we were on vacation in the most beautiful place in the world, and we started to see things in a better way. "Look at this lamp, Maria" I said holding up a three foot white plastic duck that was the lamp in my bedroom. "That's nothing, Ma" Ria came out of her bedroom holding a large light in the shape of an electric bulb. "Who the hell would buy this shit?" we asked each other, over and over. "Looks like someone went nuts in the dollar store," commented Maria and it did. The living room did NOT have a couch, instead it had a wooden Adirondeck type outdoor oversized chair. Maria started her magic. She got two quilts and covered the "couch". There, that's better. Things began to come off the wall, as Maria shoved them into the closet. The wood was all taken out of the house, and put in an empty firebox on the deck. There, that's better. And it got better and better in the days that followed as slowly we shoved things under the beds or added them to the dumpster in the yard. The flowers even looked better as Maria arranged them, watering the dried out ones and caring for the drowned ones. The best night was one when Maria got acting up....came out of the bedroom with the electric light bulb, turned it on and said to Tony, "Hey, Tony, I got an idea!" "Look at me, I'm Uncle Festus!" And, the vacation that started out so thinly, got better and better. "Does everybody want bacon?" Ria asked, pulling out a large frying pan. "We sure do" and the bacon flowed. Maria could make anyplace a home, anyplace welcoming and full of life and laughs. This year will be different, but I can't imagine we won't be laughing at memories of the past and making a few of our own.

Maria's birthday fell on Father's Day this year. It also did on her first birthday, as I recall. It seems the holidays have followed Maria, she died on St. Patrick's Day, buried the day before Easter, then we had Mother's Day and now finally her birthday. I think we're done for a while..phew. We, as a family, have gotten together on each of the above days. Family...Sabra made a video for us at Christmas "My Crazy Family" and it started with a quote by Anthony Brandt: "Other things may change us but we start and end with the family". Just think about that for a minute...start and end with the family. I started with Bucky and Gob- my father. My father was and still is a hero to me. He could sing like Bing Crosby, we could whistle (hardly anybody whistles anymore), he could do a perfect swan dive, which he always preceded with the sign of the cross, he could ski with a grace and movement that was beautiful to watch, he could fish and clean the fish and even eat the fish after one of Bucky's failure in the kitchen. He helped us with our math, could spell any word you gave him and knew carpentry. But his greatest skill, his legacy, was his photography. He could capture the faces of children better than any other photographer I have ever known. His pictures fill our albums, boxes and boxes of pictures that document all the events in our lives. Everywhere he went, he had his camera with him. I remember at his wake, my brother Bob suggested that we put a camera in his hands, to make him look more normal. That was my father - that was my family. I ran across a quote that "family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present and future" (Gail Lumet Buckly) Boy, I believe that. I look in the mirror and I see my mother looking back. I look at Paul's boy Ian and I see a picture of my father at that age. Henry reminds me of Sabra and Rachael looks so much like Maria did at that age. Family. Erma Bombeck said "The family. We were a strange little band of characters,.....loving, laughing, defending and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us." That common thread. What is it? Could it be love?

Slowly, slowly life is coming back to normal. But there are so many unexplainable happenings which of course we all attribute to Maria. Laura went to see a psychic who told her that Maria would come to me in flowers in strange places. First of all soon after her death I saw an early violet growing out of the gravel in the driveway. Then my Christmas cactus began to bloom again (it still has blooms). A heavy late frost killed all the wisteria buds on the Bird's Nest deck, but the wisteria that had climbed the nearby maples survived, and wisteria filled the trees. Now a clematis is blooming high in the apple tree, one plant with two completely different flowers. The day that Maria died, as we were all waiting in our cars in her driveway, a piliated woodpecker (the big bright red headed one - like Woody Woodpecker) casually flew from tree to tree right near the driveway. They are usually shy and not often seen. Then as Sabra drove us to Rachael's graduation, a piliated woodpecker landed next to the road, just as we drove by. Now, I have a piliated woodpecker smashing up an old stump in the back yard. Yesterday, I got within a few feet of him. He was throwing dirt and sawdust all over and I laughed out loud at his antics. Laura was also told that sometimes unusually large "critters" are seen after a death. Hers was a giant spider "big as a mouse, Ma" and when Sabra was at the grave a robin had a worm so large, that Sabra had to go and check to see what it was. Also, electronics have been affected, especially with Sabra...computers, her printer, her telephones and even her dining room light. My sister Maureen has a stuffed toy dog that says "I love you" and it began repeating the phrase (with no one turning it on) when I phoned her a few weeks back. She said it hasn't done it since. Today, I can't open my e-mail....and I just told Maria to go back to flowers for me - I want to read my mail.

Yesterday was hot. Driving in the car, I suddenly realized it was almost summer. What happened to Spring? I'm not stuck in Holy Week anymore, now I don't seem to know where I am or what day it is. I know it's almost the end of May because I have to get my car inspected and the "service engine soon" light is on, and they will not inspect it with that little glitch. I've been praying that it would go out - that worked last year, but nothing so far. What day is it? is harder than the name of the current month. My Uncle Joe, in his late 80's, goes to Castle Point for check-ups. The sanity test they give him is (1) What day is it? (2) What month is it? (3) What year is it? and (4) Who is the President? He passes each time, giving the right answers to the first three and to the fourth, he responds "that asshole" and they let that slide. Today is Wednesday, May 28, 2008 and it is the birthday of Rachael, who is 22 today. I write the birthdays on the calendar. It is my little ritual on New Year's Eve to get the new calendar and the old calendar and transport the names and birthdays to the new year. Each year is different, new babies, new weddings (I like to remember the anniversaries as well) and sometimes losses. I enjoy sending cards. When I was a kid, my father's Aunt Sadie would send a birthday card to each niece and nephew and inside the card would be a dime. Somehow that made a lasting impression on me and I am almost obsessive about getting cards out. I wonder how Aunt Sadie remembered all those names and dates and what had started down that road. And I wonder how crowded my calendar will be in the coming years. But lately I don't ponder on what day of the week is it. Instead I get these memories of things in the past that stick in my head. Today it is that cans use to come with a key to be used for their opening. Coffee had a key that you unsnapped from the top of the container and fitted carefully into the tab and slowly, slowly and carefully wound the key around the top until it came back to the start and the lid was released. Sardines had this key as well and I'm trying to think if anything else had that magic key to open it. To get the date right, all I have to do is point the mouse at the bottom of this screen. What foods used to open with a key is a little harder to find.