I didn't forget Megan, it's just been busy around here!

I have always been impressed by Brett's judgment when it comes to his relationships with members of the opposite sex. When he was in high school he used to sometimes bemoan the fact that some girls wore too much make-up, were too snobbish, were not kind or were interested more in themselves than others. When he went off to college I hoped that there was a "sweet, kind woman looking for gentle, quiet man". Every mother's dream, right?


Sometimes good things do happen. In the middle of that huge sprawling UMASS campus Brett met sweet and kind Megan. He's been smiling ever since. I think he knew as soon as they met that this was a good thing and was meant to last. And so did we. I can't think of anyone more perfectly suited for my boy.

Happy belated birthday (May 21) to Megan, the keeper of Brett's soul and happiness.

A stay-at-home Memorial Day

We took a walk after dinner tonight. Our street was unusually quiet for a Memorial Day. No picnics. No driveways filled with cars. We did catch the aroma of burgers or steak grilling but there was nothing to indicate that this Monday was different from any other. Even the traffic was light.

Whenever anyone was asked in school on Friday what their plans were for the holiday weekend the answer was always the same. "Staying home and working outside, ALONE"! It appears that that is what everyone was doing today. That is exactly what we did too. Maybe the cost of gas kept some people home but most of those I talked to just wanted some quiet time with their family to work on home projects. It felt good and was really relaxing. I only wish the weekend hadn't gone so fast.

There is so much outside work to do. I mowed the lawn yesterday, a VERY overgrown lawn. I planted some pots and the window boxes. I put in the vegetable garden today....a whole day's project. And I found a few earthworms in my garden. Oh yay! Maybe it is the beginning of something good. Maybe they are beginning to find a bit of organic debris to munch on. If only they would multiply it would do my soil so much good.

The May Flies were HORRENDOUS this weekend. I think this is the worst I have ever seen them. At times I could only see a wall of black in front of me. They were attacking me as if I were a corpse and I have the bites to prove it. I couldn't take it any longer and had to come inside. Does anyone have a fool proof method for keeping those pests away? I tried insect repellent. I tried wearing a hat. Nothing was working. I think the only way to keep them off my face is to wear one of those hats with netting. But how do I keep them out from under my socks? They love to bite the ankles. If I pull the socks up over the pants that might work. Once May is over they will magically disappear but then the mosquitoes will be on the attack. Always something.

Yesterday I planted a pretty little arrangement in the pot at the end of the driveway. Tonight when we went for our walk something had dug it up. What kind of animal would do that? Turkeys? Whatever it is hasn't been interested in it all winter but as soon as I get some plants in there they scoop it all out.

The weather was PERFECT this weekend but tomorrow it's rain and back to work and 3 VERY long weeks until school is out.

Prom time

From "Turning Back the Pages" / This week's edition of the Lakeville Journal

50 years ago - May 1958

The gymnasium of the Housatonic Valley Regional High School will be transformed into a garden of delight around the theme Drifting and Dreaming as a setting for the annual Junior Promenade on Saturday May 24, when Marie Fife of Falls Village will be crowned Queen of the class of 1959.


Has it already been 50 years since Paul's Junior Prom (promenade)?
It can't be so. When I read this in the paper I asked Paul what the phrase "Drifting and Dreaming" meant to him. He had no idea. He had forgotten the theme of his own Junior Prom. (Actually, I don't think men really care much about things like that!)

Paul even had trouble remembering which girl he took to the prom.



The idea of a prom has changed so much since then. Today there are dinner dates before the prom and limousines to transport you there. The venue is no longer the "gymnasium". Now the limousine transports you to a fancy banquet hall or counry club often far from your home town. There is all night partying which continues for the rest of the weekend, usually at the shore.

Back in the "old" days the prom was always held in the high school gym. Anyone could sign up to be on the prom committee which meant hours and hours of preparation and planning. The afternoon before the prom was spent transposing the gym from ugly to a wonderland. Working together before the prom was as much fun as the prom itself.

There was usually a party after the prom but there was always a curfew. If you successfully sweet talked your parents the curfew might be as late as 1:00. If you weren't home by then there was big trouble.



There were no limousines. I don't think we even knew what one was. You were entrusted with the family car, and sometimes the family truck, for that one special night. Most families only had one car, or truck, so being allowed to use it for a whole night carried a lot of responsibility.


The prom dresses today look like something that would be worn to the Queen's coronation and can easily cost over $500, which was well over a month's salary back then.


The dress for my prom or Senior Ball (the old brain can't remember which) was handmade. There was a fabric store next to the grocery market in Falls Village. I spent a long time wandering up and down the aisles until I found what I thought was THE perfect fabric. The owner of the store made the dress for me. It was very plain, probably almost homely by today's standards, but I felt like Cinderella.

The whole prom concept has changed so much in the past 50 years. I liked the old way better. So simple and un-glitzy. It never felt like we were pretending to be older than we really were. We were just 16 and very happy to be that way.

A weekend to remember

Finally, my blog is working!

As I was saying before......it was a wild and wacky weekend at the Cortesi B&B. The revolving door of this hotel was really spinning around. Damon was here from Germany to attend his high school reunion at Taft. One of his friends from Taft guested at our B&B. Sean and Kara and company arrived on Friday night. The house was getting full. Who says you should downsize after the kids leave home??

On Saturday afternoon Kara wanted to take a drive to the Laurel Ridge Farm to get some grass-fed beef. VERY expensive! As long as we were there with a freezer of beautiful beef staring me in the face, I couldn't resist. I had to buy some for dinner. I bought two london broil steaks........VERY expensive and grilled them for dinner. REALLY really good. I wouldn't spend this much money for every day eating but for special dinner guests like ours, it was worth it. We only had 8 people for dinner and it was a cozy relaxing meal. It was just so nice to have most of the family together again.

Brett and Megan and company arrived late Saturday night which meant happily squeezing in 4 more people at the breakfast table on Sunday morning. I did duty as a short order cook............scrambling eggs with one hand and flipping pancakes with the other. Oh for another hand.............


Long ago my mother gave me a pitcher shaped like a chicken. I have always used it for maple syrup. When you pour the syrup from the pitcher it comes out of the chicken's mouth. When the kids were little they thought that was pretty funny and named it the "vomiting chicken". Uncle Damon introduced Eamon to the family purging chicken.


After breakfast Eamon sat on his Uncle Damon's lap and watched one of Uncle Damon's favorite childhood television shows, Airwolf, on Uncle Damon's laptop. Uncle Damon is a pretty special uncle.

We eventually all waddled out to the swings to try to rid ourselves of all those calories that we took in at breakfast.

You can take a picture of this cute little baby but, please, leave my mug out of it.


The men all gravitated to the soccer ball and soon had a "game" going.


Coach Brett did a little one on one with Eamon. He's still just as quick as he always was. Fatherhood hasn't slowed him down.


Uncle Damon introduced Elizabeth to the fine art of blowing dandelion fluff. I think she picked our lawn clean of magical fluff balls.

By Sunday afternoon everyone had left except for Damon. He left yesterday. It's quiet now. The beds are all made and will stay that way till next time. The linens and towels are washed and dried and put away...most of them. The toys are back in the toy box and attic. The porta-crib is folded up. Everything is tidy and back to order. And I miss them all.

Not liking this blog very much.

Right now I'm not liking my blog. I have been unable to post any pictures for three days. All I get is a message telling me that it is "Taking longer than usual to post. Please click to continue". I click until my clicking finger is worn out and still the same message repeats itself. I am so frustrated. I went to the help section and it seems like I'm not the only one with this problem so at least I know it isn't my computer. I guess I'll just have to try every day until someone who knows what they are doing at blogger will finally be successful at their job.

Whirling B&B

We had a wild and busy time this weekend at our Cortesi Bed and Breakfast. A revolving door, musical beds, short-order cook kind of weekend. I have pictures to share but I'm just going to wait until tomorrow. We get a new internet service tomorrow which will be MUCH faster so it won't take me half the night to load pictures anymore. I tried loading tonight but I get messages saying that it is "taking longer than expected". This happens when Damon, the little computer guru, is home and jamming up the computer lines. Tomorrow will be a whole new world!

He's baaaaaccckkk.

He's back from Germany, for a little while. Damon flew in this afternoon so that he could attend his 10th high school reunion on Saturday. That's a loooong way to come for a reunion. Right now it is 10:30 our time. I keep reminding Damon that it is really 3:30 German time and way past his bedtime. He tells me I wouldn't be a very good traveler because you can't think like that when you travel. You need to adapt to the time change right away. When in Rome............

Before he left Germany he took a 3 day weekend and went to Croatia which is now where I would love to go. What a lovely beautiful bucolic serene looking country. He had his hair cut by a Croatian stylist. She knew what she was doing because it looks pretty darn great.

He leaves here on Wednesday to spend two days in Seattle and then it's back to Germany until June when he will leave that country for good. Oh yes. I can't wait to have him back in the United States. Seattle won't seem so far away after all these months across the sea.

Happy Mother's Day To Everyone

Late this afternoon I told Paul that I really didn't want the day to end. It had just been too nice. The weather was perfect; sunny and not too hot and not too cold. It's the first weekend in quite a while that we have been home both Saturday and Sunday. I slept 8 hours last night which is something that I rarely am able to do. I woke feeling rested. I spent the whole day alone outside working on the lawn. My very favorite way to spend my time. I put out the lawn furniture. I weeded. I began edging my flower gardens. We went out to dinner tonight. I was naughty and splurged and had a grilled steak. It was worth being naughty. Then we came home and took a long walk to burn off all those calories we had just taken in. It was a very nice Mother's Day.

I want to wish a very happy Mother's Day to all the mothers in my family.


My sister Lauri. She has raised 4 happy kids and made it look so easy.



My sister Liz. Kudos to her for home schooling 3 girls, something I know I couldn't do as well as she does.


My sister Ellen. While technically not a mother she has always been like another mother to my own children and her nieces and nephews. She's the mother that always makes them laugh.


My daughter Kara. Lucky Eamon and Elizabeth to have such a creative, patient and loving mother. I am so proud of the mother she has become.


My daughter-in-law Megan. She has mastered the art of bringing up two children at the same time so well. I couldn't ask for anyone better to be the mother of my grandtwins.


And last of all........and best of all..........my own mother. We learn how to be a mother by the example of our own mothers, and she taught me so well. She loved us unconditionally (which is a good thing because sometimes I was pretty hard to love!). Thanks for all that good teaching, Mom. It looks like it's been passed down to the next generation and the next. You did a good job!

Hella

She sat quietly in a chair perched on a small riser, hands folded in her lap, looking straight out at her audience of 13 year olds. A tiny lady, 80 years old. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of sunglasses with bright yellow frames. She spoke in a soft low voice, so soft that the students' bodies were all leaning forward in an effort to catch what she was saying. "Hello. My name is Hella. I have come to tell you my story", she said in accented English.

Hella is a Holocaust survivor. She came to school on Thursday to tell her story to the 8th grade students who are studying World War II. When I greeted her in the morning she told me that she had never told her story to anyone. Today was the first time.........ever. She had never even shared it with her children or grandchildren. Trying not to let the tears get the best of her she said, "This is going to be very hard for me, very hard." It was.

Hella was only 11 when her section of Warsaw was made into one of the first ghettos of World War II. She went out of the ghetto one day to get food to bring back to her family. On the way back she was met by an acquaintance who warned her not to go back into the ghetto. "They have come and taken them all away", he said. "There is no one left". Hella never saw anyone from her family again.....mother, father, brother, sister, aunts, uncles..........no one. Never again.

A non-Jewish friend of the family took her in for a while but it soon became too dangerous for them to keep her and Hella was taken to a Nazi work camp where she spent the next five years. Without radios or newspapers Hella had no way of knowing what was going on in the outside world. She said she thought that this was the way she was going to spend the rest of her life........walking 2 miles to work in a munitions factory every day. They were given one slice of bread and a little coffee for breakfast, a slice of bread and watery soup for lunch and dinner. The diet never varied.

The students sat in stunned silence. I have never seen our usually obnoxious and noisy 8th graders that grim and quiet. They asked questions and the answers were depessingly repetitive.

"What happened if you got sick in the camp. Did they have a doctor"? Answer: "There was no doctor. No nurse. We didn't have nothing".

"Were you able to keep any personal belongings"?
Answer: "They take everything away. I don't have nothing".

"Did you ever try to escape"?
Answer: "Where would I go? Germans were everywhere. I had no place to go. I didn't have nothing. "


"Did you ever get anything to eat besides bread and soup"?
Answer: "No. Nothing else. We didn't have nothing".

"Did you ever see your family again"?
Answer: "Never again. When I was liberated I didn't have nothing".

Everything from Hella's life before age 11 was gone. She didn't even have a picture of her family. She said she can't remember what they looked like.

She described the day they were liberated. They knew something was happening. They knew it was either the Russians or the Americans who were coming and they were praying it was the Americans. When they saw the American tanks roll in they screamed and cried and laughed and hugged each other. "The American soldiers....they are good people", she said. She married a man who was an Auschwitz survivor, moved to Israel and then to America. Hella still has nightmares. Nightmares of running.

"I tell you my story because nobody can imagine how terrible it was during that time. I want you to know". We read about the horrors in books but to listen to someone who has been there struggle to tell you about it is an unsettling and numbing experience. "You have so much", she told the students. "You don't know what it is like to have nothing".

As the students silently filed out of the library I could tell their minds were absorbing all that they had heard. The next morning a student said that he had gone home that night and given his mother a big hug. Yes, Hella, it was hard for you to tell your story after keeping it close to your heart for 70 years but maybe now there are some 13 year olds who have some understanding of what it really means to "have nothing"..........and who will be giving their mothers extra big hugs on Mother's Day.

Dreadful dandelions

Dandelions. Paul and I have differing views on them. He loves them and thinks those bright yellow heads look "so pretty" on the lawn. But he's not the one who mows the lawn. He doesn't have to mow over them, again and again, only to see those stems popping up and waving in the breeze in the lawn-mower's wake and ruining my vision of a flawless carpet of green. I really really do hate those things. I want them OUT.

One year I collected bags of the dandelion greens and made dandelion wine. Potent stuff. I put the bottles in the basement on their side and let them sit for fermentation. Some of the bottles fermented so well that their corks popped right off sending a stream of dandelion wine spewing across the basement. I never made wine again.

I really yearn for a blemish free lawn so I have been outside after school every day this week with my dandelion digger. I love the feeling when the whole root comes out. Success! That dandelion is gone for eternity. There are so many dandelions and only one of me so I know I am fighting an uphill battle. But even just a few square feet of dandelion free lawn would be worth fighting for.

One time we used some broad-leaf weed killer on the lawn to get rid of dandelions. it seemed so easy and was so effective. When my father found out that we had committed the unpardonable sin he said in his Thoreaulian (I don't think that's a word but I made it up to describe him) way, "Oh no. Don't use weed killer. You'll kill all the clover and clover makes a good lawn". Sure enough, he was right. August came with it's parched lawns and mine was looking pretty sorry. The grass was drying up in the heat and things were looking brownish. Clover stays greener much longer than grass during a drought. If I hadn't used weed killer I would have had a green lawn. I really missed my clover . My father was right. I never used weed killer again. Now I dig and dig and dig........and think of my father.

A birthday for a princess

April and May have always been a busy time for birthdays in our family: Kara, several nieces, my sister Liz, one of my cousins, Megan, and little Elizabeth. Saturday found us driving (actually, with Paul it's more like "racing, scary racing") to Arlington to celebrate little Elizabeth's birthday. Once again I am so grateful that we live close enough so that we are able to do this. The fact that Brett and Megan live close enough to join us made the day even sweeter.




They were there with the cute little twins. I could never tire of seeing them.



The twins had a great time playing with their cousins. It brings back memories of all the wonderful cousin times I enjoyed as a child. I was so lucky and I hope they will always be as fortunate.


Eamon enjoys being the big brother who's almost 5. Wow! Almost 5 already? Time goes so fast.


Elizabeth, as usual, totally immersed herself in the job of birthday-cake consumption.


All that partying takes everything out of Brett. Or maybe it is chasing after twins.


Sean shows his gentle and child-like side.


Happy Birthday to our little princess, the sweet little girl who loves pink and purple, flowers and hearts, princesses and fairies, and dolls and babies. Her smile can light up the darkest corner and her gentle hugs and kisses can warm the coldest day. May you never lose your sweetness. We are so happy that you came into our lives.

Can that really be me?

My passport came the other day. Oh dear. The best thing that could possibly happen to me is that I would be denied entrance into whatever country I was visiting because the authorities would refuse to believe that the picture on the passport and me-in-person were not one and the same person. The real live me cannot possibly look as bad as that picture. Maybe I do. One of our teachers in school recently adopted an 18 month old girl from China. I saw them in the bookstore over Christmas vacation. Every time I looked at the cute little girl and smiled she would freeze, throw her hands up in the air and give a blood curdling scream that could be heard all over the store. If I look like my passport picture I can easily understand why.