Life is good.

The past few days there has been a very strange phenomena in the air. I think it is something called "sun"....something I haven't seen in a long time. Yesterday we had sun ALL_DAY_LONG. Not a drop of rain until 9pm and then it was only a sprinkle. I think it has been almost 2 months since we have had a dry day. Today the day started out with clouds but the heavens parted and we were blessed with sun for the second day in a row...and no rain. It even warmed up enough for me to change into shorts, for the first time this summer.

The up-side to all this rain is that our lawn has never looked greener or been so lush. The downside to that is when I mow it the grass comes chugging out of the mower in big thick clods that ugly up my lawn. But that is better than having no grass to mow at all which has happened to us in years of drought.

My vegetable garden is still looking like it is in the babyhood of life. It needs warmth and sun so very desperately.



My flowers have been drooping with the weight of days and days of liquid sunshine......

..........and I have been able to cultivate large specimens of fungi on my lawn with no prodding at all.

Paul and I both spent the whole day outside working and working and working...trying to do a month's work of lawn work in one day. It felt remarkably exhilarating just to be outside in the sun, to see shadows on the lawn and to hear the birds chattering.

Life is good. The sun is out. I finally am wearing summer clothes. My kitchen is finished so I can cook once again (although eating out was quite nice). Is it too much to hope that we will see the sun again tomorrow??

The year without a summer???

Remember that old song we used to sing at camp?

"It rained, it rained, for forty dazy days,
It rained, it rained for forty dazy days,
It drove_the_animals_ nearly crazy crazy.
Children of the Lord."

I don't know about the animals but we humans are slowly going crazy in this wet soggy weather. I haven't kept count but I think we are reaching biblical proportions of rain. I really can't remember when the last time was that we had a whole day of blue skies and sun. At school we usually eat outside at our little Cathy's Cafe almost every day in May and June. This year we probably sat out 3 times in all of May and June. It has been THAT bad. Everything is soggy, damp, moldy, muggy, dreary. My hair is "sproingy" and my body is rusting.

My garden is pathetic but I do have flowers on some of my tomato plants. I fear that the nasty mold disease may strike them this year, though. I have been trying and trying to plant flower seeds around the edge of my garden. Today I saw a bright spot dancing around on my wall and ran outside to look...yes,yes, yes...the sun was OUT! A miracle. I ran inside and grabbed my flower seeds and ran back outside and made a furrow in the soil. I began dropping nasturtium seeds in....1, 2, 3, 4. That was as far as I got before the sun ran away and the skies opened up, spewing rain yet again.

The rain has made things that love the rain, like hostas and grass, grow lush and green and beautiful. I remember summers when we had NO rain and the grass was crackling brown. But I also noticed today that the slugs are thriving. Slugs EVERYWHERE.

We haven't uncovered our pool yet. But we keep pumping water out of the cover. I only got out my summer clothes today, not because I was too hot but because it just makes me feel better psychologically if I open my drawer and see short sleeve t-shirts instead of turtlenecks.

What I really want is sunny, hot weather. I wonder if that will happen.

They never really leave you...............

MY FATHER WITH HIS FIVE OFFSPRING

It has been 12 years since I have been able to celebrate Father's Day with my father and I miss that...terribly. I miss looking for a special card for a special person. I miss inviting him down to our house for a Father's Day cook-out. I miss just saying "Happy Father's Day, Daddy".

He may no longer be with me physically but he is always with me in spirit and that is almost as comforting. Often when I make dinner I will put in my CD of big band music. As the swing bands begin to play songs like In The Mood or Mood Indigo or Moonlight Serenade I feel him standing right beside me, keeping me company as I cook. As the Tennessee Waltz melody fills the room I can see my mother and father dancing together across the floor just as they used to do in our old living room. As I sit and listen to the thrush's beautiful sound or the perky peepers on a warm evening I know he is sitting right next to me, listening and enjoying every minute of it. If I spy a morel mushroom I can remember our mushroom hunts and how we would gather them on a dewy spring morning and bring them back to my mother to cook. We went out to dinner tonight and what was on the menu.......asparagras and morel mushrooms! He must have been right there. I see a splendid sunset..........I know he is smiling at it too. When we sit at dinner and see the deer make their way out into the field I think of how he used to put me in the car and drive into the meadow, almost within touching distance of the deer. "They can't smell you if you sit in the car with the windows closed. They don't know you're there," I remember him telling me.

There is never ever ever a day goes by that I don't think of him. There is never ever ever a day goes by when I don't feel like he is still here next to me, enjoying all the beautiful things that we used to enjoy together.

So even though he has been absent these past twelve years I can still say "Happy Father's Day, Daddy" because I know he will hear me.

A special double celebration today........it is my sister Ellen's birthday. Happy birthday to a sweet and wonderful friend. I'm so glad that I have you!

Happy 41st.

Forty-one years ago, the second week in June, it rained for a whole week. It was damp and soggy and foggy, just like the miserable weather we have been having this week. It was dreary on Friday night when I went to bed that June 14. When I woke up Saturday morning the fifteenth of June, my wedding morning, I was greeted by a brilliant blue sky, warm sunshine and a very gentle breeze. The perfect day for a wedding. It must have been a good omen because we are still here, together, forty-one years later.

Wedding anniversaries become more sedate as time goes on. We'll go out to dinner "sometime soon...when we don't have to get up for work the next day". We'll buy that special card "sometime soon...when we get some time". We say "happy anniversary and I love you still..after all these years." We don't need to do the big things. We celebrate our anniversary every day in little ways. The fact that we are still together to enjoy each other is what we celebrate. He's older and his hair is grayer and thinner but he still feels the same when I hold him. He is still my best friend. He is the person I always listen for to walk in the door in the evening. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and reach out to touch him to feel his soft breathing; just to reassure myself that he is still with me. The hardest part when we were dating was having to leave each other at the end of the evening. Those evenings would extend to 1 or 2 in the morning. "Won't it be nice when we won't ever have to leave each other again?" we used to tell each other. I still think of that, especially when he gets "annoying", and yes, he is sometimes "annoying".

I have lived with him longer than I have lived with anyone. Our personalities have become so intertwined that it is sometimes hard to separate the two. We have had 41 years of good and bad, happy and sad, ups and downs, fears and hopes and even "sickness and health". If I had to do it all over again, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Just another bad hair day...........

Oh ugh, yuck, yech, damp, dreary, foggy, rainy, cloudy, cool, showery.......everything except sunny and warm. The weather this spring has been unblieveably nasty. We have had such a series of dampy ugly dreary pea-soup fog days. Whenever I mow the lawn it is a race between me and a threatening shower to see which one wins out. This is just not the June weather I am used to. The sun did come out yesterday afternoon for the first time in days. We all immediately put our hands up to protect our face from that brilliant light that we were not used to. I put my vegetable seeds in but now I'm afraid they will rot. I am constantly running out to check but there's nothing there. Very very pathetic scene. I just want a nice warm sunny day. But I think that is too much to ask.

On the happy side, Sean and the kids have been with us this weekend while Kara went to the wedding of an old high school friend. It's been so much fun having them. Eamon and I played Trouble this afternoon. It's been a long time since I've had to lower myself to the floor to play a game with a little kid. I love to listen to him break up into a fit of silly giggles when he sends me all the way back to "home". He thinks it is just the funniest thing to send Grammie back to the beginning (but not quite so funny when Grammie does it to him). It's worth it to lose the game just to hear that happy sound.

Will my hair ever decompress or will it be a permanent brillo pad?

Hope for sunny days.........

Birthday #6

It was six years ago yesterday that my first grandchild, Eamon Joseph, was born and my life was changed forever....for the better. I will never forget Kara's first words to me when she phoned after her was born. No platitudes about how wonderful motherhood was already or complaints about the labor and delivery experience. "Mom," she said breathlessly, "you'll never guess how much he weighs." I guess at 9 lb, 3 oz she had a right to think of not much else. We don't usually make them that big in our family!


One of his few quiet, non-crying moments. He cried...lots. Just like Kara did. What goes around comes around.


In no time at all he grew into a cute little guy. We kept loving him more and more.


As he grew into baby adult-hood he was capable of having veeerry serious conversatins with Grammie. And Grammie loved it all.


Soon a little sister came along. My little grandson was suddenly not so little anymore.

This year started kindergarten....that first break away from home. Such a big-little man now. Happy Birthday to sweet, generous, kind, funny, silly, serious, smart little Eamon. I love everything about you.

Farewell to a special lady

We traveled to Hamden this weekend to say our goodbye's to a sweet and gentle lady. My Aunt Toni passed away on April 28, exactly 2 days short of the 12th anniversary of my father's death. A memorial service was held this weekend for family and close friends. The service was sweet, gentle, peaceful...so similar to the way she lived her life.

Aunt Toni was classy, kind, generous, warm, witty and a true lady. Sadly, true ladies are an endangered species today. How I wish it were not so. She was a perfect role model for all young ladies. What a different world this would be if all women could be the lady she was.

Her generosity spilled over into my life. She took my sister, my cousin and I (along with my other cousin, her daughter) on a trip to her home in Canada. This little farm girl had never been more than an hour from her home. It was thrilling beyond words. For the first time in my life I crossed a border, saw a clover-leaf interchange on the highway, went to a real amusement park, visited the campus of McGill University, sat down at breakfast and tried to read French off the back of the cereal box and listened in amazement (and jealousy) as my cousin could rattle off the names of every classical piece that was being played on the car radio.

Aunt Toni also, very generously, treated me to a trip to New Hampshire for the first time. She took the same crew of giggling cousins to the family cabin in the White Mountains. For the first time I ate blueberries and cream in the morning on a screened-in porch overlooking the mountains, went mountain hiking and was duly impressed that folks who looked to be nearly 70 could pass me out effortlessly, went to a circus, had a sno cone, took a ride on a gondola to the top of the world and played mini-golf.

Her service was quite and simple. A lovely cello solo gave us time to reflect on her life with it's ups and downs and how important the cello, and music, was to her. Her grandson put together a slide show of her life which was beautiful in it's quiet simplicity. We said goodbye to this lovely lady in the same way she lived her life; quietly, simply and with dignity.