The incoming storm was dark yet the yard vividly bright in contrast. I found it a surprisingly hopeful metaphor.

And there is nothing like a group of small children given bells to enthusiastically ring as they sing their best Christmas songs up on the stand in front of everybody. Their arms go, Look, I can hold mine higher than you! Well I can hold mine wider than you! Well my stuffed bunny can ring mine better than you can! Well I can sing louder and roll my eyes better at you because I’m two years older!

The adult grabs their attention by waving her arms a little more vigorously and they all focus a little more on Silent Night-ing with their voices and un-Silenting their enthusiastic bells. Rrrring!!

Little kids. They’re so human, and so funny.

A grandson’s 15th, my mom’s 95th, my cousin’s (who was named after my mom) 67th: Happy Birthday!

We just hung up and I walked away feeling incredibly privileged. How many people get to spend an hour on the phone wishing their mom a Happy 95th?

So the latest and greatest in the tire world is that you order what you want for the car you have at costco.com, they ship them to that Costco, and you wait for an appointment. No more of their stocking random everythings and hoping they’ve got people covered.

Seventeen days.

I showed up 40 minutes early, which confused the guy but I wanted to drive there before the projected eight straight days of rain began. I wanted only dry pavement under those old tires, glad for the heads-up from my mechanic that they needed to go.

Man, it felt good to have that taken care of.

I sent off a couple of texts and got no response. C’mon, pick up your phone, hon.

I came home to news of an ambulance ride hastily followed by (he’d just gotten off that phone) And everything’s okay now. People had gotten a little overexcited at a fainting over a needle draw.

Okay then!

Suddenly, sitting in the chair at Costco’s Optical Department knitting for two hours while people wondered who the heck you were and why you were  sitting there demo’ing green yarn didn’t seem at all like a hard way to have had to spend the time.

I guess it was the day to be a spectacle.

Christmas party, dinner served, chocolate tortes consumed, an announcement made, a young friend unexpectedly grieved, stories shared of good friends and good memories, it ran late because it suddenly had to. G’night.

Sepsis.

Love your loved ones. Love your loved ones. Please, please, love your loved ones.

It was time post-op to see where things stood.

Got a new glasses prescription today from the optometrist I’ve been going to since our kids were little.

It has always amazed me how eyes are not a static thing: that they can change just a little bit from one year to the next, and then the changes change as you get older, from ever a little more nearsighted to noticeably less so but take off the glasses if you want to see to knit or read.

And then of course the recent surgery after two years of one retina being damaged but stable till suddenly it wasn’t.

Knowing how much I would enjoy it, at the end the guy said, Oh by the way, this is how you see this line now…and this is how it’ll look with your new glasses.

OHMYGOSH!!

He laughed for joy. That sense of discovery, of recovery, of you mean it not only gets even better yet but it gets that much better?! all packed into one word, and he totally got that. And it made him so happy.

—

(Title inspired by Jackson Browne’s Doctor My Eyes and his participation in Playing for Change with artists across the world.)

I love our flowering pear this time of year. In the low light of December every leaf is an exuberant Christmas light.

I saw the guy ever so briefly past the window. I went outside.

It was a mailman I’ve never seen before–tis the season for extras–and he looked to be in his 80s, a stooped old guy. That was a surprise. I picked up the mail he’d just left and hearing me, he turned around to offer one more thing.

Because you cannot risk leaving a to-be-cherished Christmas present out where someone could just walk off with it, is all I can guess, and maybe those last steps to ring the doorbell at the end of the day at the end of the route felt like a bit too much? He was clearly relieved to be able to hand it directly. He loved my, Oh cool! when I saw who it was from.

It held a single skein of hand-dyed yarn from Karida Collins of Neighborhood Fiber Co in Baltimore. She had taken a break and dealt with health and when she re-opened her business I’d ordered that one little bit just to cheer her on.

Clearly, whatever was in there was too valuable in the old mailman’s eyes to be left unguarded. Neighborhood. Fiber. Good things!

Karida’s going to love that.

I haven’t opened it yet. That mailman’s smile convinced me it’s for Christmas.

They sang happy birthday at church. They offered me (and other December babies) a (Safeway?) cupcake with a huge swirl of frosting decorated with sprinkles.

Topped, inexplicably, with a bright red plastic ring with a cartoon hero on it. Captain America? Something like that, anyway. And thus the text with this photo to the good folks next door: the cupcake had sadly met its fate (Richard and I had split it) but the good Captain lives on. I asked if there was any chance they’d like to let their three-year-old play with it?

She laughed and said sure.

And that is how I ended up next door when they had good news to share and were ready to share it, with someone they knew would be excited along with them.

So I need to finish the baby blanket that kind of went on the back burner so that I can launch into their new one.

That definitely worked out!

I untangled the two old dead strands of lights off the mango tree yesterday before running out of sunlight. It was a job. I got a single new string on today, wondering whether I should just think, hey, heat rises, or whether I should add a second. I didn’t want future me to have to go through that much trying to separate leaves and branches and lines again.

But the point is to take care of my tree so I’m probably not done yet.

For the record, blue lights are the least intrusive for nighttime. The only ambient glow I can find is through the camera lens.

I stockpiled when incandescent bulb sales were banned. All I want is the heat. There’s a whole market waiting in this climate for someone to come up with a safe non-light warming system for tender trees: old-style Christmas lights have been the standard off-label use for decades.  There are a lot of citrus trees around here. C’mon, Silicon Valley, you can figure out a way.

Clara Parkes asked today if there was a time when darkness, however one might choose to define it, had made the light more clear.

I answered with the following story from 2003. I probably said it here years ago but in case not I want to make sure my kids have it, so here goes.

—

I was in the hospital fighting for my life and a nursing assistant was assigned to me who was a mess. She was clearly depressed. She had a thick accent and hated that I had a hard time hearing her (hey, I have a hard time hearing anybody.) She hid her badge to avoid her name being reported for lashing out at patients.

I resented the fact that at a time when I was so ill and in so much pain I should be stuck with someone like her.

But I also had time, while there, to think about it. I couldn’t do anything about whatever her situation was–but at least I could say a prayer for her. It couldn’t hurt. Why hadn’t I even thought of it earlier.

The next time she came in was at a peak moment of difficulty for me and in spite of all my best intentions I snapped at her. Before she’d even said anything.

To my surprise she didn’t snap back–instead, she looked terribly, terribly sad and turned and fled the room.

I felt terrible. I was the one with the good life and support structure and I was taking things out on someone else?

The next time she came in the room the nurse who also happened to be her boss (I didn’t know that) also happened to stop by steps behind her. I apologized to the NA in front of her, and said, I was mean to you and you were nice to me in response. You didn’t deserve that. I apologize.

I later told that nurse that I was glad that the woman had had her there to witness my saying she’d treated me better than I’d treated her.

That’s when I found out the NA was already in the process of being fired for her treatment of patients. The nurse knew it was depression and had been trying to find a way to reach her and help her. And here the two of us were presenting the NA to herself as being better and kinder than how she’d been seeing herself.

I later went back to the hospital with a stack of handknit little items for the people who’d taken care of me. I assumed the NA was gone by then, but just in case, I had a hat for her.

She wasn’t. She saw me from down the hallway and came RUNNING and threw her arms around me! Wow!

She was saved by my having lost it.

It was a quiet day spent keeping my foot up a lot. I got up this morning thinking, Oh, that’s a lot better than I thought that was going to be. Yay.

And thank you all for the kind words and thoughts.

Meantime, it’s been 36F the last three mornings. I really need to get out there and replace the eleven year old incandescent strand on my low-growing mango tree. Removing it from the tangle of limbs and placing the new such that it doesn’t constrict its growth–I’ve been avoiding it.

To be honest, I think for a semi-irrational fear of getting ticks on my head. It’s not been quite, quite cold enough to kill them off.

See, this is why nearly-white hair is a good thing: you can see them, or rather, the tall guy will. Right?

My portion of my late dad’s art arrived today.

I had previously had a few paintings shipped to me and they’d arrived carefully cushioned inside thick cardboard boxes. So that’s what I was expecting.

After I’d pre-paid the shipper he happened to mention that it was not going to be delivered inside. The driver’s contract stops at our garage door. Although, I could hire their other guys at our end to bring it in for us.

Sure, how much?

My brain refuses to remember how much above $600 he said because I instantly said no. I could call in friends if need be; I could carry those boxes myself, even if it might take me awhile with a bad back. Could they give me a warning once they actually hit the road with them, since the delivery day was uncertain. I knew it was a twelve hour drive.

They did not do so.

This morning, there was their delivery guy in my driveway with three big wooden boxes just past the sidewalk. Heavy and nailed shut. Holy cannoli. And I thought I had it all planned out where the items were going to go. As if.

I walked back in the door with the guy’s piece of paperwork and said to Richard, who is limited by having once broken his own back, We’re in trouble.

Walked back out and shook my head as I read the weights Sharpied onto them: 207 pounds, 201, 109. Clearly, the boxes themselves were a great deal of that weight. Someone with the skills could easily rework them into furniture.

The young driver was blown away at being met by only this little old lady. He just couldn’t leave me like this. He insisted.

I had found yesterday (because I so seldom use them) that I was out of checks–that was stupid–and he’d gotten there before I had any chance to head to the bank for replacements like I’d planned.

He simply said, Pay what you think is right, and started working that first box forward, twist and push, twist and push.

Wait, I said, running to get the dolly. It helped for the first two, with me helping as best I could, but he thought it too small for the third and put it aside. The low raised step into the house was the biggest challenge. Even he had to stop and breathe a moment, but he did it, he got them all in just inside the door. I thanked him profusely and emptied out my wallet as he watched me searching for one last ten or twenty to throw in there, but at least there were quite a few. Richard added his twenty.

I’ve iced and stretched my back while praying for that guy’s all day long. He didn’t have to do that. But he did. I so much want him to be okay.

Richard got the drill out after dinner. He wanted to make sure everything looked good in there, and he removed all the nails along the tops.

Those guys did a good job protecting everything.

And then, immediately after saying out loud that I was going to have to be careful not to drop that heavy board from the biggest lid on my foot…

We know the drill by now: if I did break it it will hurt worse and more specifically tomorrow, and with that we did not go to Urgent Care. Yet.

What I most want out of those boxes is the painting that I had loved but that had had a several-inch tear in the canvas. My brother has the skills and he repaired it for me and touched up the paint there. You cannot see where and would never know if you didn’t know. That one means a lot. I want it on my wall first.

I think we’re done lifting for tonight.

(Ed. to add in the morning, I don’t think it’s broken. Yay.)

There was one more thing I’d been wanting to do since late summer. Michelle and I drove to Andy’s last week and this was one of the reasons why I’d wanted to go.

A Christmas card. A pretty little bag.

Inside, two small half-pound boxes of figs stuffed with dried peaches plumped up with honey, candied orange peel, and nuts. I look forward to these every December. They were so popular last year that I entirely missed getting any and I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

But also, since that surgeon had become an instant Andy’s fan with that first peach he’d shared with his wife, I wanted to make sure he knew what else that farm can do.

The second box was for his nurse.

The card read, One last thing…

He’d told me with great love, “I never want to see you again! For your sake” after finding no cancer and not having to do surgery.

I didn’t see him. Nor his nurse. That’s okay. The receptionist asked me if I was there for an appointment? and then took that bag with so much joy for them at someone coming back to say thank you. At her wonderful boss being recognized, and the nurse, too. She had no idea what was in there, but it was the being there that mattered. She made sure my name was in there for them before she let me go.

Her love on their behalf will carry me forward through so much. Just like theirs still does.

$395 later, we have a working dishwasher again. Yay.

(When the rent is too $!$!! high, so is everything else. The average for a one-BR 649 sq’ apartment is $3007 here.)

(Nighttime photo.)

It amused me no end and I went to take its picture. Where did I put my phone… And then I got distracted to something else.

There had been a pair of pomegranates hanging onto the tree that I could have picked weeks ago but I’d never gotten them past the critters long enough to see how long they should/would stay there if I let them. I had a small pop-up style birdnetting tent–not over them, trying to balance it in those branches was too fiddly, but sideways with the fruit sort of just inside the bottom of it and the top of the tent facing the fence: En garde! (Autocorrect added an n. I am much amused.) I knew they were accessible but the critters who could reach it didn’t have to know that from their favorite runway and I knew they did not want to be in a cage.

It worked!

Michelle’s a fan of pomegranate juice and on her last night here I squeezed the ones that had been kept in the fridge, and that was as much of that work as I wanted to do at the time.

I checked. The two on the tree were still there.

This morning she was back in Boston and some sheer curiosity got me to go outside to check those fruits again.

Picture a little kid on Christmas morning tearing open a present: the strip of wrapping paper still attached to the tape in their hand while the box falls away. That’s essentially what was left: two stems, each with a thin strip of the bright red outer rind.

While all of the rest was utterly gone.

I laughed. The timing! As if they’d only been holding on for her! How did something get to both of them among those thorns, how did it eat that much? I wanted to get a photo. Didn’t I put it–where was it? Huh. Whatever.

We were just sitting down to dinner when something just really nagged at me and I apologized and said, I have to know if I left that phone in the car, I haven’t been able to find it anywhere. He said Go ahead, and meant it, so I got right back up from the chair I’d just sat down in.

It wasn’t in the car.

It was on the ground in front of the passenger door for all to see where it had fallen out of my purse when I got out this morning.

Had I waited ten more minutes there wouldn’t have been enough light left to see it there and I might well have stepped on it going to the car door to look. I’m just glad it was still there.

Thank you pomegranate silliness…