The doorbell rang this afternoon.

Scott and his two daughters told me their mom had baked these cookies for us. Merry Christmas!

There were so many and so different. Each was a work of art. If his wife isn’t a professional baker, she certainly could be. Richard and I later cut a few in half so we both could explore among the variations.

My astonishment and stunned delight made their day while they were totally making mine. I had been sick and they had decided to do something about it to help me feel better.

Hours later, I suddenly wondered if their old KitchenAid still worked?

Not that the one has anything to do with the other, but–I’d long forgotten that about twenty years ago, I bought a new beater for my mixer at an outlet store, only to find it didn’t fit my machine. A rookie mistake, but not worth the two-hour round trip to return it. Maybe the next time I go to Gilroy?

I never did. It sat in its little white box in my house taking up space till not long after they moved in half a dozen years later.

Monica, barely knowing anyone yet, offered a baking demo at church. She was good!

And my beater that fit her Kitchenaid perfectly found where it had been waiting to go. A good baker could always use extras for making multiple batches in a row.

1.82″ of rain, way more than expected, while a tornado flipped cars up in the mountains. San Francisco had its first-ever tornado warning but Scotts Valley took the hit. (No one was killed.)

It left me musing over the words of a friend some years ago who’d grown up here and had moved over by the coast. He’d never understood why people from the East Coast said they missed ‘real weather.’ What’s so great about shoveling snow in the cold or hurricanes or storms that take out the power or all of that.

But he told me he got it now: it meant being closer to nature. We all have an innate need to connect to the natural world and weather brings it right up close and personal and humbles us.

I think (and I’m sure the guy would agree) that we can do just fine without the sky throwing a temper tantrum with heavy vehicles, but I quibble.

Meanwhile, down here, most of the rain happened at night and my hero made a grocery run this evening with nothing barring his way nor slowing him down, just a normal, calm, boring northern Californian day.

With the first sprouts of winter’s new green everywhere.

I’m going to try again tomorrow to get this to work between my phone and my answering machine, but meantime: I have for years kept a recording on that machine of my mom and dad singing Happy Birthday to me. I’m pretty sure it was from the year before my dad was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, which he survived longer than they thought he would. I’m sure they were quite disappointed they missed me for that one day. I’ve long been glad they did.

My mother and her family were all very musical. Dad, bless him, I have multiple childhood memories of the spirit just sweeping him up into the joy of the song during hymns at church–and small children turning around to stare: How do you have a grown-up who doesn’t know how to sing? And who’s so loud about it?

I remember him being embarrassed and shutting right up mid-hymn one time, and he rarely sang at all there after that, though occasionally he would as part of random happy conversations at home.

And yet, what, sixty-odd years into their marriage? That recording sounds so sweet to my ears. They do say couples become more alike as they age, and Mom and Dad were so good for each other.

Love you, Mom!

And next week we get to call her and sing Happy Birthday. Let’s see if we can get my much-missed Dad singing along with us.

Oh Amazon you silly. Yes every December you raise prices relentlessly as Christmas gets closer while pretending not to, it can be quite annoying. Yes you know how to cash in on your customers’ procrastination.

But seriously (watching it jump overnight from 7.11 to 9.99.) On what planet is someone going to give their nearest and dearest cotton ostomy covers to celebrate the birth of the Christ Child?

What I need, I thought but did not say, is some classic get-better chicken noodle soup.

The doorbell rang before dark and there on our doorstep was our friend Phyl. I stood nowhere near but managed to at least wave hello and say thank you from the family room as she handed salad, bread, a dessert–and a great big thing of fresh-veggie chicken noodle soup to Richard.

Hold on, one more thing, and she ran back to her car.

A birthday present for me to wait to open.

The rest is not my story to tell, but this is: last week, when I spent the first three and a half days pretty much flat out in bed, on that fourth day when I was just barely functioning but at least up after noon, I found myself randomly doing a google search and finding something that surprised me. The very first item.

Which was nice, and hey (passing it along to the relevant person) you might be interested, I said.

Having no idea the context into which that email would fall nor how greatly both it and the timing of it would matter.

We talked on the phone tonight and I said, Dad’s still looking out for you.

Last week he was a total hero and took the bins to the curb for morning pickup.

Today I was the one who was feeling stronger so I did.

Looking up and down the street, I wondered, Wait. Where are all the others?

I came back inside and stared in disbelief at my phone claiming it was Monday. It was not! It was TuesMondays, two, not one that we just got through!

Oh. Right. I guess I wanted to be one day further along on this than we quite are yet. Oh, well, that’s one thing we don’t have to do tomorrow night. (Sorry, neighbors.)

The talk was amazing. Being able to hear it and read the captions when I knew they normally don’t have that set up there was a vivid example of exactly the things he was saying.

That the things that matter in this life are our relationships. The choices we make. And how we treat others.

And he talked about plants. How watering them allows the roots to access the minerals in the soil and support all that shows above ground; the water offers more than just water, it makes everything the plant needs down there accessible.

While I remembered neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks’ observation that if you kneel in the dirt with a dementia patient, no matter how far gone their brain is, and hand them a little seedling, they will always, always plant it roots-side down. Never roots up leaves down. It is built into our very beings to know how plants grow.

It is built into our very souls to want to love and be loved.

Our church building is in the middle of its annual five-day creche exhibit, with the whole place turned into a temporary museum, every piece on loan. The people who run it are gifted designers and creatives and the place is always gorgeous. There are concerts every night, a hands-on children’s area, and everything is a gift to the community. They wouldn’t accept payment if you tried. If you’re at all local, I highly recommend a visit.

Which means that for actual church services we double up with another ward in another building.

A friend offered to carpool. I said I’d love to but we’re sick. She said just so you know there’s no Zoom option there.

And then there was a ward email from another friend, proud of his identical twin who was going to be a speaker Sunday, not to miss it!

Oh, I wouldn’t for anything… But there’s no way I’m knowingly exposing anybody else to this.

I told him my dilemma yesterday. He got back to me today. Someone in the background, he didn’t say how much of it was him or his brother or who, managed to work things out so that yes, he then announced to the whole ward, there will indeed be Zoom available for those who are ill or otherwise in need of it.

I cannot begin to tell you how wonderful a Christmas gift it felt to be looked out for and included. Someone chose to go out of their way to do the inconvenient thing and set things up differently for that day so that we wouldn’t have to miss it.

It had not gone out this week (neither of us was bending nor lifting anything Tuesday.) It had to be done. It was piling up. We discussed who felt most up to the task and he was sure he should do it but he might need help with the lifting, he said; we could manage it together.

And then I remembered that probably the only thing actually in that silly trash can was plastic packaging material, since we’d left town on pickup day last week, and went across the house to confirm that hunch.

Getting the new liner on afterward was the hard part and that did create the sharpest twinge I’d felt since, I dunno, yesterday, so back to the stretching exercises pronto.

At long last there was a task where the fear had been the hardest part. We can deal with that. Progress!

6.7, came the alerts on my phone, with a warning to get away from the coast. Tsunami alert! The quake was later upgraded to a 7, the tsunami alert canceled an hour later, and we are not on the coast and I’ve been told the Bay is not likely to do tsunamis. Hopefully.

My friend Kevin of the late Purlescence grew up in Humboldt County and once told me of eating in a diner there as a young man (I’m thinking around 1990) and some old-timers striking up a conversation with him.

I’m guessing they’d heard on that day in 1964 that there had been not only an earthquake in Alaska but the second largest ever recorded. My son-in-law, who grew up in Anchorage, described someone walking into a bank that held the guy’s mortgage, flipping them his house keys and saying, You own it now. Try to find it.

Now there was an underwater mortgage.

Back at the diner on the bluff, they were scanning the horizon and looking at the people on the beach down below. Suddenly they bolted and drove down there, and I’m picturing it as steep, windy, and narrow.

Tsunami coming! Get in, get in, get out of here! NOW!

The water was coming in as they drove back up that hill. They’d saved so many lives. And now, all those years later, they still scanned that horizon from their favorite diner on that bluff; you never know.

Barbecue tongs for getting the laundry out, a hairband scooted under the bridge of my glasses so I can rescue them from the floor. Pushing your back flat if possible when you cough.

And stay upright as long as you can to keep the crud out of your chest (having just spent three and a half days essentially asleep.)

Four days down, ten to go?

At least I’m pretty sure it was.

I knit three hats and part of a cowl on that trip. Two hats had a spiral pattern, one was plain–but the yarn! Gorgeous. Mecha in Indonesia.

The wheelchair pusher and I were starting down the hallway to baggage and I exclaimed in delight, They’ve finally enclosed that!

A few yards later–Oh. No they haven’t.

Why they built that walkway with a chain link wall open to the nighttime temps I do not know. One thing I do know, that young woman got the prettiest hat of all because it was also the warmest.

Her favorite part and mine: I spent awhile pushing Lillian on the platform swing. It was wet and a bit heavy from that water, it was covered in needles, I swept it off with my hands as best I could but this is what she wanted to do and she wasn’t about to let any of that stop her.

It’s hanging from a limb of a huge old Western Red cedar tree.

Someone walking her dog on the other side of the fence got the biggest grin as she saw these little feet coming up again and again while a five-year-old voice giggled and counted off the numbers with her grandmother: 20! 20! 21! 21! 22! 22! (I think she skipped 23, but I wasn’t going to quibble.)

That swing kept wanting to go just a bit sideways on its way back and there was a scratchy bush there that had grown somewhat in its way this past season, with the angle of the cedar limb aiming for it; I found myself catching the thing again and again and saying, Reset! (Hold high in the air, shift to the left a foot or so, resume count.) Go!

Reset!

24! 24!

I don’t remember how many rounds of 24 we got to. She was absolutely adorable, and I got a real workout.

How much I didn’t know.

Later, I moved her brother who was climbing on her to the other side of me as I cheerfully put myself between them, as one does when little kids are too caught up in their own momentum to do what they should. Reset!

Man, that suitcase was sure heavier and more awkward leaving than it had been coming. Surely those gift bars of chocolate didn’t make that much of a difference.

I’m now doing 10-20 minutes of back stretches every hour or two. My goal is to be able to pick something off the floor without joining it. I will be more mindful of my limitations next time–but I’m almost (almost. Do you hear me reminding myself here) glad I wasn’t these past few days; we had a great time!

Next time, though, (I don’t think she was ever in actual danger of scratching herself on that bush anyway from where she was sitting,) no resets.

We had a great trip. More later. It wasn’t till the drive back to their airport that we suddenly started to feel the germ they’d been getting over when we came (knowing full well and deciding to come anyway.)

We wore masks while traveling. Would have anyway.

Mix that with waking up with my back giving way on me this morning if I tried to stand up, it was a bit of a day and not what I want to be writing about. Lots of back stretches on the floor. Managed to sit up for the first time for half of my Zoom knitting meeting. Finally got some soft food down at 6 pm and that seems to have helped everything.

But we were fine while we were there and got to love on everybody and that’s what I care about.