Strange, strange shadows this evening: sharp and long and very dark, slicing the brightly lit outside in zigzags.

The bigger birds and one squirrel didn’t care but the finches, titmice, and chickadees went home to bed, leaving the birdseed untouched from then on.

We drove through that weirdly semi-Decembery black and white light and went to Nina and Rod’s. Where old friends were gathering and looked at the eclipse with special goggles and chatted into the night.

And almost forgot to actually sing it. To a very good man: Happy Birthday, Rod!

What’s your favorite color, I asked her a few weeks ago.

Red, she answered, looking at me…

Went to the bridal shower for my friend Marguerite’s daughter tonight. (Quietly rejoicing that Marguerite and her mom, too, for that matter, were there to see the day and in good health.)

A red mink/cashmere scarf may have appeared. A soon-to-be bride may have looked across the room in great thanks. A future husband, good man that he is, may have gained even more incentive to put his arm around his loving wife. Yes.

It was THE Jose! Jose Ibanez!

Richard was sick and grocery shopping had to be done, bashed foot or no–someone had to do it. And so, by force of habit and size of juice consumption at our house, I went to the nearby Costco.

They had recently repainted the parking lot: what had been a long stretch of handicapped parking was no more. Now the spaces were scattered around and much closer to the door, easier to walk to but far harder to drive on a Saturday. That ten-minute-a-row dance? Yup. For each two already-filled spots–I hadn’t thought that oh yeah, it was the day before Mother’s Day and an hour before the store closed (duh!)

I finally got around one turn and was heading back towards the building, thinking, if there isn’t something soon I’m just going to have to give up, when suddenly I saw a man at the far end of the row, waving his arms.

The second spot from the end was open. The best I could possibly have hoped for. With nobody between me and it, he had spotted my plates and wanted to make sure I got that one up close rather than taking one in outer darkness.

And when I got up closer, it WAS him! It was Jose!

Years ago, when Richard wanted someone to come work for his group, he interviewed him at Jose’s restaurant to make a good impression on him and I guess it worked; the guy took the job. But when Jose’s rent went from $4,000 a month to twenty-four-screaming-thousand dollars a month in the first big dot-com boom–it was about a block from Stanford campus–there was just no way, and he was forced to shut down. The community mourned.

I found this article about him, and that smile on his face is pure Jose. Everybody adores him. We still buy his empanadas at Milk Pail; fabulous food, and it’s a way we can tell him that.

And here he was making sure whoever was in that car way back there got the spot she needed. Because that’s the kind of guy he is. He clearly enjoyed being able to help.

I wanted to do more than just smile and wave back, so I, without thinking, said, “Thank you” in sign language as I went by.

Which I realized only instantly after the fact looked like I was blowing him a kiss.

No worries.

Happy Mother’s Day!

(Ed. to add.) I just got a note from Steve at Milk Pail, and the locals need to know this. He said:

Alison, this Wednesday there is a City of MV meeting where the Phase II plan
for the San Antonio Village project will be shown at City Hall at 7 pm.
The initial plan effectively will flatten the Milk Pail.  This won't happen,
but the Milk Pail will need strong community support in the next couple of
months.
Spreading the word would be good.
Thanks
Steve

I woke up the other day to my Richard on the phone, talking to the nurse at 7-something o’clock. Where were those hearing aids? *fumble fumble drop* Wait-what? Ask her what the side effects are? What?

He did but didn’t get a real answer, because, as it turned out, she didn’t think there were any.

And so it was that today I got the latest and greatest to fight the bone damage from the useless steroids of my Crohn’s flare three years ago. I had to look it up: Prolia, ie denosumab, is indeed a monoclonal antibody as I thought it must be from the name. (Any drug name that ends in -mab.) And it’s less than two years past FDA approval–I lucked out.

On the last thing they tried, I was one of the unlucky hyper-reactives, sick for a week; six months later I went in for follow-up testing and got a note from the doctor: “I’ve never seen this, I’ve never even heard of this!” It had done diddlysquat. I asked him if it could be a new manifestation of autoimmunity? He said it was too soon to know.

This time, so far, so good, and he will absolutely not wait the standard time frame for follow-up testing.  Crossing my fingers. Having lost 29% bone mass in four years, and having had another year pass since then in which the loss continued at the same speed… (So yes, some of that pre-dated that particular flare.)

The Prolia works by blocking a protein that is a main instigator in shedding bone. Blessings on that doctor for fighting the insurance company while we were off having a good time for a few weeks. May the day come when providers can simply do the right thing because it’s the right thing and not have to go through all that.

Meantime, the bluejays went for the feeder twice in rapid succession while I was home (and got just as rapidly disabused of the idea) and were otherwise nowhere to be seen all day. Things are going back to normal.

And the yarn I grabbed on my way out the door to the clinic is, I’ve decided, not what I want to do next after all. Where are all my 7s…

Paraphrasing there.

An intense day: a noon lupus meeting–and I couldn’t find a place to park without a lot of sun time.  Which I cannot risk. After driving all the way over there, I simply had to bag it.

Which was okay–I was going to have to leave early anyway, because I got an email last night that a friend needed a ride to her eye doctor three towns away. Dilate and wait, rush hour traffic coming back.

Annnnd…

I had promised to bring dinner to someone else at six.

I drove her, I waited, I knitted, I dropped her off at home, I went straight to Costco. It was past 5:30 when I got out of there with a rotisserie chicken and enough extras to keep them happy, apologizing for the lack of creative input thereto. Done.

Sat down finally at home with some Costco pizza, my first meal in seven hours and all I could do at that point–sorry for not waiting, Richard–and collapsed into a chair at last.

And saw the bottom half of a hawk swooping past the very top of the window.

Nobody on the bird feeders, sorry; my pepperoni’s too salty and really not what you’d like. I walked out of the room. Back a few minutes later, in time to see what I at first thought were falling olive leaves and then realized were feathers. Somewhere the Cooper’s had found its favorite, a dove.

But wait. Trees. Angle. Distance. Wind? How were they falling exactly there?

I wasn’t the only one who was fascinated. A young black squirrel on the patio didn’t run for cover, didn’t duck under the picnic table at the last second and hide on the chair legs like I saw one do last year–it loped over to the center of the grass and then stood on its hind legs, stretching upwards, sniffing as far as its nose could reach, staring, clearly, at the hawk. (My view up there was hampered by the awning.)

I remembered the one last year that liked to taunt the Cooper’s and how predictably that eventually turned out.

Then this one took off up the tree to get an even closer look.

Dude!

Didn’t your momma ever teach you not to get in a tree with strangers?

The doorbell rang yesterday afternoon.

It was a man holding out a blooming Easter lily in a beautiful basket with a white ribbon tied just so, with a card: “Happy Easter, Grandma and Grandpa, love, Parker!”

And its perfume is exquisite, too. Our great thanks.

We got a second surprise today at church: Shane and Stacy were in town with their kids. They moved away 13 years ago and the then-teenage son came with his wife to show her off. He did very well–and so did she. I am very happy for them.

Shane and Stacy are the ones who, before they moved, told me I had to read this book I’d never heard of, and when the next week or so I had not sought it out yet, they told me no, you really do, you *have* to read this: “Kitchen Table Wisdom,” by Rachel Remen.

I did; it made me think. It comforted me. As a doctor and patient both, she gets to the heart of what it means to be human, and when a nurse saw me with it in Stanford Hospital three years ago, she smiled, nodding, “Oh yes. THAT one. I love her books!”

I read Dr. Remen’s second, “My Grandfather’s Blessings,” as soon as it came out. Bought my dad a copy. He read it and immediately bought six more to give away.

And I met her once at a booksigning.

As we spoke, I referred to one of her stories and told her briefly of a friend and why this story was exactly what this friend needed to comfort her in a profound and unexpected grief. To know that someone else out there somewhere knew what what she was going through was like, when I could only offer my unknowing best–I had prayed and felt strongly that this was the right thing to do, only now I needed to pray to know…

And Dr. Remen, eyes to my eyes, said in unison with me, “When.”

Months later that time came.  It was just right, as I knew it would be. It was a profound blessing to us both and has been ever since.

And none of that would ever have happened had these good friends not told me of Dr. Remen’s writing, and I will forever be grateful they did. And that they lovingly nudged me some more till I knew why.

I reread them every year or two to remind me what kind of person I want to be when I grow up.

And to take the time to pause and enjoy the lilies while they bloom. And then care for them so they will again, year after year to come.

One of my earliest memories is from the summer I was three. We were driving across the country, and a cable snapped and wrapped around an axle: we were on the freeway doing 70 when suddenly one wheel wasn’t turning. We spun out–Mom remembers we missed a gasoline tanker by inches, I just remember going airborne and bouncing around and around the far back–and down we went, over an embankment.

I remember being mad at my daddy. What was he doing?! I didn’t LIKE it!

This was long before carseats, or even seatbelts other than in the front.

My older siblings remember that there was a petting zoo at the bottom of that embankment and that we got to pet the animals while waiting for help on the car, the owner taking us in on the spot. This was an unexpected fun adventure, a lot more fun than sitting in some dumb old car forever.

Meantime, the truck driver had found a farmhouse and pulled over to call the police, saying a family had just died back there.

Actually, not so much, but the help was much appreciated.

B a a a a a a ah! Petpetpet.

I wish I remember that part. But I’m glad I got started on appreciating fiber animals at a tender age–and Mom was always knitting on car trips. Go Mom! I love these pictures of Parker discovering wool on the hoof, too; maybe he’ll be a spinner some day. Here, have some lion mane to cement the deal.

Now, if you ask someone to open up and tell you all about their childhoods, they’d likely go uhbuhduhbuhduhbuduhhhh…

Narrow it down. One of my sisters emailed all of us siblings out of the blue today and asked for memories of the cars we had growing up–particularly the limo.

My folks once needed a new car that could haul six kids on long trips and handle a camping trailer as well. Guess what car, in Washington DC in 1972, was cheaper than a new station wagon? And in the days of shoddy auto work, was designed not to break down?

Yup.  Dad bought a three-year-old used embassy limousine. (Link is to Scott’s strawberry pie story.)

There was the time Mom, turning right at a blind intersection, stopped a school bus that had lost its brakes on a steep hill. Just a dent to the limo. The thing was nineteen feet long and a tank.

The irony is that my brother once was stopped and someone roaring up behind rear-ended him so hard that the nose of their (MG, he thinks it was) went right underneath, all but totalling their brand new car. The guy got out ripping mad, screaming that it was all my brother’s fault.

Um, hello?

The cop admitted that he could write the guy a ticket, and certainly would–except that the MG guy would just rip it up in front of them.

The guy worked for an embassy.  Diplomatic plates. Defense de parler au chauffeur. (That was a sign one of us bought for Dad one year to hang on the back of his headrest.)

And when I mention shoddy auto work, from back before the Big Three had competition: my uncle once bought a brand new station wagon that, the first time he raised the hood, one corner near the windshield simply crumpled. As Walter Cronkite used to say, And that’s the way it was.

When he moved away from the DC area, he sold it to my folks.

Years later, I decided I wanted to drive it to college. Mom thought this was a really bad idea but didn’t tell me I couldn’t. She did (clearly) set an older sister from a family we were close to on me to tell me how much her college life had revolved around working to pay for car repairs and how much she regretted buying hers; a $200 VW bug was anything but $200, and college learning kind of dropped by the wayside, missing the point of why she was at school.

So. The wagon needed a lot of work and Mom wanted an estimate on it (probably to tell me sorry, couldn’t be done). I still had some hopes. We were going to leave it at the service station across the next town. I was driving the other car, Mom was following in the old battered battleaxe–and that hood suddenly twisted upwards and hit the windshield!

We finally pulled into the gas station. Mom asked where we should put it.

The guy looks at it, looks at her, looks at it in a long slow wondering stare and answered, What do you want ME to do with THAT, lady?!

I should add that that was after it had sat in the driveway unopened undriven for two weeks and someone had left their wet bathing suit in it. In July. In 100+ degrees, 100% humidity, windows rolled up.

I had scrubbed and scrubbed in anticipation of being able to have a car… Because not only did it stink worse than rotten eggs, the seatbelts were a thick fuzz of inch-high poofy white tendrils.

I did not know before that mildew could do that.

I still thought it was salvageable.

I don’t think anyone ever drove that car again.

An older friend who doesn’t drive anymore needed a lift. As we drove the main road coming home, I was keeping an eye out: I’d seen one around there several times before, and then–Ooooh, look! as I grabbed my eyes back to the road, hoping she would see what I meant before we passed it. It was sitting on the telephone wire, being anything but their usual stealthy.

“That’s *beautiful*!” she exclaimed, her head turning to follow it as the car continued on.

“That’s a Cooper’s hawk,” and I wondered if it was one that might have fledged from our nest two miles away. I was so delighted that she was as thrilled as I was; thank you, Gail.

Dropped her off, came home to my own quiet house, had a hard time getting myself to relax and sit down and accomplish some knitting. There’s a lot going on. Cancer surgery for the wife of someone we know, Richard covering some of their job at work just like they did for him when I was sick, and cancer treatment outcome tests this week for a relative of ours.

Our daughter Sam is doing better and for that, and for all those who have reached out to help her in any way, we are infinitely grateful.

I sat down at the computer.

It’s nesting season. He always seems to be more sociable during nesting season, and so, with a feeling of someone’s eyes, I looked up to see my male Cooper’s standing on the box just the other side of the window, looking in at me. People watching. Beautiful, beautiful, big bird, and I birdwatched back at him. He opened his beak and spoke in hawk talk that I wished I could understand, and then, having said hello, flew.

Maybe an hour and a half later, there he was again. Right there. Getting my attention and posing for the camera I wished I had in my hands. Looking at the look of wonder in my face.

And he came back again! But that time I didn’t see him behind me till I laughed at a Frazz comic, I think the one where one of the elementary kids asks why the Thanksgiving people dressed like color blind leprechauns?

And with that, a swoop of the wings and there he was, on his way by. His work here was done for today.

I can cope with anything now. And I went off to Purlescence, where, surrounded by good friends, I knitted towards making someone happy.

A friend spoke at church today: at the last minute, he’d decided to fly to a family get-together.

When he had been a child, his parents had had to take business trips and a friend of theirs (let’s call her Betty) would take care of the kids. Betty became practically a member of the family.

He, now a father of four young children himself, decided at the last minute to fly to an extended family get-together to see a relative giving his farewell talk at church before leaving on a two-year Mormon mission.

And it turns out that his aunt and uncle had decided to invite Betty to drive the hundreds of miles with them to come be a part of the family again.

Betty and and my friend, who had no idea she would be there, saw each other coming in at separate doors at the same time: she threw her arms high and called out his name and the former child and his former almost-a-second-mom ran to each other.  She hugged me like Betty always did, he said.

They sat next to each other during the meeting. She asked him, Do you have any children? and he happily pulled out his phone and showed off pictures. Wonderful! She beamed.

A few minutes later, she leaned over to him again with the biggest smile, and asked, Are you married? Do you have any children?

He pulled out his phone and showed her, wondering…

A few minutes later, again. And it made her happy all over again to exclaim over those beautiful children and his lovely wife.

Relating the story later, he admitted he didn’t get much out of the meeting, but…! And afterward, she remembered all these tales of him as a child and delighted in regaling him with them.

It was just the new memories that weren’t sinking in. But he had come, and she–

–someone struggling now with old age and a failing memory and all the worry that comes with those circumstances–

–had found connection and love from the past coming back to confirm her and she knew that she mattered forever.

And to think he almost hadn’t gone. He was so glad he did.

Got hours of knitting done, and at one point movement caught my eye and made me look up as the female Cooper’s hawk swooped in a sharp U-turn right on the other side of the window, tail wide, just missing an escaping junco. Wow.

And then I went to run an errand and found myself in a different drama altogether.

I was at the post office mailing a package to one of my kids when there was a loud bang behind me.

“He DID!” the clerk handling my box exclaimed as a well-dressed Asian man kept going as if nothing had happened. “He BROKE it!” as another clerk ran to see. The first said to me in indignation, “People just don’t care anymore.”

But either nobody thought to run after him, or… it could well be that they realized they knew full well where to find his name if they didn’t know it already, and they’d probably been given training on how to react in an emergency: don’t risk your life for something stupid.

The man leaving the building had found the automatic door opener too slow for whatever was bugging him.  So he’d stepped over from the out door and slammed the in one outward so hard that he broke the large metal piece securing it in the top of the doorway.

The tall door now swung freely in both directions.

Nobody got the license plate of that late-model BMW (or was it a Mercedes. I hadn’t had any reason to pay attention earlier.)

And wow, I hope his significant others are okay, whoever they may be out there. He possibly isn’t, but one can only say he got what he wanted.

And guess who was there tonight.

That same couple–and their baby, whom I hadn’t seen since she was an infant, 11 months old now and almost walking; she and I played for quite awhile. Peek a boo! *giggle giggle giggle*

And Penny and her husband, too.

She had been diagnosed with lymphoma shortly after I knitted her that shawl, and it was a comfort through all those months of treatment and solitude as her chemo-battered immune system could tolerate no risks for months and months.

That yarn had known exactly whose it was from the get-go.

I showed her the project I was working on–and admitted that although it had absolutely demanded to be made, and I’d thought I’d known who it was for, the further along I got into it the less sure I was that that was where it was meant to be.

And so I have already decided what I really will make for the person I’d been aiming towards, while this? I don’t know. I just know I have to knit it. Monday, when I rescued its UFOness from oblivion, I actually only had the first four rows on the needles; now it’s halfway done.

She reached to touch the Findley yarn and exclaimed, Ooooh! As she did so, I suddenly knew: this was exactly the pattern I had knit for her.

Everything came together in good will from both of us in that moment towards whomever it holds in its future.

Monday, it was going to be a different pattern in the body but my counting was off, and so…

I told Penny in mock indignation, My knitting bosses me around! She guffawed–she knew. Hers does too.

I’m curious to see what will come next with this. I do know that yarn time is in its own variable universe.

The shawl is almost finished, but I’ve decided to make the edging longer: not because I have to, but at long last because I want to. It’s going to be gorgeous.

The friend who has shown up at my door several times when I’ve been sick with a quart of mango juice from Trader Joe’s just because it’s my favorite, knowing it would cheer me up, sent out a note today: did anyone have crutches for her height?

We have some, but they’re my son’s and he’s 19″ taller than she is, so I couldn’t help her on that one. But anyone who’s sprained both ankles needs a little something to cheer her up.

What I really wanted to do was help watch her little kids who were running in and out of the house, but that whole sun thing…

I put the chocolate torte in her fridge so she wouldn’t have to get up.

And it was enough.

p.s. Happy Birthday to my daughter-in-law, Kim! And to my son John yesterday.

I always make chocolate tortes in pairs. Saturday’s first went to Becca. The second didn’t know whose it wanted to be when it grew up.

Last night, “Do you want a piece?” And we could freeze individual slices for nibbling after that.

But somehow neither of us felt like it. We did, but…not… Huh. So, no.

He called me mid-day today. He has a co-worker who was the de facto mother to a young woman she’d been close to all the young woman’s life, and she has shared parental worries with him from time to time, trying to be a good mom. I met the co-worker when she came to our older son’s wedding four years ago; she’s a good soul and that young woman was very fortunate to have her.

Whether it happened today or whether today was the day she was able to say it, I don’t know, but she asked the nearest person to let their office mates know so she wouldn’t have to repeat it again and again: her god daughter had just died in a violent accident on the freeway.

“It’s meaningless, really,” I heard the grief in Richard’s voice, “but…if you could…” He was hoping I’d be willing to bring that torte to the office. He knew I would.

And how!

We acknowledged the issue of the sun at mid-day and a full parking lot. But I knew. If I didn’t do this in person myself I would regret it forever.  And so I put the car as close as I could and then in utter defiance towards all the limitations that that stupid lupus imposes on me without my consent, I walked it in.

Richard came, and arm in arm we walked to the other end of the facility. We were coming down one hallway, and as we saw her office just around the corner from the end of it, she wasn’t there.

Just as we started to wonder what to do, we saw her coming from the other hallway that right-angled there. She saw the two of us, recognized what was in Richard’s hands–I’d sent tortes to the office before–and ran and threw her arms around me.

“I’m so sorry.”

We threw our arms around each other again. “Chocolate helps,” she told us, with a wince and appreciation all mixed together in a silent tornado of emotion.

A cake by itself was meaningless. A torte that created the chance to be there for someone in a grief I can hardly imagine–it was what we could do.

But just in case someone who didn’t know found it in the office fridge and snitched some before she could get it home, I just pulled another pair out of the oven. I want to be sure to be ready again. You never know.

The story popped up today on the local feed that a burglary trio had just been arrested with the tools of their trade, hopefully accounting for the rash of daylight break-ins last week.

Which had given me extra cause for concern. That does help me feel a little better about yesterday’s guy.

Meantime.

You know how little kids like the box better than the toy? My husband saved a nifty little one from Christmas (thanks, Sam!) that a descendant of a Rubik’s cube had come in, and the best way I could describe it is that it looked like the upper part of a jazzed-up lighthouse, complete with a mirror on one of the sides and opening at the opposite. (Actually, that box in the link is the right-looking box, but Richard glancing at my screen mentions that his was a more complicated toy and, checking, Amazon doesn’t have it.)

Whichever. It is colorful and quite light. So. Yesterday (before All That) I got the bright idea to hang it by laceweight from the bottom of the birdfeeder: there would not be enough weight to set off the closing mechanism.

It took awhile for the birds to get used to it. It would be still, and they would fly tentatively in. Add momentum from lots of birds coming in for a landing and the thing would start swinging wildly below and they would all dash away.

Today they were less skittish about it. A junco even took a turn up there.

What I was hoping to do was to interrupt the squirrels’ path in their leap to the feeder.

What I hadn’t anticipated was the lack of squirrels. Not in the yard, much less on the patio. It felt oddly empty with no squirrels playing flip-flops with their tails or watching me to see what they could get away with. A gray one appeared on the fence and considered a moment but dove down towards the neighbors’ garden.

Today, a black one did finally graze a bit below the feeder when he got hungry enough, but he wasn’t having anything to do with the things he used to leap from. Wouldn’t even look up.

Like the rained-on-and-gone Margaret Thatcher cover, only with flashing light and sudden movements.

I think I’m on to something here.