You have to post that story, Holly told me.

I was sure I already had. But using every search phrase I could think of on the blog, I’m not finding it. So here goes.

They were about to move away, and I know how the impending sense of loss at such times brings friends closer together and the emotions high.

I was talking a moment to Curtis, the husband, at church on I think their last Sunday before they left California, and in that conversation, he started to say something about an afghan his grandma had knit him.

Only, with such a sudden halting sense to his voice that I immediately picked up on it and went, “Does it need to be repaired? I’d be glad to,” before he said another word, hoping I wasn’t getting myself into too much.

The relief and joy and sudden hope in his face!

When he’d been in high school, his grandma had offered to knit him an afghan. Anything he liked; his choice. Years later telling me this, he said, And I asked for black. I had no idea what I was asking of her.

I smiled and nodded that yes, black stitches are hard to see to work with and really hard as you get older. I sympathized with Grandma with him.

But she had knit it because she loved him and he had been thrilled. He held it all the more closely when she died, love meeting loss and finding warmth in the dark places.

And then his cat had gotten to it. It was torn in four spots. He was heartbroken and had no idea what to do with it except to put it in the closet and hope that at some point in the future something somehow could be done.

I would be honored to give it my best, I told him.

And so later he swung by the house with it, knocking on my door to hand it over. One look and I told him, Oh, good. This won’t take very long at all, if you don’t mind waiting.

His wife was in the car with their two little kids, who were sick, and they hadn’t wanted to expose me so they’d stayed in there and he didn’t want to leave them waiting alone and not knowing how long I’d be.

Well then. I picked up my yarn needle and, afghan in hand, walked out to the sidewalk next to their car and plunked myself down. Let the kids wave hi and watch if they want, and besides, I wanted to see them and his wife every moment I could.

The afghan had been fairly loosely knit out of a nice, soft wool. That looseness made it vulnerable to a good cat-claw snag and there were long pulls in it–all I had to do was work the yarn back into the sides to where it belonged, here, here, here, and a little bit over down here. Not a single break.

I told him he had done the right thing: he hadn’t lopped off the loops and that had saved it.

The whole thing took maybe five minutes. There was such an intense joy the whole time. Curtis, Jenna, the kids, getting a little extra time with them before they left–but it was also as if his grandma herself were standing chuckling over my shoulder, glad to see her work restored to go hug the great-grands with.

I was talking to a friend today and showed her a quick sequence of shots of Parker on his birthday: face coated in cupcake and grinning with his mom, then contemplating whether to eat more or smash more, then arms thrown high in delight: Taadaah!

She loved it; then she showed me her niece and nephews on her own Iphone.

Oh cool!

She flipped through a few and then stopped at one of her eight-year-old niece, the oldest, running happily in front of the incoming tide. She told me why she loved this photo so much.

Her brother and his family had been visiting recently and it was the first time his kids had seen the ocean. His little girl kept running after the receding water, then running back in to the beach just in front of its return, over and over and over and over, till finally my friend asked her what she was doing? (Clearly there was a perspective here that the adults weren’t quite in on, and she wanted to know.)

“I’m playing tag with the ocean!”

The anti-tumor-necrosis-factor drug that saved my life in ‘03 blocks one of the body’s ways of fighting off cancer cells.

I’ve had nearly nine years since then. I’ve spent the last three days considering how good a tradeoff that risk was and how glad I am that that drug gave me that time.  While expecting more: remembering the time we passed a flock of newly-sheared sheep along Highway 5 on our way to southern Cal, when our youngest whined unexpectedly into the quiet of the car, “We’re not STOPPING, M o o o o o mmmmm!”

Hang onto that thought.

Tuesday, in OB-GYN, I guess the doctor felt I was being a little too blithe about the whole thing and had to make sure I understood that this…was what was normal and this…was what the ultrasound had showed. She did a biopsy, and wanting to be sure she had enough cells, did it again. She remarked that I had a high pain threshold.

Breathe deep.

I went home and read up on endometrial cancer and the studies on the survival-rate effectiveness (not!) of lymphadenectomy with clinically-observed and the most-common stage 1. Etc.

They told me I would get the results in a week and I was thinking better to wait less than you thought you’d have to than longer, right? And so I hoped it would turn out to be sooner than that ohpleaseohplease.

I got an email this morning asking me to sign into the clinic’s online site. Already? Oh good. I think. Took a deep breath, knowing it would either say what I hoped or else it would ask me to come in to be told the news in person.

Signed in. Went to my inbox there. Slow, slow motion, as if the whole thing were echoing the endless, dragging last three days.

Not even the doctor, just a note from her nurse. No cancer cells. No precancerous cells. No sign.

NO CANCER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It’s a good thing Richard was still home so I had someone to dance with.

Michelle flies home from school tonight for her friend’s wedding. There is serious celebration to be had.

(Ed. to add: that drug was Remicade, and I was put back on it 8 months later for awhile, then three years ago Humira, an improved variant.)

When our kids were little, a trip to Urgent Care or the ER meant a stop at Rick’s Rather Rich on the way home for some of my husband’s patented Emergency Room Medicine, daddy style: made-on-the-premises ice cream, a special treat. There’s a wooden placard inside the little shop declaring, “Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first.”

A million miles from Rick’s, our child with ITP ended up in emergency a few days ago.

And a friend there, having no idea we used to do that…showed up later in the day with ice cream to try to make things a little better.

(Ed. to add: my forever thanks to all those who can donate blood and do. You’re a life saver.)

I emailed that pharmacy last night and we went over first thing. They did still have Richard’s med and the pharmacist told us I was supposed to have been asked to verify the birthdate.

And then she looked and went, “Oh–but even the birthdate is very similar!” I was watching the clerk’s face yesterday and I didn’t hear or see it and I don’t think they did ask, but if they did, Richard pointed out, my hearing was an issue.

She very carefully marked both patient files so that staff would know next time. She thanked us for coming back and was about to send us on our way when I stopped her with, “Wait a minute–when they rang me up yesterday, I asked them, ‘Are you sure?’ I was thinking, that’s not enough, is it?”

And then I looked at the new bottle in my hand and told her how much we still owed her.

She thanked me yet again and told us again, as that got rung up, how glad she was that we’d come in. I imagine so.

But she really wanted to ask questions the moment Richard mentioned my hearing, and that delay seemed to have broken the ice for her: did I have any experience with Meniere’s? Yes I did. With rotational vertigo?  Yes, years ago.  Any other cause…? Yes.  Clearly she wanted to talk to someone else who knew what it was like to go through those kinds of symptoms; Richard gave her a twirling-room description with arms flailing that had her laughing.

And clearly she wanted to meet someone else about her own age who already wore hearing aids to reassure herself it would be okay to start considering them.

You know that I feel that if you need help hearing, get tested and get the help; it’s easier to start younger than older to retrain the brain to pick out voices from a crowd and sounds out of noise again. And it’s so much better just to be able to understand why things sound the way they do–you lose your high frequencies first so you lose the consonants but not the vowels.  Making no sense of speech makes sense once you know. So fix it.

I wonder if the other person mixing those bottles up was all part of a Plan unseen to help get her where she needs to be. Curious.

Picked up the hubby’s new prescription at the drug store. He got home, looked at it, did a doubletake and went, wait–that’s not the… then he read the super-fine print I hadn’t even seen.

Written in the very tiniest letters used only for that, there it was: wrong home address. Right name, wrong person, wrong med. And of course the place was closed by now. Who knows if the other guy came in too? If he did, he didn’t notice in time for the pharmacy to call us; I really hope he reads his prescription bottle and doesn’t just take something that may be very wrong for him. Egads.

Puts a new twist on the old Sandra Boynton birthday card: HIIPA birdies, two you’s.

Meantime, I finally got that hat mailed today and took pictures of it with my new Iphone. I love that the phone offers instructions as you go when it’s new, and I wonder if it keeps doing that after you’ve gone through those steps a few times?

(Totally stole that title from a comment by Becca’s husband.)

I’ve been hoping I can get over my cold fast enough to get to Jasmin’s baby shower this Saturday; her baby, long nicknamed Sharkbean in utero, was expected Jan. 25th.

I saw a FB note from my friend Becca, (side note to some friends: she used to live in our ward, yes, that Becca), that her doctor had told her this morning she was in early labor and to get to the hospital. Becca made a side trip to make sure her kids would be picked up from school, was coming down the freeway in the fast lane, and…

…blew a tire. Called AAA. Yeah, we’ll have someone out there in about an hour. Wait: you’re what?! “They called everybody,” and so Becca posted a picture of a handsome young fireman peering in her car window, who, she said, was very happy not to be delivering her baby.

She posted updates all day, laughing over outrageous name ideas, and while she was…

…Jasmin posted. Totally scooped her. At 4:07, her baby girl had arrived, safe and sound and beautiful!

Wait, what? That one’s not due yet!

Becca posted how labor isn’t boring anymore, she and her husband were watching a movie, waiting for the kid to get on with it. And then finally, at 9:32, another beautiful baby girl arrived into the world.

Back when I was at that stage, I had an obstetrician with a poster of a newborn with the caption, “A baby is God’s opinion that the world shall go on.”

The whole world is reborn in the face of a child. But don’t be surprised if she likes to play with toy firetrucks next Christmas. Or thinks she can grow little toothy fishes from the proverbial bean sprouting out of a filled dixie cup.

Welcome to the world, little sisters.

Richard said, reasonably enough, that I shouldn’t buy a phone I haven’t tried to actually hear on.

And so John and I went to the local Verizon store. The manager set up an Iphone 4S at full volume and I called home.

Standing in a noisy room full of people, I heard every word. It helped that I was talking to my husband and knew his voice well, but still–had it been my current phone, I would not have been able to make out a thing, even in speakerphone mode. Wow. Sold.

The manager came back over and chatted us up a bit. Can you turn Siri up louder too? No, he was sorry, you could not. John mentioned that we were going to buy online and the guy said that unless something said internet exclusive, he could match anything there. Double data on the droids? Sure.

Hey. We went home and grabbed Richard.

The process took hours, it was crazy, but it’s done. (Well, almost, the Iphones were on backorder and will be mailed.)

Annnnnd… There being rung up too and waiting for the system to do its belabored thing was a dad with a toddler being very well behaved but very bored at the very long process.

Lo and behold: a hand sanitizer dispenser to my left–thank you Verizon!–before I reached into my purse and found, you guessed it, a little banana-chomping monkey handknit finger puppet to entertain the little boy with and his older sister who suddenly appeared next to her daddy when there was something interesting to investigate. Sharing commenced and they were actually happy about it.

The dad went from tired to glowing. It was worth going in just to see that.

Felt fine yesterday afternoon, by dinner, not so much, by bedtime, definitely sick; slept dark to day to dark.

It was dark already. The doorbell rang. Three boxes: a Kringle with “A gift for you” printed on the outside, another with a return address of Mrs. Fields cookies, and a plain brown To Be Discovered.

No UPS truck, rather, the Christmastime UPS bicycle brigade, a great few-days’ job for kids on winter break, and the young man already back to his bike called out to me from the dark, Season’s Greetings! Have a happy one!

Thank you! You too!

And another project got finished today too and is blocking. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good knit. (Um, all? I’d better, like, *really* hurry up…)

I’m picturing those bicycles rigged up as knitting machines cranking out as you pedal, creating tall socks ballooning behind them to alert drivers like the flags on those baby carriers. I gotta get me one of those. Hey, Santa? I want one. In Rube red and Gold-berg.

Took a nap today, puttered around the kitchen, walked into the family room at last to see, perched at most 15 feet away, a Cooper’s hawk–I think the female–looking at me in as much astonishment as I was looking at it: I didn’t expect *you* here! It considered my presence a moment and then in no particular hurry spread those beautiful 31″ wings wide, flared her long striped tail in the now-familiar circle, and she was off.

One of the first things Michelle asked when the kids got home last night was whether a certain package had arrived; it had. I picked it up to show her and said to Richard, “Looks familiar, doesn’t it?”

To which my daughter reminded me of a certain earlier Christmas where I’d told her of a favorite yarn, and a familiar-looking package had arrived: I opened it, I pulled out this lovely yarn, I knitted up half a ball’s worth of it and then suddenly realized, wait–I didn’t order this color, did I? (Checking name on box.) Oh my goodness.

And so I’d stuffed it needles and all back in the box, wrapped the box, and threw it under the tree tagged from Michelle to me. There. I wrapped it for you.

Needle deprivation. That’ll teach me.

Today was the true spirit of holiday rush.

Remember that four-year 29% bone loss? (Yeah, steroid meds are fun.) I was scheduled to have my first yearly IV infusion of an osteoporosis drug this afternoon. They needed a morning sample from the lab beforehand, preferably same-day.

At the lab, I asked, wasn’t there supposed to be a blood draw too?

With the place packed and signs pleading for patience saying that they had a new computer system in place and it would likely take a few weeks for everyone to get up to speed with it, they looked me up and assured me no.

Well okay then. I stopped by the house afterwards and then I was going to the annual lupus group luncheon. I look forward to it all year. There are old friends who turn out for it that I never get to see otherwise, and I’ve missed it too many times from having germs–you do not bring contagion to an immuno-compromised group. I had RSVP’d, I was germ-free, and I was good to go.

The phone rang as I was walking for the door. The doctor’s office: I was indeed supposed to have had blood drawn, and it had to be at least an hour, preferably two before that IV, the sooner the better.

I. Am. Going. To. My. Luncheon. And I did: and our group got seated at the door, which kept being left open and I kept getting up and shutting it. Lupus. Sun.  Come on, folks, you know what group is here.

The manager, bless her, said to me that the whole restaurant was reserved and everybody was here and then she locked the door! And put a chair in front of it to try to get people from the other group to go out the far one or at least notice that a message was being conveyed. Go her!

I probably shouldn’t have ordered at all. My soup arrived, a little too hot to eat yet, less than five minutes before I really really had to bag it up and leave (but it was so good). We were supposed to be rung up as a group; they let me pay and go, glad to be able to help. Good folks there at Allied Arts.

But I was stressed out enough to trigger my cardiac cough. Back to the lab. Back home.

This IV was all something new and they told me I would feel like the flu for several days afterwards, maybe even a week. I had no idea how I would react. Richard wanted to come with me to be a support and just in case I wasn’t up to driving home, bless him. I offered him half my soup, still warm.

We arrived at the oncology clinic. The nurse clearly was used to people who weren’t used to IVs, and apologized at blowing a vein on the first try: my blood pressure was so low, it was hard to find a good enough one.

Eh. I knew there’s a world of difference between that and a vein that collapses after a couple days’ use in the hospital and screams at the saline they have to push through it; this was nothing, absolutely nothing. I assured her it was okay, and it took a few tries before she believed me that it really didn’t bother me, none of this stuff did.

Dem bones dem bones dem dry bones. An hour of sitting and quietly reading with no pressures to get anything else done in the moment. Enjoying the quiet.

I’m just glad there’s something they can do!

(It’s still the 13th here, my blog timestamp is off an hour.)

As Richard hung up my coat at Flea Street Cafe for the birthday dinner, the maitre d’ exclaimed to me, Ooh! I love your necklace!

Yesterday’s silver beaded chain? Today I got to wear an alpaca beaded version. Picture a Saint Bernard with the proverbial cask: I now come equipped with emergency yarn around my neck. Not that I would ever think of taking these soft jewels apart, but still. It is so me. So perfect.

My doorbell rang this afternoon during the few moments I was actually home between errands: Andrea, bearing gifts and totally surprising me. Inside her two bags were thistle seed and a hanger for them for my finches, and this hand-crocheted Fair Trade alpaca necklace from Bolivia.

Wow. Coooooool! Thank you! And like I say, the lady at Flea exclaimed the moment she saw it, just like I did.

Moments after we walked in the door home again from there, the phone rang: our son Richard and his wife Kim, wanting to set up a Skype chat.

And so we got to wave hi and play almost-patty-cake via the cams with our little grandson. Parker, I am here to assure you, is as cute as ever.

We adjusted our camera a moment to be in a more direct eye-to-eye line with him rather than offsides, and then I seem to have waved hi just the right way: Parker got the biggest smile waving back, got all excited about it and turned and RAN TO HIS MOMMY. Three steps.

Wait. Did we just see what it looked like we just saw?!

While my son was going, Wow! He’s never done that before! We’ve never seen him do that before!

First steps. For delight at his Grammy on her birthday, to the safe reassurance of his Mommy. Does it get more perfect than that?

(Day two: quite good. Yay!)

I was at our clinic today, paying my December bill in person because I needed a receipt for it. I knew that meant I would have to wait; I came with yarn.  I set down my cane and my purse and then the admin lady smiled as my needles came out.

I sat next to a desk, and attached to that desk was a pen connected by a long chain of tiny silver balls to a black plastic base.

The previous person at my seat had painstakingly, perfectly wrapped that chain around and around and a few more times around, so that it sparkled in a circle at the base as if it were a small Christmas tree skirt. Horizontal tinsel.

I was charmed. The woman there was delighted that I’d noticed it too and told me about it. I wondered how long it had taken that person to get it set just so–and I didn’t want to mess it up, but when I needed a pen mine weren’t easy to find and the woman smiled again and assured me it was okay to go ahead and use that one. (I did try to redo the little desk sculpture but it was clearly going to take me a long time and I didn’t want to get in the way of her work.)

From wrapped to scattered in an instant.

I spent the evening with tape and colored paper to try to get some presents ready to go out of here, and soon. Some people do incredible jobs of present-ing a gift just so; for me, I can only hope that they’ll be charmed that I tried.

This is the first Christmas that we have a grandchild who will be old enough to open his own toys: things that wobble, things that go ’round. And you know that means there needs to be a good plain box, too, because those are always the best.

Part One.

I had no idea what the place was going to be like or even quite where it was going to be. Which was okay, I was going to be the passenger.

My friend Nina was taking part in a small–very small, as it turned out–holiday craft fair in Sky Londa today, immediately down the hill from Alice’s Restaurant.

Phyl was sure it was going to be held indoors and safe for my lupus, and it’s always good to see Nina, so up twisty Highway 84 we went.

Well, there were doors, that much turned out to be true: a stand-alone room of a building with the doors wide open and most of the crafty goings-on out in the fresh air, with Christmas trees over to the side being picked out and bundled onto cars, attracting people driving by to or from the coast. Come.  You see all these trees all around? Bring one home with you, pine-sized. Buy a handknit woolly scarf while you choose in the chill.

The sky was a dense fog, the ear-popping elevation not limited to the tops of the redwoods. I had on two layers of sweaters, wool knee socks, and a good wool hat. Nina was cold in a down jacket and thick hat and I realized that my heating-impaired house had gotten me more used to colder weather than I’d realized. (One site says it was 46F there today, one, a bit more.)

Checking the blog, it was Wednesday that that skein of Malabrigo Rios jumped onto my needles for no reason I knew of and just absolutely demanded that I knit it into a hat, and fast. NOW. And there seemed to be only one stitch pattern for it. That was that.

It wasn’t for my Christmas knitting queue, either. Don’t ask me how I knew that, but it just felt obvious all of its own. Well, huh.

So it got made. I knit it into the pattern that surrounds this blog, except done with yarnovers to make fern lace. I ran the ends in to finish it this morning right before Phyllis came to pick me up; whoever it was going to be for wouldn’t mind if I wore it just this one day, would they?

Ferns grow freely among the redwoods, the fronds echoing the green needles above; the Azules colorway echoed the California coastal sky, bright blue and foggy mixed together. With a touch of green. The ferns.

There was a seat just behind the window next to the door. After admiring Nina’s knitting for sale and visiting with a few friends, (side note for them: my brother Bryan’s Jeppson Guitars is here) I sat down there, figuring the glass would give me a little bit of UV protection on one side at least, pulled some yarn out from my purse, and started another hat while listening to a singer with his guitar who was seated in that room too and whose sound had drawn me in there in the first place.

I tell you, he was good. I looked around for signs of CDs I could write a check for but saw none.

Another man had told me there would be four musicians together later, and I’m quite sorry to have missed that but I can only be outside so much. But while I could be there, the one playing then, I could have listened to forever.

Yarn winding in time around wood as he played helped keep me warm.

I (in my sun worries) thought we were there about an hour and a half; Phyllis later guessed about 45 minutes. Judging by rows finished, she’s probably right. She came to me to say she was done just as I was finishing up a needle; okay, cool–and just as the musician finished his song and said what he was going to be playing next.

He had a blue canister with the word TIPS painted prominently in bright yellow.

I was standing up to go but turned to him instead, glad that I could say something without interrupting–the timing had come out perfect. I said very briefly I had no cash with me (much though I wished) and major home repairs waiting. But this I could do: Malabrigo. Some of the finest wool in the world. I had just knitted this (and I took off my hat). I had made it up as I’d gone along, and it is a woman’s, but I was sure he could find someone to give it to; “I want to throw my hat in the ring” to thank him for his music, and with that I put it in his tip jar.

The new warmth in his smile was like no one else’s.

Part two.

We were pulling out when I went, “The honey!”

“Oh, right,” answered Phyl, offering to let silly me pay her back later (I did) and she pulled off to the left to where someone was selling local honey across the side street.

He had blackberry! My favorite! I told the man I couldn’t go to the Kings Mountain Art Fair anymore where I used to buy it; too much sun time.

He asked if I were sensitive to the sun?

Turns out he and his doctor have discussed whether he had lupus on his arm. He seemed grateful to be able to say that to someone who knew what the word meant.

I explained there were two types, skin only and systemic. If he has it there, don’t let the word scare you.

He told me as we left, “You take care of yourself.”

“You too.” And I assured him that systemic notwithstanding, I’d had it twenty+ years; I’m doing fine.  He was visibly comforted.

Part three.

Costco run. I grabbed my piano hat on our way out the door. If I was able to stay warm enough on that mountain I didn’t need more than a hat thrown on down here too, right?

There was a woman in the store’s motorized wheelchair wearing a set-up that I recognized from when my son had knee surgery: her leg looked tinker-toyed. She was offered a sample of smoked salmon and wanted to buy some, but it turned out to be set on a shelf high above her head and the person giving the stuff out was too swamped with customers to notice.

But I did. “Do you want me to reach that for you?”

“Oh, yes, please! If you would.”

Now, I have spent my time needing that chair before. I know that people in wheelchairs like to browse too: like not just having help getting something down, but also like not being forced to buy it or stash it in the wrong place after looking it over simply because there is no physical way to get it back up high again, the helpful person by then long gone.

So I hung around the salmon a moment, just in case, thinking, browse away, hon.

She asked me if I were a pianist?

(I didn’t say, not like my concert-pianist grandmother nor my organ-performance-minor son, but) “Yes.”

She was too! She LOVED my hat! Wait–I’d *made* it?!

Hey (bring on the brag). I’d designed it.

I showed her the inside: how I’d wrapped the yarn across the backs of every single stitch so it wouldn’t have long lengths to snag on things. But that had made it so the black shows through the white keys a bit across the front, and for later hats, I’d gone with the long lengths. (The floats, to a knitter.)

I did offer to put the salmon back up if by chance she needed that. She loved that someone understood how it was to be seated.

However long later, Richard turned back to get one last thing for me and then we headed to the checkout. With him at the cart, he picked a line.

Which turned out to be next to that woman. Her young sons had joined her by then, one quite small, one maybe six or seven. I knew it couldn’t be easy to have Mom having a hard time getting around for awhile, especially if that’s a change.

I said a quick inner prayer, wondering. In response I felt this: could I re-create the hat? Sure, in a day, two, tops. Could I re-create this moment? Not on your life. And so while she was turned the other way I whipped my hat off my head, stepped over and tucked it into her cart just as she turned back.

She was stunned. “NO!” in disbelief. A delighted butbutbut.

May I?

She shook her head in how can I let you and joy and are you sure. Yes I’m sure.

She exclaimed some more and her older boy admired it and put it on his head. She told me he played violin.

“I don’t know how to knit a violin yet,” I laughed. (Thinking, but just wait…)

Her husband joined them right about then and the next thing I saw, all of them were laughing and happy, and then the older couple behind them in line were happy for them and admiring their hat and loving being at Costco right there right then.

I had been exposed to enough UV earlier to burn my cheeks and wonder what my T- (ed. to add, and B-) cells would do next. But as I once told my friend Scott, “Sometimes you just have to LIVE!”  I was hoping the Decembery conditions would be enough in my favor, but it was a risk and I knew it and I weighed it and I took it. Maybe, hopefully, I’ll be fine. Some things are worth what you pay for them. It was a day well spent.

But that very awareness pushed me to choose not to be selfish but to grab the moment given me to make that family happy.

As that musician had made me happy by the depth of that smile that had lit up his whole countenance. He, too, had played his part to help make it happen for them.

We all arrived of our own choices where we were supposed to be.