Nay, kids are the jaybird’s

(Say that fast. Sorry, couldn’t resist the chance for a bad pun.)

Slipping back towards the bad old days: I made it through about a half hour at Purlescence last night. Someone brought in their dinner and I had to move quickly away before my stomach did violence to the surroundings from the smell of the food. My daughter, who’d dropped me off and gone to the nearby library, was hovering from a few blocks away and texted me that I probably wanted to go home now?

So I came home and collapsed. But not till I’d had a conversation with a fellow knitting Crohn’s patient about a new drug approved last month. There is? Really? Yay!

Hopefully, though, give this a few days and it’ll settle down on its own.

Meantime, Michelle had gone and looked up bluejays: they stay in pairs even when it’s not nesting season (I often see two) and they’re loud–until you get near their nest. Then they get quiet so as not to attract undue attention.

Oh goodness. And I’d had that thing squawk at me across the yard and finally get quiet near the apple tree after I flicked the hose towards it. I don’t think the water even reached it, but suddenly I wanted to go apologize to the baby birds. I will be the one who’s more respectful now (and curious as to where the nest is–I didn’t see it.)

To change the subject: when my husband and I got married, my parents were so happy and so glowing, you’d think they were the ones getting married! I saw the love mixed with the difference between being young and in love and middle-aged and in love, and told Richard I looked forward to the day when we too would have the time, experience, and maturity behind us like they had. I wanted to be them when I grew up.

And here, a generation later, I think we’ve done okay, and here we are looking at two of our own kids and their spouses with love and gratitude ourselves.

I didn’t take Jessie’s shawl to Purlescence. I figured it was too complicated to be an on-the-go project, especially when I was still at the stage of starting the main pattern and trying to keep track of the stitch count. After I got home, I picked it up and wondered if my fried brain could make sense of those jellyfish, Barbara Walker’s Showers pattern turned upside down.

And you know what? To my surprise, my laceknitting had become middle-aged. No angst, no worries, just do it. Why had I thought this was hard? Knowing which way to wrap the yarnover when the next stitch is a knit or purl is as natural now as breathing. Knowing what to do coming up to a double yarnover is like remembering that the green light means go. The purl through back loops of three stitches at once is a meandering knit along a beautiful country road.

I’ve always loved this pattern, and now we’re old friends, too.