We got the unwanted message: Commuknity in San Jose was closing. As in, really closing: their space would be available Jan. 1.
They had been waiting over a month for me to pick up two of my shawls they’d had for a show, and they’re further away than I had been able to muster the energy to drive to and I just hadn’t done it yet. But I knew they needed to have one less thing to worry about and to have to keep track of under the circumstances. So.
Richard took me down there today; I needed to be up to it, so that was that and we simply went. Gail and Tom, the owners, happened to be right at the inner doors at the moment we walked in the outer ones (there’s a little alcove between), and greeted us with much emotion. Gail said, “I’ll go get your shawls” before I even said anything, allowing me to plop gratefully into a chair in the alcove.   I looked at the very long line of buyers and knew I could never make it that long, much though I would have loved to have given one last show of support to my friends, and when someone walked in the outer door, stopped, and coughed right at me, having utterly no idea what she had just done, that sealed that. No way. Too risky. I had to get out of that exposure.
But not before Gail and I threw our arms around each other with her worrying about me and me sorry she was losing her yarn shop they’d poured heart and soul into. It had been a well-named store. Crum.
We were driving back up the freeway heading for home and Richard was saying how, chemo and Crohn’s flare or not, he felt cabin fever would get to me and that he needed to take me places at least on weekends till I was back to getting out and about on my own. I told him I was wanting to knit a hat, and that after four years of knitting shawls and using lace and fingering weight and baby alpaca, I just didn’t have wool in worsted weight in the colors and softness I wanted. And, I added–that’s the exit to Purlescence, by the way. He swung immediately over to the offramp and to Purlescence we went.
Where nobody was sick. Where we happened to catch the place at an unusually quiet moment. Where my friend Mary happened to come in just then in need of a hug, and Kevin and Sandi got one too for good measure and Kay helped me find the superwash Cascade.
Where I supported my local yarn store, and there will now indeed be a hat.