Afghan and again

So much to say. I can’t do justice to any of it.

I want to say how my friend Lisa, 20 years ago, decided she and I should go visit John at Children’s, that we did once a week while he was in there and how we got to have the joy of watching him coming back.  How the day Highway 880 was on almost total shut-down from an accident, the one day John’s mother Nanci couldn’t get through–Lisa had previously been a cop in Hayward and knew all the back roads.  She and I got our visit in, not knowing his mom was still stuck back there on the freeway.  It helped her later to find out he hadn’t been left alone after all.

Our time and sense of purpose together during that is what deepened our friendship to where, when I was diagnosed with lupus a year later, she was willing to volunteer to take my preschoolers every morning so I could go do swim therapy. She asked if I would then watch hers while she worked out.  Tara’s Redwood Burl shawl story in my book?  We’re talking about that Lisa.

I want to say how stunned I was to sign today for a package from Canada and find another afghan!!! and then, not only that, it was not one but TWO afghans made from squares people had started knitting in January via a Ravelry group to try to wish me back to good health.  Thank you, everybody, and especially Anne for putting all of those together.  (And for chocolate!)  All the well wishes, and arriving on the day I saw my surgeon, whom I adore, for a follow-up… Wow. What can I say? Wow.  How could anyone be anything but well after that?

And it was kind of funny, because for a moment there when I gave my surgeon her black cashmere shawl as I’d waited so long to be able to do, it was almost as if she might protest something silly like I am not worthy!

And now here I sit feeling myself precisely in her shoes. Wow. What I haven’t said on the blog, is, I had that allergic reaction but also a staph infection on top of it and we’re still fighting it.  The afghans are a great comfort–this little bit of illness now is nothing.  I WILL get over this.

I’ve only begun to look at that Ravelry site. I want to savor it, I want to take it in, I want to soak up each post.  But for just this moment I can’t give it what it so much deserves, because I’ve got so much to do because I need to bake a cake and go to the grocery store and and and…

I want to say happy birthday to my Richard!  Maybe that’s why there were two afghans  in there?  Wow.  (You see? I can’t possibly do justice to all these subjects at once.)

And especially because.  (Wishing her amaryllises from afar.) Kay of Mason-Dixon Knitting just lost her husband after a brief illness, someone far too young to go.  (But. But. NO. *I* got better, so everybody else should too!)  I am so sorry for her loss and her children’s.

Love your dear ones.  Life is so terribly short sometimes.

And thank you all for loving me so dearly and so knitterly and so well.  I am utterly gobsmacked. Again.

So much to say…