The other thing I did yesterday was to go to the Social Security office.

I officially changed to my married name with them years ago but the IRS never got the memo. Social Security always had it right, at least, and I no longer had to worry about the state refusing to cash the check for my driver’s license renewal. (Checks. Boy that *was* awhile ago.)

It finally tripped me up again. The Boomerbenefits.com person told me the only thing for it was to take my documents back to their office and walk it through.

The Social Security people told me to take the taxes under my full name problem to the IRS office, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Given Jean’s funeral, I went in the afternoon, a little afraid they would close promptly at 4 and kick everybody out who was still waiting. My previous experience had been back when W Bush signed the Patriot Act and messed over millions of women over how official their married names were or not: the databases had to match.

It was hours and hours in a building and part of that town I’d never want to be in again among people who really didn’t want to be there nor work there.

This was closer and much nicer–nothing fancier than a good paint job and decent flooring and no dirt, but what a difference that made, and they were much more efficient. And actively helpful.

But since I didn’t have an appointment there was still about a 75 minute wait. I pulled out my purple cowl project.

A woman about my age (I can just see her smiling on reading that) walked in, saw how closely placed the connected chairs were, saw that there were only a few individual seats here and there but it was all definitely going to be too close to strangers, and hesitated and nearly walked out.

I smiled, “I don’t bite,” and she chuckled, looked relieved, and sat down next to me.

We made friends on the spot.

Turns out she’d always wanted to knit or crochet. She had even bought a crochet kit for–I think she said a sweater project?–and she’d tried a few times to teach herself how to do it, but it seemed too much to master all at once and it had sat there for years.

I told her, sometimes you need to simply start with something else, maybe something smaller, and then come back to it.

She looked at me. And the small, make-time-useful portable project in my hands. Yes. Yes, that made a lot of sense, thanks.

Eventually they called my number, they called her number, and that was that.

I walked out of there regretting that I hadn’t offered her my name or email so that she could ask any questions or get help getting started; it was the crocheting that had stopped me from offering, it’s been so long I’d be looking at YouTube videos myself.

On thinking about it later I realized the difference would be that I only need to refresh the memory on what term goes with what and the rest would come right back to me.

I did mention to her that I’d found knitting easier on the hands.

The SS office’s website had warned that there was very little parking but I’d pulled in going, Four spaces?! There are only four spaces?! How does that work!

Turns out the rest of them were on the far side of the building, y’know, where I ended up finding the front door, too. Oh.

And so as I was wishing I could ever see her again, walking along the outside of what I now knew to be Windows 5-12 inside, a small red car about the age of my Prius slowed down.

And there she was, waving hello, glad to see me again, too. My face totally lit up and so did hers.

I really hope she gets her sweater and her new skills she’s long dreamed of. I think the chances just went way up.