We were enjoying some old rock classics after dinner; I was finishing off the last of the blue on the afghan, there was the occasional comment back and forth, we were enjoying each other’s company on this fine spring evening.

And then Black Magic Woman came on.

That one always, always, I said, takes me back to that guy at the Stanford clinic in Redwood City.

He raised an eyebrow in question.

I was working on Mathias’s baby afghan, I told him, the one in the pattern with circles surrounded by contrasting colors and then more contrast at each edge: all those balls of yarn hanging down. I was well into it and it covered my feet. You were having some testing done that was going to take a long enough time for me to declare that one a portable project for the day because I really wanted to get it finished.

Just before you came out there was a guy being wheeled past me by a couple of family members and he had them stop a moment. Right in front of me.

He made a point of looking, really looking, over the expanse of afghan, the needles in my hands, and then up to my eyes, which he held in his for several heartbeats.

And then again with slow deliberate motion to make sure I understood how he much he meant this, he raised his whole arm in an emphatic thumbs-up with an exclamation point at the end, nodding.

Then he glanced over his shoulder at his family affirming that it was okay to move on now and they did.

It was one of the great compliments of my knitting life and I will never forget it.

And the guy was, if not actually, then a dead ringer for Carlos Santana.

Richard considered that a moment.

“Well he does live around here.”