Summer ten years ago, dear friends of ours were moving to another state and I didn’t get to do nor attend any proper goodbyes because I was in the hospital.

Their daughter Brynne, in middle school at the time, folded this beautiful little orange paper crane by way of a get-well card in the midst of their own upheaval of packing and change, preparing to leave her own friends behind as well as her parents’. Letting me know I was not forgotten at a time when that made all the difference.

I was very touched. I still have it–there it is.

One of those blink moments where you go, wait, how long, wow, it has been: a letter in the mail. It was Brynne and her fiance’s wedding announcement, set within a beautiful little paper doily folded just so.

Only, this time I can do something creative in return.

The best thing, by far, that I have ever read on the subject of Paula Deen is this essay, ending with an invitation to her to come cook and bake and break bread with the author. Powerful in his forgiving, his empathy, and in the opportunity he offers her. The point of my mentioning this is not Paula Deen: it is in the wisdom and the words of the wonderful human being that is Michael Twitty.

And more locally:

Last October I loaned a friend a skirt for part of her Halloween costume. It was a tall size Talbots, silk, bought off Ebay for a buck plus shipping charges that were no more than a gallon of gas–it seemed worth the risk at the time, though the color was a guess from the poor photo; I could always change that part anyway.

Vivid orangey red is the exact light frequency that sets off my head injury the most and tosses my flimsy balance away. Yow! But it was long, flattering. Elegant.

Emily absolutely loved it. She’s tall, she loved the color, it fit her perfectly, for her it was perfect, and so when she came to bring it back I offered her to keep it.

No no, it’s yours, and she refused, delighted by the gesture, though.

As I mentioned yesterday, I was cleaning up in preparation for our houseguests. They’ll be here after seeing Yosemite–I don’t think my brother’s been in California since the summer I was 10 and he turned 12–and somehow I came across that forgotten skirt. And so I found myself looking at it yesterday morning and thinking of Emily.

Well, I did already try to give it to her, time to finally go put it in that dyepot and darken the color.  A lot. No sense in having it go unworn. The lining is polyester and will likely stay what it is and resist the protein-fibers-specific Jacquard bath, but that’s okay. Seems a shame to risk it, though–it’s harder to dye finished clothes evenly than it is yarn.

But no sense in wasting it, either. I started to pick it up to start the pre-soak.

Something felt so strongly, no, that, no, and I put it back down. Huh. I looked at it again and thought of her and how much she’d loved it, and at last left it spread out on the ironing board ready to steam press or dunk but doing nothing yet.

I found myself thinking of her all day as I passed in and out of the laundry room with the neon-bright skirt front and center. The skirt was secondary; Emily seemed uppermost in my thoughts.

There was an email that came in last night.

Emily’s husband was out of town. She thought she smelled smoke. They think it was her water heater, but whatever it was it became a two-alarm fire that also damaged the apartment above her.  She and her baby got out and nobody was hurt but she was evacuated from her home.

Many, many friends responded to the mass email and helped her get her family’s belongings, what remained of them, into a storage container because I guess it all had to go. Now. Richard, who has done Red Cross volunteer work responding to house fires, says that typically it takes weeks for the fire officials to investigate causes of unknown origin–you don’t want the next apartment over doing the exact same thing shortly after, you want to find and verify and fix. And then there’s the wait for the repair work to be done before you can move back in. It can take months.

I was absolutely wiped after cleaning out the yarn room, and with that recent Crohn’s growling, I did not dare push my body further in one day.

But what I could do was to offer a beautiful, bright, cheery skirt that I knew would fit her body and soul, something new rising from the ashes.

Don’t know if her computer burned… Haven’t heard back yet.

Whether she lets me give it to her or not is almost beside the point. When she most needed support by her side, before her friends knew, the Love in the universe was right there for her trying to get through my thick head. Emily. Emily needs you.

I interpreted it in a way that made sense to me at the time, but at least at the end of her terrible day she could know there was someone who’d been thinking of her constantly from about the time the whole thing started.

And if in the fire she lost the scarf I knit her awhile ago then I will go find some fabulous, soft yarn and it will be in bright orangey red.

My brother and his daughters are coming in two weeks. They are driving from Colorado. We shall tour the Aquarium with them. We can’t wait!

And it dawned on us tonight that that means the yarn room–you know, the one with all the projects for book one and the successes and rejects and hmm maybe I should improve on this ones let me think about its for my long-delayed second book idea, plus the yarns to go with, all of it has to be emptied and put somewhere else–and not in the other two bedrooms they’ll be staying in.

Oh goodness.

Not to mention the fact that a friend was desperate to get rid of her late grandmother’s hospital bed as she closed down her house for selling, and it happened to be between when a doctor sat me down and explained to me just what that scan showed, trying to prepare me for the news, and when the biopsies came back–and they were negative. By that time we’d already helped the friend out and taken the thing off her hands on the grounds that it looked like I was going to need such a thing.

And having not gotten rid of the old twin bed in the yarn room yet, we simply put it upside down on top, mechanics-side up. Where else you gonna put it?

I wondered if we should pass it along now that we didn’t need it and my husband thought bluntly that given the last ten years… Yeah, might as well keep it so we have it when we need it.

Or not. We could figure it out later, there was no hurry.

But in two weeks…

Which is why I was sorting socks. Makes sense, right?

(Edited to add: there is no basement. There is no attic. Not in this California Eichler.)

It had been awhile since a good Trader Joe’s run, and it was time to stock up on the honey mints that I reward myself for treadmill time with, bags of frozen fruit for making crisps with, organic sugar too, dark chocolate salted caramel peanut butter truffles. And ginger cookies, one of the few worth buying store-boughts over, don’t forget the ginger cookies.

No we won’t eat them all at once. I promise.

I got in the checkout line of a middle-aged clerk whose cheerful face I have enjoyed for a number of years.  She was being given a hug by a quite young fellow employee about to leave–the job, the area, her friends,  on to her new life, and I waited, not wanting to interrupt nor put any pressure on them.

Ah my. Back to work now. And the older woman turned to me, emotions close to the surface, and asked, It’s been awhile. How are you?

I’m fine, I smiled, and you?

Good, thanks–but no really: how’s your health? You doing okay?

I so was not expecting that. But instead of feeling intrusive, it felt like a tap on the shoulder reminding me how good I have it now, and I really meant it when I said thank you. To reassure her, I gestured towards the two bags she’d just filled and told her, “When life is good, you buy the fun foods,” and she laughed in relief–and at the truth in the thought.

———

And while I was typing that, a small finch hit the window and was laying on its back a few feet away from me–I thought at first dead, but no: its tail quivered.

A towhee, a gentle, bigger bird, reminded me in that moment of that clerk as it eyed me quickly to be on the safe side and then hopped down straightway from the box and it went directly to the finch’s side and sang–encouragement, to my surprise. It was not a bird that posed any danger to the injured one, but I did not expect it to matter to it that the little one was hurt. Clearly it did. Get up, get up, the hawk might see you.

Then the towhee flew away.

The finch pulled herself to upright and watched me for awhile. When I blinked, she blinked back. I kept my eyes shut longer to try to encourage her to rest. She did.

Good. Not blinded by the impact, then–that’s the biggest worry.

And when she was ready, sooner than I expected, she too flew (I saw that wing tucked partly across her earlier, I’d have thought it was broken, but no) and was off and away and okay.

We had a wonderful time at the lunch Thursday–but I would have given so much to have been able to stand outside in the bright summer sun afterwards and chat some more with Scott and his mom where the noise of the restaurant would have been a door behind us and he and I both could have heard better. There are moments where I highly regret my lupus. But it is what it is. And it was so joyful to see them. He sent us home with a collection of his photography, and he does such beautiful work. Alaska was well represented, and I hope someday to see some of it too–and I reminded him of the postcard he sent me from there when I was in the hospital the first time, of a sign warning no going beyond this point: bear danger.

A very large bear was leaning casually on the sign, all his world before his eyes.

We took Sam and her roommate Maria and Karen out to lunch yesterday as a final hurrah before the airport and then got home late last night, and on the first leg of the flight I sat next to someone who was clearly studying nursing.

Or maybe she was brushing up, but it’s always best to guess on the one side rather than the other, so when the plane landed and I could hear, I asked her if she were a nurse?

Oh, no, not yet, she said with a pleased smile, but she would be graduating in December.

Oh cool! I thanked her: “A nurse saved my life.” I told her I had been in the hospital with Crohn’s disease, I had had temporary diabetes on the IV steroids, and during a shift change a nurse I didn’t know had poked her head in the door in my room and gone, I don’t like the looks of you. She had checked my blood sugar: 32!  And falling.

Oh wow! said the young woman at that number.

I have heard from enough sources that it is hard in many workplaces to be a beginning nurse, and everyone has to start somewhere–so I wanted her to come into it knowing that the patients appreciate what she will do. I thanked her for going into nursing.

She was coming to see her dad…she hesitated…and her grandma for the last time. Her husband had told her to go, just go, and I could just picture a very young couple with no means really yet agonizing over the price of the plane ticket; she had flown from Columbus to San Diego via Baltimore, a long day but the cheapest flight. I chuckled; we were coming from Baltimore to San Jose via San Diego, same reason. A long day.

I told her we had flown in December to see my mother-in-law for the last time, that we’d had a wonderful visit and had been so glad we’d gone.

We had enough layover to grab a fruit smoothie from a vendor whose shop was right against the gate and get back on the next plane. I know, I know. But it is Richard and Kim’s anniversary this weekend so we will see them and Parker and Hudson next week, and our son John made the long drive home for this weekend because at the last minute some friends needed a fellow driver and back.

He is here now. We are home, too. Life is good.

Just a picture to show why Richard and his dad didn’t think they’d have to do anything more to the 50-year-old apple tree when they cut it down: surely the last bit would just rot away.

There’s a whole tree grown now above where they left it, balanced really well somehow over that gaping hole, and anybody familiar with what January ’09 was like for me while I tried to get used to that new number 50 on my hospital bracelet will understand why it so appeals to me that this tree that was expected to be gone grew  back to productive life: can you just see the darkened ballet shoe in the gap? Dance!

“In 2001, the Faustman Lab reversed type 1 diabetes in mice with end-stage disease, a project that is now in human clinical trials.” That really got my attention: there is so much research that never succeeds that far. They hope to expand their findings to other autoimmune diseases, lupus and Crohn’s specifically mentioned. Hey!

My cousin Heidi was diagnosed four years ago, out of the blue, with Type 1 diabetes, the autoimmune version of the disease, and her husband’s employer donated an Ipad Mini for her to raffle off towards raising funding for that lab. The link goes to her blog post about it. Heidi asks that people donate directly to the lab, no middleman on her part, three bucks per chance, you get the tax write-off, and then come tell her to be entered in the raffle (and to honor the legalities of it, there’s a no-money option).

And just for fun, in addition to changing the world for the better, someone gets that Mini. You can name it Cooper.

When we came home from Texas last weekend the phone line was dead again, only, this time the problem was inside somewhere.

It was getting old.

Richard stayed home this morning until he tracked it down to a problem in the jack in the kitchen; unplug the wall phone, boom, there you go, just in time. (Sing it, Paul!)

My little sister, 19 months younger than me and who was always almost catching up to me growing up, being just a year behind me at school and getting the same teachers, who (since she was the fifth kid) would say to her like they’d said to me, Oh, *another* Jeppson, called: “How does it feel to be an old fart?”

“Actually, I can’t fart anymore.” I grinned.

That stopped her a second. “I never thought of that!”

More Parker pictures from our trip.

Or not. Huh. Silly computer. Meantime, we’re home. And the phone rang today: I had finally made a hat, out of a strand of Cascade Venezia merino/silk and a strand of sheared mink laceweight, for a doctor whose caring had made a great difference to me three years ago in the hospital. That bit of a flare at the end of this summer nudged me to just go do what I’d so long wanted to do and say thank you; I would regret it–I had regretted it–if I didn’t, finally. And so it came to be.

I left it in an envelope with his receptionist last week with a note explaining why I’d made it: how his words then had said to me, Wow. You’re a survivor! And so I had been.

He called this afternoon. “It’s so soft!” And he’d so loved my note. His voice was full of wonder at it all.

But first he had to get through my thick head. I was hearing the tones but not the words… I’m sorry–(finally), Oh! Is this Dr. F?

Yes!

He said it again, and the second or third time I got it, and thanked him right back.

Got off the phone, wondering how on earth I had been that deaf on the phone…reached up to my left ear…and found that although I’d put that hearing aid in hours earlier, both of them…

I’d never turned the darn thing on all day.

But he was patient with me anyway. Like I say, he’s a good one.

I missed it the last two weeks with that flare going on. I got my blood test results back yesterday–1.9 on the neutrophils is what it was like when I was on chemo for six and a half years, what’s up with that? Going and being in a crowd was just not the wisest thing to do; things are settling down and the bleeding seems to have stopped and the cardiac cough that was bugging me is almost gone too, so, why would I want to risk revving up my autoimmunity by being exposed to anything?

Because it was knit night. And I missed my friends. And Pamela’s moving away soon.

Coming onto the main drag on my way out, there it was. A Cooper’s hawk, quite possibly my male Cooper’s hawk. On the phone wires running just this side of the train tracks, looking down on the road I was on.

And at that moment I felt like everything would somehow be okay.

It was a very good evening to be at Purlescence. (Hey, and if you want a really good lace shawls book *cough* they’ve got it.) I was so caught up in the drama of go/not go that I’d utterly forgotten that Pamela and Sandi had been working on repairing my spinning wheels. Pamela had wanted to learn how for the sake of when she will be far from the expertise of the shop.

One turned out to be ready for me to take home.

Years ago I found a friend-of-a-four-times-removed friend who had bought an Ashford Traveler spinning wheel. Cute little thing. As far as I could piece together, she put the drive band on too tight and couldn’t get the darn thing to spin worth beans. (She also had her roving separated not in lengthwise strips but short fat wads.) Maybe someone told her she couldn’t get a high enough ratio on so small a wheel to make those linen curtains she was dreaming of spinning and weaving?

So. She bought a second wheel, an Ashford Traditional. Uses the same bobbins. Got a distaff for the flax.

They sat in her garage for years till the day we found each other. She sold me everything: her wheels, a goodly stack of books, all her fiber, getitouttahere, $150.

Eighteen years later, my Trad has had a hard life. One kid tried to balance her Welch’s grape juice on it and  stained it a permanent purple puddle; another kid tripped over it and his teenage foot smashed the flyer. That was after the wheel had fallen out of the car and smashed the original flyer and maiden. I bought new parts, again, but after the second blow it was wobbly and a pain to to use–the uprights had a tendency to wiggle apart as I spun and the flyer would simply fall out.

The Trav fared a little better but it was always stiff and arthritic, whatever the drive band. If you pumped the treadle just as hard as you could and then let go, it would turn maybe seven cycles before stopping. I read an article in Spinoff years ago that said it should be closer to 100. As if!

And now the Trav is glorious. It’s scrubbed, repaired, lovely, it works and looks fabulous. They’re not quite done with the Trad, but give them a few days. (Don’t worry about that purple, guys, it’s part of its charm now.)

I can spin again. Do you hear me, life? I can spin my own yarn on my own working wheel again! Thank you Pamela and Sandi!

This morning:

Can you get in here right now to the lab and we’ll put a stat on it? And then appointment at 1:00.

Sure thing.

It didn’t really make sense to go home in between, turn around and come back, so I threw an extra 100g skein of yarn in my knitting bag just in case.

And so, after talking to various people on the phone all week, the GI doctor taking emergency calls today welcomed me in–with great apologies at the wait, and then another wait in the middle as she had to dash out to answer someone, but I told her, I’m just grateful you saw me, thank you!

But one of the first things she said when I got there was, Last time I saw you you were in the hospital!

And I said to her, Your baby’s three now?

She was very pleased that I remembered she had been pregnant. (Secret guilt here that I’d never knitted for her new little one.  I am going to make up for it now by knitting for her–not out of guilt but because I’ve always wanted to, and now I have an excuse again.)

We discussed. Not the stream of blood while changing the dressing but not gone either.  She tested: tender here and here, yes, but not really bad and I know really bad. Hmm. Tell you what, she said, I’ll put in a non-urgent request for a CT, and they’ll get you in in the next two weeks; if you don’t need it, cancel. If you need it a whole lot more than you do right now, call me and I’ll mark it urgent and they’ll get you right in.

I asked, and she said there was indeed a new med on the market since the Humira that might be a possibility if it turns out I need it.

There is?! YES!!! She told me the name and I said I’d go Google it; no, says she, I can get you more information than you can get by Googling, here, wait a second and I’ll go get it for you.

Came out of there with a plan and a knitting plan and happy anticipation at telling her thank you for the simple human comfort at being seen in all the ways I’d needed it. Life is good.

There. No question. No real surprise after the bellyaching of the last two weeks.

My gastroenterologist is on sabbatical till the end of the month. Of course. The new nurse I talked to–well, she tried. After I described the problem re diagnosis of blood hitting air and oxidizing, and this morning there being absolutely no question but it was difficult to gauge volume for that reason…she stopped me with, Did you have any rectal bleeding?

Let me explain to her again why I can never have that again in my life.

Let me explain the Crohn’s+lupus thing.

I’ve got a ton of knitting and writing to catch up on.

(Update Wednesday morning: I simply wasn’t home yesterday, with errands that had to be run, so I never did talk to the doctor; the same nurse called back this morning and totally got it. Today is enough better that we’re holding off on the barium x-ray for the moment.)

It’s Kings Mountain Art Fair weekend and I’d been looking forward to seeing Mel and Kris.

Only his name was on their artist list. It’s always been both their names, and I noticed that.

I got there just after four: enough time to visit before the 5:00 close (and after the crowds would have gone way down), hopefully not too much sun. It is amazing how deep and how everywhere the shade is in a redwood forest.

Mel exclaimed in delight when he looked up and saw me. I did too in surprise when I realized that was one of their now-grown sons with him: “OHMYGOODNESS! You aren’t little anymore!”

They laughed. His son glowed, just absolutely glowed, when I told him how beautiful their work is. I know he helps with their production and I’m glad he got to see the appreciation in person. And he remembered me! He wasn’t very old last time I saw him.

Kris wasn’t there.

Cancer last year–and they’re sure it’s totally beaten now, she’s okay, she’ll be here Monday.

!?! I’d had no idea. I just knew that I absolutely had to go to see them, no matter the sun, no matter anything. Monday, Crohn’s flare willing (it’s minor so far), I’ll be there.

Phyl and Lee wanted us to see their photos from their recent diving trip to Bali. We love Lee’s  underwater photography; we’d been looking forward to it.

And so they had us over tonight. (Again, yes.)

Walking in from the parking lot, there was something odd in that tree… I walked over the grass to it and looked up.

Some young child had thrown his yellow Tonka truck up in there.

It wasn’t that tall a tree. Canes can be handy sometimes, and I ducked out of the way as it came down and left it waiting at the trunk for its owner to find it in the morning (I hope!)

As we later thanked them for the evening, I reminded them that the last time we’d seen their fish pictures after one of their diving trips, I was in the hospital shortly after, totally tripping out on morphine with bright Indonesian fishyfish swimming through my hallucinations all night, keeping me entertained.

We laughed. And, let’s not.

Paying it forward on that little rose plant…

Richard gave me amaryllis bulbs back in December, and today, the first one was close to blooming: five blossoms showing, the color just beginning to come in.

We have a friend who is just one of the nicest people you could ever hope to meet, who was asking me questions about a year ago about Crohn’s disease; turned out she had just been given that diagnosis and was trying to take it all in. She’s a widow, about retirement age, a lot older than most people get it and with her beloved gone, it made me keenly aware of how lucky I am. I was I think the one person she knew who had it too.

We happen to know she loves amaryllises like I do. So I called and asked if we could drop by tonight.

A few minutes later, she was on the sidewalk with her small dog, watching us pull up.

She was so delighted. “What color is it?” as she held the pot. The streetlights weren’t telling.

“Pink and white, it’s an Appleblossom.”

“Oh, my favorite!”

That bulb was big enough there ought to be a second stalk showing up any time to continue the show. There is nothing like watching something grow as you care for it, and amaryllises do such a spectacular job of responding to a simple daily glass of water.

Happy Valentine’s!

And to Katy’s beloved late husband: that was for you, too. Your Katy is just the best. But you knew that.