Rescheduled twice till the original reason for it was history, I finally got in to see the neurologist today, six months after the fact. We’re still pretty new to each other.

I was knitting that blue cowl when he came in.

We talked about a bunch of stuff and then it was time to do an exam.

He had me try to stand on my toes. I managed not to fall on him but it was a near thing. He had me lift my toes to stand on my heels. Again the involuntary collapse.

He asked me to grab my cane and repeat both of those and with that extra tactility to tell my brain which direction the floor was in when parts of my feet had abandoned it I had no problem, it was as easy as sitting down.

An offhand remark: he wasn’t mansplaining, he was marveling when he just had to tell me that he’d found out that you can’t just knit something–quickly. That things like sweaters and blankets, they take a long time. A *long* time!

I chuckled. Yes. Yes, they do. I did not say, And you’ll get your turn, but I knew his appreciation had just shown me it was so.

He grabbed a pin from a tall box and poked it around. I could feel it in my hands and arms but more as a slight pressure than anything else. Legs and feet? Okay, that’s a prick point.

I discussed a little family history: (sorry for the repeats to those who’ve read these before.) My grandmother never had a headache in her life, she had no idea what it was like to have one. My cousin was born without the ability to feel pain–like the time he got hit by a car, walked home, told his brother, said he was tired and was going to go lie down, and the brother ratted him out to their nurse mom who rushed him to the hospital in time to save his life. I told him one of my kids wasn’t that bad, but definitely on that scale. And also got hit by a car as a kid and tried to shrug it off.

I had started out as normal myself but for years now my own ability has been impaired. I told him of the time my tall husband took off his undershirt, hit the overhead light, shattered it, ducked the falling glass and fell into the oak  hamper while I, still in bed, just heard the loud thump against the wall and leaped out to save him. Like I was going to pull him out of the hamper? I found myself running across broken glass.

And just sat down on the bed and laughed because we’re such a pair of klutzes–and because I knew that in five minutes I wouldn’t be able to feel the pain anymore. And I didn’t. This can be a bad thing, like during the heart attack and not calling 911 because, um, wasn’t it supposed to hurt, but at other times it can be quite handy. It’s like the bod says, Okay, listen up something’s wrong, okay now I told you–you go deal with it.

He (clearly fervently) wished he could offer his other patients a way to not hurt after five minutes and pronounced me as pretty fortunate for that. He’s right.

On my way out I found myself about to go past a quite elderly woman with a head covering I’d guess as Slavic as she was being pushed in a wheelchair, her face a blank. I was wearing my hand-embroidered, very traditional red and black on white vyshyvanka and the effect on her was instant: an energy that hadn’t been there a moment before as my shirt had her full attention and recognition, she looked up into my face in wonder and smiled. No words needed.

And I looked in her eyes and loved her too and smiled back.

I said to Richard later, not for the first time, And this is why I wear these. This is part of why I buy these.

Yes.

The beach is done, the seed-stitch hillside above it is done, the steps built into the hill are finally done and the first redwood has begun.

Once this thing is finished and washed, the yarn will bloom and fill out and the areas will all look more solid.

Meantime, Lillian celebrated turning three today with much enthusiasm. It’s fun to be big!

Next Tuesday, Amazon said. The box showed up today. Ask me if I mind.

Comes assembled, they said. But, it turns out, screw the knob on the drawer yourself, lady. Yeah, I think we can handle that. (Note the lack of application of said knob. That drawer came in handy already!)

I tested out the setup by talking with my mom while trying not to lean on its slight wobbliness, and we now know that my sister Carolyn’s name types out as Kill Christmas. You know, I can actually do that kind of word mangling better than it can but it’s trying.

Speaking of whom, she and her husband have been househunting online. A few days ago, she flew to see her grandkids in Ohio with a day trip to the town in New York where she’s been looking. On that very day the most perfect house for them went up for sale–and now it’s theirs. Great condition and reasonably priced, to top it off. And she got to see it in person. Because it was on the one day.

I can’t wait to see what she does with her new horse carriage in back. Would it kill Christmas if I asked her for a pony? Always wanted one when we were kids.

Nina got her peaches and dried apricots from Andy’s and I threw in some of his plums, too. The lady at his farm agreed with me that fruit straight off the tree was the perfect homecoming after time in the hospital.

My heart monitor came off and went in the mail per protocol.  So did a birthday present for Lillian, who is turning three whether her Grammy can fathom that number so soon or not.

Writing all this it suddenly struck me what it was that I didn’t do today and I didn’t even think of it till just now: I didn’t knit.

Wait, how did that happen?

About twenty years after she moved away, M-L was here at church today, catching up with old friends: she was on a trip that took her close enough to here that she couldn’t pass up the chance.

I cannot begin to say how much it meant to get to see her.

We laughed over memories of her twin toddlers being told to offer Oreos to my husband and those two adorable little boys sneaking around the corner, snarfing down the creme centers, putting the cookies back on the plate, and proudly offering up the soggy remains as if no one could possibly ever catch on.

Her husband was the one who, during the flood of ’96, opened his front door to see if any water was backing up, just time to see their koi from their backyard pond swimming past his feet. Brad loved to tell that story.

He was also the first person in the county they’d moved to to contract covid, when even the tests for it were new. The first one there to survive the ventilator. He wrote a rare-for-him Facebook post that day of his intense love for his family, his gratitude to all who’d taken care of him, his plans to hike in Finland with his family the next year where his wife’s mother was from. He was going to go to rehab to build his strength back up and then at long last, home!

He stood up at the side of the bed–and was suddenly gone. This was before they knew covid causes blood clots.

I’ve long kept in touch with M-L, but to get to see her and share in person the love and the support and the grief and the pride in her now-grown kids and mine just meant so much.

We got home. I had an email waiting. Richard made a phone call and was out the door but told me not to come and not to be exposed. Were visitors allowed? As he explained afterwards, Part of being visiting clergy is an inability to read when you need not to.

And so he in his K95 mask got to visit our friend Nina, who is in the hospital with meningitis, and to be there for her husband, who knew Richard would know what this is like.

I tried to keep her company before and after by email while trying not to wear her out. I know how responding to even the most appreciated message or in-person visit can wear out a sick body even while reviving one’s spirit.

She is delighted at my new phone gadgetry and could I call her on it, she asked.

Today? Or would tomorrow be better, I asked.

Tomorrow.

I told her I’m looking forward to it.

If you take the Post’s recipe and use a bit less sugar and a tablespoon less butter and add in an egg, then it’s totally a health food, right?

(I added too many blueberries because I had them so I was going to use them, it overflowed, and Richard walked in the door saying, You’re burning something, with me responding, It did at the beginning but don’t open that oven yet.)

I’m typing this to remind myself to scrape that out of there after it cools and before the next time I set the oven to preheat.

I got to hand deliver the red afghan to our niece today, who was thrilled. Her six-month-old daughter grabbed it, as babies do, and it was soft. Hey. She liked this. She held onto it and pumping her arms up and down tested what this new thing was like. Tasty, too!

We got to catch up a bit with Richard’s sister the new grandma out here for a visit.

Some days just leave a smile that you know is going to stay with you a good long time.

All that time of feeling like, hurry. Hurry. No, seriously, hurry! This needs to be done. This needs to be ready. This one. L&A’s can wait.

I was telling Richard on Saturday about that and how it felt like such a relief that it was done in–somehow in time, whoever it was supposed to be for.

His sister called Sunday. Her son had just moved to San Francisco with his wife and baby and she was flying out to help and to play grandma for the week; she would be there Tuesday.

Today.

She and her siblings are all quite allergic to wool so I thought, it would be nice, but it wasn’t realistic to hope for. And I knew if I asked, and they were, then I’d have to make not only a third baby afghan but a non-wool one for his sister, too, who also just had a baby. Right?

(Shading from the trees vs the sunset in this photo.)

Worse things have happened in my life than needing to knit for someone, c’mon.

Deadlines are wonderful things. I finally blocked this–I mean, I love the 3-D effect too but I wouldn’t want anyone to ever feel like they’d ruined it the moment water hit it–and then texted the nephew: Are you guys allergic to wool?

Answer: No.

Me (wanting to yell YAY!) Is red a good color?

Answer: One of the best. Grin.

Me: Machine washable, too.

Answer: If only babies were.

(Me: I’ll catch up with his sister later.)

I spent too much time in the sun yesterday dealing with the contractor when he needed my attention, and my lupus let me have it last night. It is summer, UV levels are high, and I’m super reactive to it. I debated going to the ER in the middle of the night and would have but I wasn’t sure enough that I needed to, and eighteen years of having it suggested that my symptoms were all in my head before the right doctor knew right away what I had to this day leaves me needing to be sure I don’t cry wolf in their eyes. There will always be a time when it’s worse. Save it for then.

The only way that way of thinking has served me well is in the doctors who know me knowing I don’t complain. And if I do…

My body kept forgetting to breathe on its own. It could if I made it, it just didn’t want to bother. This is how, twenty years ago, I ended up in a tilt table test in the hospital to stress my autonomic nervous system to see if the lupus was attacking it. 63/21 blood pressure/40 heart when they stopped it (it may have gone lower but that’s the last I remember) and alarms clanging and people running down the hall and bursting into the room (I could still hear, even if I couldn’t respond) said that yes, in fact, it was.

One doctor apologized to me afterward: he had considered ordering that test himself but had swatted away the thought because it was just too rare. Brainstem involvement? He’d only ever even heard of one other case.

I’ve found a number of other patients online–all of us having had doctors who didn’t believe it at first because it just doesn’t happen.

Except it does.

That complication faded out over about a year. It’s been so nice to have it in remission for so long.

I woke up this morning glad to wake up this morning and thinking, You know what? I want a pastry from Dandelion, darn it. I do. Calories be d****ed. But covid is up and exposure is dumb and San Francisco is a bear to drive to and through and it certainly wasn’t going to happen. So I didn’t say a single word to anyone.

Michelle woke up this morning knowing nothing of this little flare of mine with the thought, You know what? We should take Mom to Dandelion Chocolate.

She texted her father with the idea and could we pick her up on the way? They had a dairy-free option now that she really likes so there would be something for everybody.

Did I want to go?

Was this a trick question? They could drop me off right at the door there and, sure!

Turns out the block was closed off to car traffic, but we found a spot close by with a walk in the shade, at least. I had on my sun jacket and wide hat, doing my best not to be stupid that way.

We had such a good time. We splurged. We bought extra for tomorrow’s breakfast to look forward to. We had their hot chocolate. We enjoyed the by-now familiar faces behind the counter.

It was the perfect antidote to that brief siege of feeling sorry for myself.

(Edited to add: Saturday night was so much better. So much!)

I went out quite early this morning after seeing remains of peaches on the fence to see how my trees were doing, and three black squirrels–Momma teaching her young where the food was?–suddenly burst out of the leaves and scrambled for the hills.

I took the useless produce clamshell they’d somehow pried open and put it on another peach, hoping that one would have better luck. Went inside for the grape koolaid squirter and went at’em again because, oh well, it was something to do.

Walked back inside, wishing hard. Stepped out of the room, stepped back in, and now a big gray squirrel was sprawled on top of the bird netting cage over my single tomato plant not even far from the door, trying to figure out how to get to those. I gave it a what-for too and scared it away, took a deep breath, and headed inside yet again.

They had stayed away for so long. I wanted them to stay stayed, darn it.

There was almost like a tap on the shoulder.

I had long, long since forgotten that when the moving van had shown up with boxes near to the ceiling and halfway across the living room with my late parents-in-laws’ belongings (we were expecting a set of china for a daughter and not much more), that amongst all those items were what I took to be child toys. Really ugly child toys. From the father-in-law who once painted a homemade plaster of paris ornament as an orange Jack-o-lantern and proudly hung it on the Christmas tree every year when my husband was a kid.

My MIL, I am told, carefully made it so that that would be the thing most likely to break the next time the cat pulled the tree over, but it never worked.

Why, DadH, why, and I put the bouncy little crawly ickies over by the kid zone toy basket in the family room to let the grandkids tease each other with them. Or something.

Look. At. Those. as I strode across the room.

DadH had been an avid gardener.

Rubber snakes. Coiled. Two with mouths wide open and eyes fierce, with forked tongues sticking way out.

DUUUUUUH….!!! Thanks, Dad!

If I’d gone looking for them I would never have found them but there they were right there on top demanding to be noticed.

There are none in the Baby Crawford tree. No point anymore, although at least I’d picked one early to make sure we would get one single one. And that’s all we got. There are two snakes in the August Pride peach and one in the Thomas Jefferson-named Indian Free (as in freestone), which are small and hard and green for now.

I went out tonight to check.

The peaches are being left in peace again.

I haven’t seen a single squirrel since the snakes went out there.

Thank you, Dad, you’re a genius.

I sent a card and note off to Dad’s old Army buddy Walt south of here, not knowing if he would ever get it because he’d apparently moved and knowing that he’d survived at least initially after having been hit by a car. At 95.

Turns out he did.

He sent me a hand-written card in return.

On its front was a painting at the LA County Museum of Modern Art, Diego Rivera’s Flower Day. The link is to an ArtNet article telling the history of it: it was that painting, and Rivera, that sparked New Deal public art commissions in the US. I’d had no idea.

What leaped out at me the moment I opened that card, though, was a symbolism Walt had no way to know anything about: when my dad died, my friend Afton sent me a white calla lily plant. It has bloomed almost nonstop since. It is by our front door and those flowers and that greenery remind me of my dad and my friend both every time I go in and out.

And now it will remind me of my dad’s friend. Walt. Who sent the sweetest note. “Dear Alison,” it begins, “Your dad and I were best buddies and my only regret is that we ended up living so far apart.”

And yet they kept that friendship going to the end of my dad’s life.

I feel privileged to have a little of Walt now in mine.

Grieving Highland Park, the morbid and angry thought on this Fourth of July was, What could be more American these days than a mass shooting with innocent parade-watchers shot dead?

And please, please, please, can we vote out the people who are okay with us having more of these?

So I picked up the needles to create a little solace.

Now, here’s where I admit out loud that all along, there’s been this feeling hovering around this baby blanket of, this isn’t going to be the only one.

Yonder daughter came over. Loved that I was making it.

But…

She’d been really hoping I’d make a white cashmere/cotton one like the one I made her other close friend, so beloved still by that baby who’s now five that when they moved to the mom’s native New Zealand and left nearly all their belongings behind, that blanket came with. Not having it was unthinkable.

She wanted that level of passionately loving this blankie again, and she just couldn’t see it in wool (side note: to which she’s allergic), no matter how nice. As for cultural reactions, she reassured me that whatever the immigrant grandparents might think, the prospective parents are thoroughly American and white is no problem at all.

Okay, I’m at 11″, let me just finish this one first because someone is going to need it to be already done and I just don’t know when nor who they are yet. It still feels like the right thing to be spending this time right now on, and I’ll have months to get the other ready.

I got a message.

San Diego Jennifer, whom we adore from when she was in law school at Stanford, said she was flying into town for a wedding but there was a problem with her bridesmaid dress and did I have or did I know who had a sewing machine she could use for a few minutes and could we hopefully possibly get to see each other?

It’s been about ten years. I miss her. YES!

When she said what time she’d be getting off the plane I mentioned that it was our anniversary and what time our dinner was set for. She said she could come tomorrow.

Oh what the heck, she came today and when she ran out of time she borrowed the sewing machine, but not till we’d had a great time catching up for far too short a time. Her friend who’d picked her up from the airport got invited in too because of course.

I offered them peaches from Andy’s.

I got to see the complete surprise on Jennifer’s face as her eyes flew open and then closed in ecstasy at that first bite. Her friend’s reaction to her own was simply, Wow. When I offered a second peach, the friend hadn’t been going to ask by any means but she was sure glad to take me up on it.

I sent them off with another two for the road. Those peaches are at their very most perfect today and they should be enjoyed just like that.

Our dinner arrived minutes later. I’d ordered it delivered so that there wouldn’t be any last minute tension or scramble, it would just come, and turns out Richard’s meeting, the real wild card in all this, had gone over. So it was just as well we weren’t wrecking a restaurant’s reservation schedule.

So: 42: Life, the Universe, and he’s my Everything.

Richard’s family had served all the raspberries anybody could eat at our wedding breakfast. His grandfather had a quarter acre berry patch in Northwest Washington, DC in what’s now the Obamas’ neighborhood, where in the 1930s he’d bought the plot next door as well as the one he built his house on and forever after refused to sell it because that was his garden and his raspberry patch. He was born a farm boy and wanted to work some land. (Even if he was the lawyer who wrote the laws governing the new Federal Radio Commission, which became the FCC with him as chairman at one point and–I need to ask my sister-in-law to be absolutely sure, but our memory is that he was the author of the Fairness Doctrine.)

Yesterday’s recipe? We ate it for breakfast. It had to be raspberries. Go Grampa H.

And I get a second visit with Jennifer when she brings the sewing machine back. We’ve made an appointment to go out to lunch.

—-

Before I forget, for those who missed the announcement. The January 6 committee said today that they had new information and were holding an emergency hearing at 1:00 Eastern Tuesday, with some of them flying back to DC for it after having gone home for the Congressional recess.

It should be interesting.

A clerk at Trader Joe’s I hadn’t seen before. Mid-60’s, I’d guess, older than most of the ones there. Old enough to have seen a bit of life, and his “So how’s your day been” sounded more sincere than I would have expected as he held my eyes a moment. He struck me as a genuinely nice guy.

I kind of brushed it off at first and asked about his, but the wall crumbled quickly. I found myself saying I’d been at my uncle’s funeral today. (By Zoom, because we’d been exposed to covid so I wasn’t going to pass any chance of that to the flying public nor my mom.) He looked wistful. I quickly added, He was 101. He died in his daughter’s arms as she told him she loved him.

He smiled warmly. “It doesn’t get better than that.”

“At home,” I added, nodding. I told him that my uncle had been doing a research project and had finally said, Well. Someone else is going to have to get that Nobel.

At that, the clerk loved this man he’d never met and we parted warmly.

(For the record, Robert Fletcher believed that Einstein was wrong, that the speed of light was variable, and he pursued his theory and published on the subject.)

So here’s a story from the funeral:

My aunt and uncle had eight kids. Someone decided to make them hand felted placemats and apparently they warned that the colors would run if you washed them, so everybody was afraid to use them. They were beautiful, they’d clearly been a lot of work, and especially with kids they were sure they’d be ruined the first time.

So they saved them for Christmas and brought them out for the big day, with warnings to all the children on down to the youngest not to spill ANYthing on those.

Aunt Rosemary went out to the kitchen to bring in the dessert.

One of the kids–I noted they didn’t say who–whispered that they’d spilled on their placemat!

Uncle Bob’s reaction: Quick! Switch it with your mother’s!

Aunt Rosemary came back to the table demanding to know what was so funny, because they were all just totally losing it. And then she was laughing just as hard as the rest of them.

Another story:

Again dinnertime, and Aunt Rosemary found that someone had left the tap running in the kitchen and said in exasperated snark, You’re going to empty the ocean if you keep that up!

Hey! Science! Her physicist husband immediately tasked the kids with finding out: how much water comes out in X minutes?

What is the average depth of the oceans of the world? (I can just picture the Encyclopedia Britannicas being pulled off the shelf.) Etc. Okay, then, how many gallons of water would there be in all the oceans of the world?

They had to concede in the end that it could only be a rough rough estimate but they proudly presented their mother with their conclusion: to drain the oceans through that tap? It would take a  L  O  N  G    T  I  M  E.

Dandelion Chocolate has a superb pastry chef on staff, and they’ve started including an allergy-friendly vegan lemon poppyseed option.

So tomorrow being Father’s Day, Michelle took us into San Francisco for pastries and hot chocolate to celebrate early. We even found a parking space! We started the day off right.

Watering the fruit trees this evening, looking at the last of the sour cherries at the top and the first of the peaches coming on, the hose got caught on a rock about a foot across and it took some effort to get it off but it flipped and rolled a bit and out of the way and that was that.

Of course that means the next thing that happened was that I tripped over it because it was not where my subconscious expected it to be. You would think… This time my wrists caught me an inch or two above the ground and saved my face and teeth. No emergency dentist this time.

Progress.

I have a new determination to hire someone to install a better watering system, no matter how much I enjoy my weekly evenings of taking care of my trees.

The third January 6 hearing today: I missed part of the second due to the time zone difference–I was not getting up at  6 a.m., thanks. But listening to bits and snippets afterwards of what reporters thought were the main points just didn’t have the same effect as listening to the whole thing start to finish.

One of the things about being hearing impaired since my teens is a need to see someone’s face when they’re talking. It’s not just the words that matter, it’s how they feel about those words as they’re saying them and I wanted to know.

I remember the chapter in Dad’s book about the wealthy Texas oilman turned art collector who could never be fooled by frauds and fakes as long as his deaf wife was alive. She could always tell if the seller believed his own words–or not.

And man did he get swindled after she was gone.

There is such an enormity to the story of our first violent transfer of power in history, and it felt last time like a dereliction of democracy not to have paid attention to the entire hearing.

So today’s, I did. (With the quick exception of answering one email while the retired judge was choosing his words very carefully as history watched, and v e r y  slowly.)

I wanted to say to some of the people involved in this mess, Didn’t your parents teach you to make choices that you would always be glad to publicly acknowledge you’d made? Didn’t they tell you that cheaters always get caught–if not by anyone else then by their own consciences, and that feels even worse? How not putting that burden on yourself, much less others, is far more the way to go in life, hon?

“Get yourself an f’in good criminal defense attorney, John, because you’re going to need one.”

And not just him.

Man, am I grateful for my folks.

——-

(Dad’s book, The Fabulous Frauds, got him and the publisher sued by one of the forgers who was still alive but hiding from the French authorities in South America. The book got republished without that chapter and another the publisher was antsy about, so if you’re interested in it at all, the purple Weybright and Talley imprint is the one you’d want. But in one of the other stories, someone did copy the Mona Lisa about a hundred years ago, stole the original and put their fake in its place and nobody noticed for a week or two. –edit: two years.–  No worries, the Louvre got the real deal back and held him accountable.

Wait. There’s an analogy lurking in there.)