I remember, when we lived in New Hampshire, a woman I adored at church (yes, Herb, your mom) who’d lived in southern California most of her life and who had a hard time understanding what seemed to her a frosty culture where one must give much notice before dropping in on someone; “Lighten up, people!” I also remember that she was the only person there I knew who could pick out the one avocado in the store that would actually ripen before rotting after the snowplows opened the roads back up so you could get to the grocer’s.

Years later…

I dropped Don an overdue note: I’d knitted him a hat (no not the pink one I finished last night) as a thank you and needed to get it over to him sometime.

The response: would now be a good time?

It would!

And so we had an impromptu visit at what turned out to be just a perfect time for him when he had much to be happy about; thank you, Don!

Our chat was interrupted by a spammer calling my phone. So when, just after pulling away from his house, it rang again, I pulled over in front of his neighbor’s thinking at the spammer that hey, what part of Do Not Call do you not get?

But it was Richard: his aunt and uncle, who live halfway to Santa Cruz, were on their way over.

That gave me the incentive to explore using the freeways rather than surface streets for the route back. I managed to beat them home, where Michelle was doing a quick sweep and spruce and we were both glad for the kitchen do-over yesterday.

They wouldn’t stay for dinner but did succumb to good chocolate and a very fine Sunday afternoon was enjoyed by all.

I came away wondering, whatever the house may look like, why don’t we do this more often? We’re always happy when we do. Why do we let silly things snow us in? I hereby resolve to visit more and enjoy more.

Speaking of which, before I emailed Don? My Cooper’s hawk, which I had last seen every single day that I was waiting for my biopsy results, arrived and visited me, again right outside the window here.

And only just now as I type this am I realizing that that was such a shot of joy that I had to go email Don.

The microwave blew up on Michelle this morning with a spectacular gust of smoke and stink after I’d had my hot cocoa but before she’d had hers. This still constituted an emergency, then.

A few reviews on Amazon about unseeable controls on the one that Costco turned out to have, unless you crouched down to its level each time, and we went off to a second store and found just the right thing. Stainless steel and black. Looks great.

What that triggered, of course, was a burst of energy towards making the kitchen look really nice too, by myself because Michelle had other errands that had to be run. Scrubscrubscrub. Let’s see, why is this still here? Out! Scrubscrubscrub.

I finally sat down too tired to move when suddenly Richard called for help: one ambitious project had begotten another in another room.  Our Web connection was going to be down for he didn’t know how long unless he got this finished. Okay, I’m all ears–glad to help. He was half under a table, drilling a hole, rewiring bedrooms; “Could you tell me where this is coming through so I don’t go through anything wrong?”

STOP you’re going to hit the rug!

He stopped.

I came to check on things from his side and managed to fall and twist a few things. Landed on him. Oh sorry dear. Picked myself up, got out of the way…

Then another yell for help: the bookshelf had collapsed, at him but thankfully not on him.  We emptied the contents of the bookshelf, fire brigade method.

I am sitting. I am knitting.  A randomly grabbed single stash skein of Frog Tree Meriboo that hopefully will be enough to make a fast not-really-for-warmth hat to cover the vasoline etc on my head. But boy does it feel good to have gotten all the things done we got done.

(Do I dare try my treadmill time with a twisted ankle…)

Maybe I should unsubscrub to that idea just for today.

I was going to post a picture of the lilies, type, Just one more day, and leave the blog at that for the night and distract myself with Epiphany yarn. Row 72.

Michelle popped her head around the corner: “You were going to make almond cake, right?”

“Was I?” (Total head tilt.)

She’d just assumed, since I’d bought almond milk at Trader Joe’s on that trip yesterday and said it was for making cake with, well, so, tonight, right?

After we both got a good laugh out of that miscommunication–I’d simply wanted it on hand for the possibility–we both admitted that lemon cake actually sounded more fun, and since we already had five lemons picked we wouldn’t even have to brave the thorns in the dark out there.

1952 Betty Crocker’s Hot Milk Sponge Cake, substitute fresh picked lemon juice for half the milk–all of it is even better but again, it was a thorny issue–double the butter  (using Earth Balance to substitute) and soy or almond milk for the rest of the milk if needed (the dairy allergy thing) and there you go.

I got interrupted by the timer during the previous paragraph, and oh, does that kitchen smell heavenly. Michelle and Richard are looking forward to their early-morning breakfast before the dash for the train, everybody’s cheered up, and I’ve totally lost any leftover moping about the skin cancer surgery and any hair loss tomorrow.

Just because you can definitely means you should.

I periodically (well, yes) get a catalog from a Dutch bulb wholesaler, thanks to a Christmas box a few years ago with eight giant-size amaryllis bulbs in it. (Thank you, Dad!)

I thumbed through the new arrival today and a few minutes later regretfully put it in the recycling bin. Pretty, pretty pictures, but nope, nope, nope. Even beside the whole issue of me and sun exposure: you can’t grow tulips here, really. It doesn’t get cold enough for them to bloom but the first season unless you’re willing to dig them up and store them in the fridge, and they’re poisonous for people if someone majorly goofs.

The squirrels, on the other hand, will thank you for hosting their party the moment you put them in the ground. Daffodils are safe from the little marauders, and my glads seem to be too, but tulip bulbs? Totally dessert.

The lilies in those pages, though–those really grabbed me. I’ve always loved Stargazers, though I think I only ever bought one bulb once years ago and it did not thrive while I was chasing after small children. Was I going to buy $50 worth of Stargazers to meet the company’s minimum? Absolutely not. Thanks for the peek, out you go.

I skipped out on Purlescence time tonight, too tired to drive, but Richard needed to make a Costco run. As long as he was at the wheel, sure, be glad to come keep you company, hon.

And so we were headed towards the produce when there they were. The lilies. After Eight,  a smaller, even more perfect version of the Stargazer variety, the flowers just as big–five stalks, 10″ pot, $14.99.

The smell was heavenly. There were two whole wooden pallets on the floor covered with blooms reaching high towards us.

We both stopped so suddenly at the sight that someone to the left turned and rammed his cart into Richard in the near-empty store. Oh sorry sir.

I was going, Wow, those are gorgeous, when Richard, to my surprise, ignoring the cart guy, pronounced, “You want one that’s not open yet. How about this one?”

Wait, what?

“Sometimes I buy you flowers,” he added in happy anticipation, waiting for it to sink in.

I looked at him. Yes of course he meant it. Cool! (He had no idea I’d been wishing or even anything at all about that catalog arriving or about how I like Stargazers, none, nada. Never been a topic.) We looked through them all till I came back to the one he’d picked out at the very beginning as indeed the best one. Like trying on shoes, isn’t it.

I had instinctively gone for the ones already in bloom because of my pink azaleas: one of which, I found out the year after I planted them, happened to actually be white. Mislabeled. Oops. Yup, it’s still there at the end of the row of them out there, its branches interwoven by now with the pink till there’s no telling where each begins: they made themselves belong to each other. They stay.

So if there’s one white lily stalk in there with the other four it will just be too funny. But behold the lilies that will be in our field of vision. I can’t wait.

I remember my Mom and my next-older sister planning a prom dress together. Would have been 1974. Mom had some beautiful fabric for it; I’m picturing that it was a red and black silk print my grandmother brought back from a trip, hand-batiked in Indonesia, but if I’m wrong I’m sure I’ll hear about it.

Before Mom messed with that treasure she decided to give the pattern a test-drive in muslin. I remember her explaining to me that this is what the pros do, they sew it twice, once for practice and fit and once for real after they see that their design works out the way they want (or what to change if it doesn’t.)

I remember arguing: you have to pay for the muslin in the fabric store so why not pay for some other fabric and get a second usable dress? Why just plain (muslin being in an oatmealy shade I didn’t like) when you could have something more colorful? And softer?

Mom just laughed me off and went on with what she was doing; I do remember my sister happily reporting afterwards that her date had admitted that when he’d heard that Mom was going to be sewing the dress, he had all kinds of worries about how homemade it was going to look–but wow, he said, she looked beautiful!

Practice makes perfect.

Mom later sewed my wedding dress. Those of you who sew who live in the Washington DC area, couture-house lace remnants at G Street Fabrics for the yoke and cuffs. My mom rocks.

I thought of all that as I put my qiviut aside, almost done but before I got any further, just just just to make sure (and yeah I should have done this first like Mom taught me), I went to go play with the same shawlette idea in different yarns: a strand of that so-soft Baruffa merino knitted with one of an alpaca with a bit of wiriness to it–okay, but not baby alpaca.

It’s done. I love how it looks, even if it’s not as soft (well, yeah) as that ohmygoodness qiviut. And Michelle approves.

When the next generation down says it looks good you know you’ve nailed it.

Cheryl asked me yesterday if I had a lot of yarn, and I laughed and answered with a story on myself: the hot water heater once burst and flooded out the back of a closet where there was, ahem, more yarn tucked away–Richard knew about the stash in the family room closet…

But I’ve been thinking since then that although I was sheepish about it at the time that that happened, telling that tale that way wasn’t fair to my husband.  He has so often seen me find out about a need, someone who needed support just then, and seen me go to my stash and find what felt like just exactly the most perfect yarn to launch into for them and I go for it on the spot. Knitting is love made tangible. He has seen the joy. He has shared in that joy.

And I knew he got it, he really got it, 18 years ago when his sister, whose name was also Cheryl, was diagnosed with late non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He asked me if I would knit her something? And he insisted on coming along, driving me and our four kids across the Bay to the  now-gone Straw Into Gold store in Berkeley where the stock was immense, helping me pick out colors for her multi-colored vest. (There was no way I was going to feel sure I could get sleeves to fit from long distance, but a vest, that I could do.)

We wrapped her in our love together for eight more years.

I actually asked him just a few days ago, after a small cone arrived from Colourmart, if he minded how much yarn I had. (Side note to my fellow knitters: those come with mill oils that feel like dried hair mousse and the yarn must be hanked and scoured in soapy hot water, dried and balled before knitting, a lot of work and the missing steps that you pay for when you buy a yarn store yarn. But the cone was Zegna Baruffa, very soft, and the prices are what they are.)

He looked astonished. “No! That’s what makes you happy!”

Not just the collecting it, not the owning it, but the impish anticipation and then the moment in the recipient’s face (whether I get to see it or not) when it all comes together: every skein is a symbol of those moments. My job is to make them come to be in real life.

And this is true, too: the gift my lupus gives me is that it sits me down, especially on a bad day, and demands: KNIT.

So that it becomes no longer about me.

I bet you Sue knows what I’m going to write about tonight.

1. But before I get there, I knitted a little Camelspin on the side today in a sudden hurry to get that done yesterday.

2. Nope, no phone call today from the doctor, or at least not while I was home, and no messages were left while I was out foraging for chocolate.

3. My daughter had a co-worker who, last Friday, was having a horrible, rotten, no-good-I-think-I’ll-move-to-Australia kind of day. (That’s the refrain on most of the pages of a certain children’s book–just to make that clear since one person who’s going to be reading this has a loved one who *did* move to Australia and who clearly has turned out very nicely for it.)

4. So I offered to bake a chocolate torte for them. (Here’s the recipe.)

5. Tomorrow is that person’s birthday, it turns out.

6. Well then!

and, 7, since I always make two of them, and since today’s our anniversary, and since Michelle can’t eat dairy, I substituted hazelnut oil for the butter, coming about two tbl short out of two cups needed for two cakes–close enough. We’ll call it the low fat version. I can’t begin to tell you how heavenly it smells.

8. Richard and I are home now from going out to dinner so we might go cut into that second cake if I stop typing a moment.

9. We went to the restaurant where Sue works, hoping to see her; for those of you who’ve read “Wrapped in Comfort,” (still available at Purlescence) it’s the first story, and yes, that Sue. Nope, they said, wrong night, not here, sorry.

10. On our way out I explained to our waitress why I’d so hoped to see her: how, when we moved here we came here a lot while on a per diem the first month, and how 20 years later she still remembered what my then-small kids had liked to eat. She loved my kids and we all adored her.

11. At that point, a different waitress exclaimed, “She’s here now!” Sue and her husband had decided to beat the heat and go out for dinner too, coming to this really great place they happened to know really well.

12. Hugs, love, intro to her husband, and then Sue told him that our kids were the best ever. “Some kids in restaurants, you know, but yours were always perfectly behaved.”

13. They were just shy of 1, 3, and 5 at the time; I don’t remember them being perfectly behaved. But I do remember them as being perfectly loved around her. Every parent of a small child needs some other adult who feels their kids are adorable: it helps the children and it helps the parents, too, to all rise to the occasion.

Sue was there. Our occasion got even happier. She laughed to her husband about my four year old who liked lobster. (It was a moving-expense per diem, the corporation didn’t care in the least what she ordered as long as it was below $25. Come to think of it, four-year-olds ordering lobster several times a week because they miss New Hampshire would be memorable.)

14. Happy anniversary, Richard! With no skunks this time.

(If that one of the three budding amaryllises turns out to be white, I’ll know it was the one Sue dropped off at Purlescence for me back when I was sick. Thank you, Sue!)

Love you, Richard!

The qiviut is humming along nicely now. It’s hard to put it down.

Meantime, there’s been a lack of Parker pictures because I nearly killed off my aging computer trying to take on a lot of them, so this is a cell phone shot: Parker, six months now, and his two-month-old cousin, Kim’s sister’s daughter. It tickles me no end: every kid should have a cousin their own age, and these two are going to grow up close by each other.

On the wildlife front, two days ago there was a sudden flipping the lights off and on behind me and then again in front of me, all in a near-instant as I looked out at the backyard–only, it was bright midday: it was the sun, the windows blocked as wide wings flew over the house. Wow.

The headline in the paper the next morning was all about five juvenile California Condors, the oldest being five, maturation at six, seen partying together on Mount Hamilton in San Jose the day before; the story talked about how they can fly 150 miles in a day, etc.

I’m assuming the shadow was from my Zone-tailed hawk I’ve seen before, which is certainly big enough, given that it can reach the entire keyboard on my piano and then a bit. But it’s so cool knowing there were five (!) Condors so close by, where none had been in a hundred years, shooting the breeze, swapping eagle stories and those parental puppets?–nah, never fooled me a second, you? Nah… Well yeah, I thought he was condor funny looking, myself.

A mole, been on the back of my face about eight years now, and suddenly last week there was a small second one behind it, same color.

Oh come ON. Just because my child has melanoma doesn’t mean…

Wait a minute… I dabbed my finger under the tap to get a little water on it, scrubbed at the spot and looked in the mirror again.

A splash of hot cocoa. That’s all it was.

The dermatologist laughed today when I told her that–classic, classic, and she told me she’d had a few patients she’d seen for similar reasons, as she checked out the rapidly growing lump in my scalp that had been a barely-there pinprick around, oh, I dunno, maybe December when we first noticed it? I assumed it was a lupus lesion and had asked to make sure, then after the rheumatologist ignored it I did too.

Richard’s been bugging me. Being married to a very tall man can really come in handy.

“Oh yes. It is,” then she immediately reassured me she was very sure it was just basal; cut it out and it will all be gone.

She had gotten my note yesterday about my daughter and my head and had immediately cleared a path to see and biopsy me today. Results next week. She will call me and we will set a time for my Mohs surgery–so, yes. I have skin cancer too.

p.s. The final pathology report came in today for my Sam: they did indeed get all hers. No chemo. Done. To quote her, “I will, of course, have to be monitored the rest of my life but that’s a small price to pay for having a life to live.”

There was a black squirrel doing a Salvador Dali/Wicked Witch of the West performance piece; I’m melting. Melting!

I refilled the water out there and went back to knitting up very warm fibers, grateful for air conditioning.

Ninety-nine degrees at 6:00 and sitting in the car waiting for Michelle’s commuter train to pull in, I wondered: who opened the door and let all the northern California out?

A friend who belongs to a CSA sent out word that her farmer had excess strawberries to sell and that if she could find takers for enough big cases, he would deliver them to her house.

Twenty dollars was a lot of just-picked ripe red sweet-smelling goodness.

Strawberry picking getting up very early on a June morning, before the 100/humidity+heat hits the top of the misery index in Maryland, was an essential part of my childhood–along with hours afterwards spent around the hot kitchen table, we six kids anchored in place by Dad working too at the head of it, hulling, Mom a few steps away at the stove. If Dad couldn’t get out of it either after all those hours bent over looking for fruit over and under those green leaves and was cheerfully working away at his mound of berries, then there was no hope of a kid weaseling out. None. Trust me.

So often, we would try to pun-up each other, starting off with a lame “I can’t believe I ate the hull thing”–but if you could make Dad roar with laughter it was definitely triple word score time.

Counting and anticipating: jar, jar, blinks and it’s all gone. (I know. Sorry. Reminding you of that movie is like singing “Feelings” in earshot. Woe woe woe your boat done with these–when we’re jamming, it gets bad.)

I hadn’t seen any hawks, neither the male nor the female nor any grandhawks yet this year, for about a month. And then suddenly in two days I have four times now, the adults.

The patient’s doctor was on vacation; the person covering decided not to wait for him but to get the results and to get the results to the patient.  Dermatology had wanted three months for an appointment to do the biopsy and the patient’s doctor had decided not to wait for them. The patient was too young to have melanoma and the lesion didn’t look like what melanoma is typically supposed to look like; he had decided not to wait till it did nor till the patient got reasonably older. The surgery center wanted to wait several weeks to do the operation; the person covering said NO you do my patient NOW.

The biopsy results came Wednesday. Melanoma.

The surgery was today, Friday, with no time to think out what one might need to do to prepare for the post-op period, just GO.

Aggressive but very shallow and declared stage one, still. They do believe they got it all.

And while we were talking to the not-too-groggy patient, the mama Cooper’s hawk caught dinner and prepared the meal (no blood and guts within sight, very tidy) right in front of us, laying out her picnic on our back lawn as we talked. A down feather got caught in her beak for several minutes till she finally managed after several tries to pull it off with her talons–the proverbial spinach between the teeth while people are watching.

My husband and I described to our loved one this gorgeous raptor capturing a share of our day. Somehow, when we need one, they always show up.

When the patient, far from us, needed it, friends became family and I will love them forever for it; they very much showed up over there.

When the patient needed that doctor to follow their gut intuition regardless, that doctor completely showed up for us all.

There’s a doctor out there who deserves a whole whack of knitting from me.

The phone rang at the end of January.  My in-law said the tests were positive and yes, it had metastasized.

The phone rang three days later. Different in-law.  Yes, it was.

The new news came yesterday. Protesting that three’s a crowd does nobody any good and there is much we do not know yet; what we do know gives much room for hope.

Trying to process it all: I write, I knit.

And I looked up in the early afternoon while typing to Chan: on the roof of the shed, with the awning blocking my view, all I could see was the feet and the wing and tail tips that had just arrived. The dove on the patio freaked and ran straight up and towards it; those big feet and feathers turned leisurely to enjoy the pizza delivery.

I think less than an hour later, he settled in on the back of that chair I talked about yesterday and simply stood and looked me in the eyes. He wasn’t looking for prey.

It was a moment of sharing in all Creation.

“Be still, and know that I am God.”

My thoughts flew upwards on his wings and a prayer.

Two highschoolers at church, a young woman and a young man, interviewed my husband and me a few weeks ago for a project they were working on; they seated us together and then asked each of us our memories of various events in our lives.

There was a get-together tonight at the home of one of those kids, and I happened to be talking to the dad of the other. I’d wanted for awhile to tell both sets of parents what I’d seen that day in their children–the light in their eyes. I’d never had a real conversation in private with either kid before that day, but I tell you: they were *nice* people. I was very proud of them.

The dad beamed, and as the conversation went on, he admitted that, still, for all that, his two kids fought with each other. It drove him crazy how much they fought!

I laughed and tried to reassure him of the normalcy of all that. Is there a parent out there whose kids never once fought? Kids learn as they grow how to get along with people who may disagree with them in the safety of a family setting, given comfort (no matter how much they may resist it) by the fact that if they overstep, there are limits and those limits will be enforced. And also–that someone else’s point of view is as important as their own.

I was once at the wedding of a young man whose little sister was 11 to his 29 if I remember right, and they were teasing and needling each other while their mom rolled her eyes. Siblings!

Part of being human.

And since we are only human. As part of that growing up, all kids need their basic inner goodness reflected back at them: every kid needs an adult who is not their parent thinking the world of them and expecting only the best out of them because they only have to see the best.

And I have to tell you, having a teenager think the world of you back just totally rocks.

I saw two of these, one in faded tones, yellows rather than vivid oranges, and the one shown on the left with the sunspot its apparent mate: Black-Headed Grosbeaks. Breathtaking up close. It’s been a year since I’ve seen any. The little house finches (like the little female on the right) were annoyed that they didn’t play the ‘fight and fall up or off and let me grab your perch’ game; just couldn’t get a rise out of them.

Dude. Let me eat my lunch while I ignore you. How else do you think this place gets its yumminess: I am the sun to the seed.

The squirrel flicked its tail side to side like a cat. Another un-intimidate-able bird: Not. Cool.

Oh yes it was.

Meantime, Michelle was trying to buy walking shoes for her trip and at the store I realized I’d been right when I’d grabbed yarn on my way out the door. I pulled my needles out of my overstuffed purse, eyeballed out the length I would need for longtailing it, and cast on.

Not something she’ll need in DC’s summer blaze, though.

p.s. Just for fun? There is someone who made a really loved Bug: those are all tiny seed beads. I’d be afraid to drive it, I mean, think what a fender bender would do, but, wow!