I got a package in the mail on Friday from my childhood friend Karen of the Water Turtles Shawl.  It turns out Richard was in on what was a total surprise: a kilogram of fawn superfine alpaca on a cone from a place she’d stopped in while visiting her daughter in Maine–a place where local producers sell their output.  Cool!  She thought I might be able to figure out something to do with it.

And you know? I just might. (Thank you, Karen!)

Then that evening Michelle talked about some plans with some friends for the next day, and the easiest way to make it happen was to drop her off in San Francisco and then pick her up from the local train station later.

Note that I mapquested where she wanted to go to Imagiknit and only then back to home again.  My ulterior motives were cheered on by the others.

But I dislike deep-city driving enough that after she got out I decided to bag it after all and just get on the freeway and go. However, while avoiding jaywalkers I missed my street sign and ended up on Market Street and Market Street is a long straight shot west with a whole lot of No Turns signs. You have to juggle constantly between the trolley only/not trolley lanes and I can see why Mapquest dodged it–but it was actually also the most direct route towards exactly where I wanted to go. Finally allowed to turn left? Right where I wanted to.

And wonder of wonders, despite a hugely popular park nearby on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, there was an actual parking place a half block up the street from the store. I was so surprised and still so ready to bail for fear of a long walk in sun exposure that I missed it and had to circle the block.

It was still open.

Well, then. Clearly it was meant to be.

I really really wanted to do baby knitting in Malabrigo softness.  And so with the help of Kurt at Imagiknit, I got to see (in person!) their superwash Sock in the Solis colorway that was on the very top shelf without even having to hold the tip of my cane while waving its curve hopefully around way up there in the air trying to snag skeins and scaring the bejeebers out of everyone around me.

There–that skein. That one’s perfect. No yellow splotches, just the greens and blues playing perfectly, that’s the one.  Malabrigo’s super soft superwash worsted-weight Rios yarn (it has a name now!) isn’t officially out till next month–the baby blanket I want to make is waiting for the day…

I talked to Karen. She won’t mind if I do a little superwash knitting first. I’ve got a good excuse.

And so I’ve got a soft Malabrigo hat going on tiny needles for my grandson (and yes, Mari, you’re right, the Saartjes booties to match it are the only way to go.)

It and he are nearly halfway here so far.

I watched the warm glow that came over her as she said it: “Elaine would be so pleased.”

Indeed she would.  And we both knew we both felt Elaine knew as well as we did.

Jean and I were talking Tuesday evening when I told her the news.

It was while I was in Washington DC for my 20th high school reunion that my friend Conway, my uncle’s friend too from WWII, had another heart attack, this time at the swim therapy pool where, on a normal day, he and I would have been chatting together as we exercised.

Someone called his wife Elaine.  The lifeguard did CPR.

Jean was their neighbor and old friend whose children had grown up with their children; she was home when she was struck with the sudden, intense feeling, Elaine needs me!

This was in ’97. There were no cellphones.

She got in her car and drove, first towards the pool, and then no, and turned the car towards Stanford Hospital. All on the strength of that feeling only.

And so it was that Elaine was coming out the door of the hospital at the very moment Jean was coming in to look for her. Conway’s flattened-out vital signs had kicked in briefly when his wife showed up–just long enough for her to feel he was trying to tell her goodbye.

The two women threw their arms around each other. Their children and grandchildren and all who love them will forever be grateful for that moment.

After his death, Elaine packed up and left the house they’d lived in for so long and moved to southern California to be closer to her sons; she passed away not long after.

One of her sons sent his daughter off to BYU, not many years later…

…Where she started going out with this tall kid from, it turned out, the town where her parents had grown up.

And when he mentioned her name to us (we assumed, rightly, that the very fact that he did meant that they were becoming seriously interested in each other) I said to him, not quite daring to think it might be so, Ask her if…

He called today with such a twinkle in his voice.  I’d been so sure it was going to be a girl.   Heh.  Ultrasound says it’s a boy, Mom.

Better go get out that superwash merino in blue after all.  And yes, this is an announcement: our first grandchild is coming. He will be the first grandson on both sides. He should arrive soon after the first of the year, and to tell you we are excited does not even begin to touch the unfathomable degree of love we feel for this new little person on the way.

Conway and Elaine must be so pleased.

I got permission to post a picture of Rachel, my great-niece.

I took the damaged birdfeeder down yesterday and gave it a good cleaning and disinfecting and let it dry inside overnight.

What was amazing to me is how fast one of the black squirrels figured out, before I did, that it was open season–a couple of hours is all it took: the feeder cage wasn’t going to close down on it now.  Did it make a different sound now when the birds landed? Did it give slightly under their weight and now it didn’t? Did the squirrel remember the short time awhile back when I put it together wrong and they could get at it and what it sounded/looked like then?  I don’t know. But clearly, it had been looking forward to this for a long time and I had made its day. Forget those nuts over there–I’m going in!

Nope. Sorry. Mine.

What made me laugh later was, after thinking how smart the one was for figuring it out so fast, how dumb a sneaking gray one was for trying to gauge jumping distance from the forbidden pole (that they normally really do stay off of)–not quite noticing that, duh, dude, it’s.not.there.now. If your friend takes a flying leap, does that mean you have to take a flying leap? Huh? Huh?

Off to the shop.  They replaced the inner tube, it was under warranty, all taken care of, good to go.  Got it home, set it back in its spot, filled it up, walked in the other room, walked back, and it was–well, let’s just say I was no longer the bad Finch who stole Christmas. *Nah-voo dore-ace to you too, guys.

Meantime, I got some knitting done at Purlescence tonight and my hands were doing okay–I tell you, it feels good to be back in the land of the knitting.

————

*Richard thinks it’s ah-voo dor-ace. Michelle thinks we’re both not quite right. Wikipedia was no help, but I did find the theme song singing here.

I forgot to add on yesterday’s post: at one point we were in an area of Foothill Park where there was a wide expanse of grass. They decided it might be a good place to let the baby out to run off some energy. I stayed in the car, out of the sun, reading the newspaper, Richard staying too to keep me company; not ideal but it worked. I did mention to them before they got out the rattlesnake we’d seen once over there by the trees, which had a creek hidden behind; umm, might not want to go that far.  Mountain lion country too.  Open is better.

Oh, okay, good to know!

Rachel, however, plunked right down in that grass where they put her and sat playing in great delight with the tiny flowers she found growing there.

Well, hey, that works, they decided.

My niece the flower child. I love it.

In the meantime…

Michelle, who is always looking for a good dairy-free recipe, made rice krispies treats today to take to some friends, leaving some for us.  It brought back memories that I don’t think I’d told her before: my little sister and my dad and I went on a visit to his widowed mother’s in Walnut Creek, California, the summer I was 16 and Anne turned 15. In happy anticipation of our arrival, Grandmother had made a big pan of those for us.

This was the grandmother who lived across the continent from us in an age when both planes and long-distance phone calls were monopoly-owned and hideously expensive. We didn’t get to see or talk to her often, and though I loved her, I didn’t know her well.

I hadn’t had those in ages. To me, it seemed like a little kid’s treat from way back in my childhood: so sugary. So sticky.  So not-Adelle Davis-healthy.  (Davis began the health food movement in the ’50’s and ’60’s; running and checking, my copy of her Let’s Eat Right says 1947.)

I’d been baking a lot of cookies and bread in my mom’s kitchen for awhile by then, often grinding my own wheat for the bread especially, and like a lot of teenagers, thought rather highly of my own skills–and I’d been raised by a mom who thought desserts should be a last chance to get good nutrition into her kids: she would make fruit pies, blueberry cakes, (that was a collective swoon you just heard from all my siblings) Davis’s wheat germ and powdered milk “Butterscotch Brownies” with, ahem, not the slightest hint of chocolate… (I still love them. My friends thought they were the weirdest ever, and probably still would, and they were, and I still do.) Mom’s pear-and-lime pie creation won an award once.

At least with popcorn you get a little fiber, and one year for a birthday cake I got, at my request, a great big tube-pan-shaped popcorn ball for slicing onto your plate. Dyed in green food coloring. I wanted different and I wanted green and by golly I got it and the sense of triumph that my mom had actually created that for me is one of the delights of my childhood.

If it was rice krispies and not popcorn, set me straight, Mom, but my memory is it was popcorn and that the popcorn came out tough, but oh well–it was green! And unique!

Can you say contemporary-art-dealer’s daughter?

Empty-puffs cereal, butter, and melted marshmallows. And yet. Grandmother had made those treats just for us, and I had enough sense to be touched by that and enough of a kid’s craving for sugar to enjoy them.  And so I let myself rediscover rice krispies treats. It wasn’t till writing this just now that I realized how much of an effort it must have been for her to stand and stir that sticky mixture on the stove–Grandmother had rheumatoid arthritis! I don’t make them, so I just never saw clearly before the effort it must have taken her.  (Man, am I slow.)  She was trying so hard to create good memories for us. And she did. Oh, she did.

I did not know it was the last time I would ever see my Grandmother Jeppson.

I told Michelle she’d made my grandmother’s treat and that it had brought back all these memories. She was delighted.

And I ate some of Michelle’s, too. Because I love her, too. (Adding chocolate chips–‘Shelle, you are SO my daughter!)

I got some adorable shots of my niece and her husband and 12-month-old Rachel–but I forgot to ask if I could post any. Diana, your felted turtle was Rachel’s instant favorite: it was bright, it was colorful, it was soft, it was snuggleable.  And it is now back in the toy basket on the hearth wishing for Rachel.

They all enjoyed watching my little flock just outside the glass and the parents thought out loud about getting their own birdfeeder. I quite wish I’d had one when my kids were little, like my parents had had; there’s so much to observe and learn and hold in wonder out there, just waiting to be noticed and cared for, to be seen.

We packed a lot into one day: talking, eating, the Rodin sculpture garden at Stanford University, a trip into the foothills, stopping at an overlook with a view of nearly the entire peninsula with San Francisco lost only to the fog in the far distance… Raptors reaching their wings out in the updraft overhead… Gorgeous.

And then dinner out. A toddler, an old man of about two or so, playing peekaboo with her and flirting shamelessly from the next table.  Directions back to the freeway, hugs goodbye, and a little girl trying to get this waving bye bye thing down pat, rocking her hand slowly side to side, side to side, and then both hands, grinning bigger and bigger to match the motions.

A day far too short. It was wonderful!

p.s. Oh, and–not only did Laura know exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned that smocked dress from two dozen years ago, her mom had saved it for her and she loves it and has it for Rachel now; I was very, very gratified to hear it.  Thank you, Carolyn!

My older sister and I had our second daughters a week apart from each other. I made them matching smocked dresses–and I still know right where Michelle’s is.

Laura is coming tomorrow with her husband and baby daughter, who would be about the right size now for one of those dresses. (I have no idea if my sister kept hers all these years. White with green pinstripes and green embroidery if you’re remembering it, Carolyn.)  I haven’t seen Laura since she was a young teenager, and I cannot tell you how excited I am to see them tomorrow!

I can finally show some pictures of what I’ve been talking about. Here’s what the elk looks like as you come up the stairs. There’s a game room (ain’t that the truth) up there, and glaring across the room is this moose, held forever in the velvet-antler stage. And then in the bedroom to the right is this nice little cat that got its tail dunked in the Die! pot.

Yeah. All friendly-like.

Downstairs was my motivation for learning that black bears shed their paws in the spring as they grow new ones; this one, and being so thin, too, seems to have been caught right at that point–here, let’s do a closeup. And yes, that snowman in the background is–well, the place was full of kitsch like that, plush and resin snowmen in winter garb with cheerful sayings everywhere. One of my children described it all as painfully rustic.

I looked up at the pointy tips on the antlers on that elk and had the Californian thought, I do not want to be here in an earthquake.

Now, my grandparents bought a small, cozy A-frame cabin up by Brighton ski resort near Salt Lake City maybe 60 years ago or more. I remember seeing it as a kid and being gobsmacked at being told why the wrought-iron rails around the patio above the creek swooped down in scallops like that: it was from the weight of the snow up there. Wow.  I tried to understand how snow could possibly bend metal (well, no, actually, first I had to argue that it was unreasonable to expect me to believe that and that it wasn’t possible.)  I learned what stinging nettles were–and the butterflies! So many butterflies!

We kids were not to splash in that rocky creek: the local drinking water was taken straight from it. We could, though, touch it briefly to see just how cold the newly-melted snow was in the middle of July or August. And the chipmunks! Adorable. And if memory serves, ground squirrels too.  We would feed them peanuts from that small patio.

There was a mounted antlered deerhead that came with the place when my grandparents bought it, across the small room from the fireplace. I remember being eight years old and asking about it and my grandmother kind of shrugging her shoulders, conveying the impression that it was not to her taste but it had been there for many years before them and they had let it stay.

At the cabin (pictured) for last week’s family reunion on my husband’s side, a chipmunk found its way onto the highest wooden porch up there at the one point at the front where it’s near ground level, but the poor thing found itself surrounded by humans near where the person in the red shirt is sitting and the only thing it had to duck under for safety was the bottom of that railing–with a view straight down and no way out.  It kept putting its nose over the edge, checking.  No can do. Yikes!

It brought back so many memories. It was so cute.  I managed to gently, gradually herd it back towards safety. To that side of the house, now turn left, that’s right, little one, go away from me, thataway, get away from all those people, keep going, alright.  There you go. Home free.

Later, at my uncle’s house on Sunday, my daughters mentioned the taxidermied excess where we’d stayed and my cousin grinned and decided to tell a story on her brother.

Now, my husband and I have our skunk story, which we gleefully told her.

Bob had asked if he could borrow the grandparents’ cabin for his honeymoon. I imagine other relatives were discreetly told in no uncertain terms not to show up there unannounced.

So. He and his new bride were snuggling in front of the fireplace, the fire snapping and crackling just past the stony hearth. Summer or no, it’s often cold enough at night up there for it, I can tell you from experience.  The outside would have been very dark in the brisk mountain air, the fire very bright in contrast. They were together at last in their own new world, away and alone at last from all else.

In all its decades there had never been any sign of trouble with the thing. But suddenly that mounted trophy came crashing smashing down behind them unannounced.

Oh deer.

Finally home.  Had a great visit with my parents after the reunion on my husband’s side was over and we got to go to a get-together at my uncle’s.  Too tired to think straight. But the birdfeeder is full again, the tomato plant survived our absence (it’s in a pot) and I’m going to un-load on you a little to say we’ve started the great laundry catch-up.

Now for my own bed to go collapse into.

(Oh, and, I have access to my mail again. Um, let’s say tomorrow.)

Imagine looking at a Claude Monet painting up very close, or any other pointilist painter’s, examining all those tiny dots that make up the picture.

Now imagine those dots are all shades of green/graygreen and they’re all moving, constantly moving, shimmering gently in the mountain breeze, countless thousands of individual hanging circles amidst the whole of the trees. Those are the aspens. It was gorgeous up there. We were at a cabin in the Utah mountains at 7950 feet. (Thank you GPS unit!)

I had a good case of altitude sickness–every morning I started to pass out, every single day I got offered to bail if I needed it, but I just didn’t want to miss anything. I googled: if the headache doesn’t respond to the analgesic, get off that mountain! Oh. Okay, then. I could stay.  (Somewhat… But I stayed.)

For the record, I knit really really slowly on low oxygen. On the other hand, what I knitted was done and didn’t have to be done again.

And who knew when we might get to all be together like that again. As I told one nephew, I would have loved more one-on-one moments and it was all so short, but on the other hand, it was better than a wedding for that.

My sister-in-law made her trademark decadent fudge sauce and some brownies and got some ice cream to  go with them for our last night there. Celebrate!  When everyone had been served, there was just a bit left in the pan–you can’t throw away that good stuff, you just can’t. It’s chocolate! I scraped out as much as I could onto the large serving spoon and went looking for someone with a little ice cream left.

I spotted a nephew, a young adult. A victim. I asked him.

Sure! he grinned.

Then instead of trying to pour the mostly-solid-by-then chocolate into his bowl, I simply put the spoon in his bowl; we’re talking a large mound of chocolate over a very small lump of mostly melted ice cream here.

Just then my son came up from behind, having  spotted that spoon in my hand a moment before–but it was gone now.

My nephew grinned up at his cousin and in a singsongy neener neener voice declared, “Your mom loves me more than youuuuu!”

We laughed so hard. SO hard.

And I would have missed that and so would they have.

I’m so glad I stayed!

I remember my mom once mentioning to me, while trying to read a  book to one of my then-small children, that it had gotten hard for her to read the pages that were in black print against a dark background.

I didn’t want my young mom to sound old.

Last night my niece started opening Cat in the Hat to read to her little girl and my husband immediately chimed in that I used to  read that to my kids while I was driving them around: I would chirp “ding!” to tell them when to turn the pages they were holding in the back seat.

The mom grinned: I was on.

I’m out of practice. About a third of the way into it I had to glance at the book Jana was holding to prompt the next lines out of me–but I still remembered how to make the story jump up and down on that ball along with the Cat.

That black print on dark blue background on one page, though–how the generations ease forward. But we had a fine time, and the little one was totally cool with it when I went, oops, I think I skipped a line, while bouncing right to the next.

Speaking of our story. The owner here likes wildlife too; I think it is safe to say not quite in the same way. I might want to argue that he’s practicing the ultimate anti-Darwin: nonsurvival of the biggest and fittest. There’s a black bear in the living room, a massive elk head and a moose’s across from it glaring it down upstairs, and in one room, big as day, a mountain lion.

Now I gotta tell you, what surprised me is, that lion is bigger than that bear. Here, kitty kitty! But if looks could kill, that bear would have our heads. It looks a lot fiercer. They sure caught him on a bad day.

On the other hand, if one of those bears were to try to come crashing through this cabin… I’d switch sides in the argument fast.

One nephew, a teenager last I saw him, is a grown man who walked in the door and exclaimed “Whoa!” at the first sight of me. Short auburn hair? Young mom? Not quite the same anymore. It’s always a shock. And back at him; it was so good to see him and all of us and to start to catch up.  Been too long.

The generations take a few more steps towards the future, we swap stories together on our pasts, shared and newly shared, we dance and there is great joy.

So. I was doodling with this pink silk/cashmere stuff. How to take a six-row pattern and make it into 34 rows long before good sense yells Stop! Nobody’s going to want to keep track of–no, just no. Keep it simple, okay?

Although, it IS really pretty and I like how it worked out. *I* want to knit it again. So maybe. Hmm.

Meantime, Michelle was talking to her friend Natalie, she of the recent hospital bout.

I was having an online conversation with Chan:

The pink is blocking. It’s silky and it’s pretty. Michelle is on the phone with Natalie right now.

(Does she like pink?)

Michelle beats around the bush for me.

“Medium colors.”

(But does she like…pink? –pointing at the thing on the floor drying.

Ah. Michelle tries again.

A big grin erupts as she stands there holding the phone, then a triumphant, “Hypothetically she likes pink!” And then a moment later, “She likes pink scarves!”

Gee, I wonder what happens next?

As we anxiously wait to hear more.

Let me start off with this link from two years ago to tell Natalie’s mom she’s not alone. My daughter was in school at BYU at the time; her daughter’s on an internship here, the same distance away from home.

Michelle is very protective of me re germ exposure and my impulse to jump in the car with her wasn’t worth the time the argument was going to take if I pursued it.  But I thanked her as she walked out the door.

She stopped in her tracks and shot back in her worry, Mom! To do anything else would be unthinkable and immoral!

Well, yes, of course, and she saw that clearly and dropped everything during a heavy day at her job; that’s why I was so proud of her.

She had met Natalie at a church young adults party. Natalie asked if she might have a ride home to where she was staying for the summer, and it turned out to be right in our immediate neighborhood anyway, so it went from sure, glad to help, to, oh cool! They were friends on the spot.

That made it so Natalie had someone in a town she didn’t know that she knew she could turn to.

Good thing.  Last night there was a call; she had a fever. The older woman whose house she was staying at was out of town.  We knew Natalie had no car, and a bike gets you nowhere when you’re at 102.  So when she said she had no aspirin or anything, did we, would we mind terribly? It was an of course and oh honey and I heard Michelle on the phone insisting that she call her any time in the night or day if she needed any help as she rummaged through our medicine cabinet before dashing over.  We found the meds. We sent along a new pillow for her, too, trying to make her comfortable.

We all had a feeling that wasn’t the end of it. I told Michelle last night not to worry about the car today, just assume it was hers if Natalie needed her.  We all said she was welcome to spend the night here, as a matter of fact we’d rather that than having her be sick and alone… But she did not.

The call came this afternoon and the very sound in her voice got Michelle’s instant attention. I know from an experience of mine at about that age how hard it is to go off to see some doctor you’ve never heard of in a town you don’t know, but it had gotten to the point that she knew she had to. Michelle was out the door in a flash, stopping only long enough to make that protest of but of COURSE!

Urgent Care took one look at her and said, Stanford ER. Go. We think it’s appendicitis.

Shirley, meantime, the woman she’d been staying with, came home from visiting her grandchildren and is now off at the hospital to be there for her–where I dearly wish I were, too.

I owe that.  But I am so grateful to her and Michelle, too, who took up the cause on all three mothers’ behalf as well as Natalie’s from the start.

I hesitate a moment to let the chickadee grab a last sunflower, the goldfinch, too.

I open the glass door.

The chickadees are always the last to leave and the first to come back. Also the most likely to fly right up by me while I’m at work and then veer off at the last second; they are as close to fearless as Darwin will allow. Upside down and hammering at the suet like a woodpecker, testing out the prickly elephant leaf for a toehold, flitting fast but never, ever hitting the glass, they’re my favorites.

Those and the Bewick’s, the little wren flipping itself around by the tail like a living helicopter.  A juvenile Bewick’s! Cool! I guess we’re raising them right!

The jays, though–they’ve completely disappeared. It surprised me when I realized how long it had been since I’d seen one.  Huh.  I guess the Cooper’s hawk showed them who was bossiest; they clearly nested a few backyards away this year, and the young seem to have imprinted somewhere else–not like the last few years, where the parents yelled at me for jaywalking if I went out my own back door. They kept it up at dark o’clock, too, screaming at only they knew what and off and on through the night.

Michelle slept better this spring.  My mother will recognize this phrase: joy and raptor.

I stand on a chair and pour the seed mix into the feeder.  Forget what the bags say: finches do not thistle while they work; nyjer, and safflower, too, stays put.  Back to the usual.

I love seeing the juvenile finches with their long skinny teenager look trying to land like a kid with a learner’s permit, their wings flapping furiously an inch above the patio,  sweeping them slightly backwards like a stickshift on a hill, then a hoppity-hoppity-hopp-phew-I-stopped! at last.

Lovebeads of millet in there too for the sun flower child, the dove mourning peacefully.

Looking up, I see a waiting line above me on the telephone wires and over there on that one tree, every top branch beperched.

It’ll be a moment before the squirrels come back; the finches and titmice, the towhees and occasional warbler or cowbird will have the patio to themselves a little longer because I stamped my foot at the squabbling furrytails. That’s one more peanut for dove, one less sunflower for squirrelkind.

I put the lid back on the Squirrelbuster–heads above me turn a little at the sound–scoot the chair back under the picnic table, and go to the sliding glass door.

They wait to hear that latch click. (I’ve experimented to see if they would take longer to come back if I don’t click it. It’s true, they do wait for that–but only so long, dinner’s ready!)

Click.

Time for LaughIn. Flock it to me flock it to me flock it to me flock it to me.

(Top picture added Sunday–one ball merino/silk/cashmere and I wish I’d bought the dark blue too. Done.)

I managed to sneak in, after a bit of family negotiations on the car/scheduling thing, a few minutes at Purlescence. Got back later than I’d wanted (the shop’s clock had stopped. I didn’t notice right away. I actually had a good excuse.)  I grabbed my purse and ran inside, grabbed the kid, jumped in the other car to run an errand with her–saving some gas mileage with the Prius rather than my doddering minivan–then she drove home so I could jump out and she could take off again: you know, the normal family your-car-my-car-goes here-goes there errand-y stuff.

She was off on her merry way for the evening before I realized that, wait: she’s got her dad’s car. And his keys.

And my car keys, accidentally left behind when I swapped seats with her.

That new 75% off Silk Road $2.50 ball of yarn from their sale with a specific intent and deadline in mind. It is sitting in my driveway, ignored and unknittable,  and I can’t do a thing about it right now.  AAA Emergency Roadside probably wouldn’t be amused.

Well, huh. I wonder if I could find some other yarn around here to play with in the meantime.

(Added later: where there’s a will, there’s a spare set. Silkroad in the key of Jo Sharp. There you go.)

A woman I didn’t know, about my age, was sitting in the back by herself before the start of the women’s meeting at church today, so I picked myself up and moved over there.  There’s enough aloneness in this world; this moment, I could do something about.

You’re Katie’s mom, aren’t you? I asked her.

Yes! She brightened.  We chatted a little.  This was her third grandchild, eleven days old now, she’d come to help out.

(Someday I will get into the baby knitting thing and I know if I do I will never stop, but we’re not there yet.)  I asked where she was visiting from, and when she said Cincinnati, I asked if she knew Gary M…?

(Right.  What are the chances.)

“Well YEAH!” She looked at me in delight and explained how she and her husband knew him.

I told her, very pleased, “My husband’s cousin” –not adding in all the details like how Gary and his siblings and my husband and I had gotten to know each other better going to college together, etc etc.

And yet again the world shrinks down to people size.