Channon’s comment sparked this one.  She and I wrote back and forth, with me going, eh, who wants to hear more about lupus, and her encouraging me to go ahead even when I said I can’t skip that part, it’s integral to the story. So here goes.

When it was first diagnosed, my kids were 2, 4, 6, and 8, and barely that.  I found myself suddenly being told I was not to go in the sun anymore.  Right. Like how am I supposed to adhere to THAT forevermore!?  Besides, I’m an outdoors type.

My arthritis was severe enough then (it isn’t now) that they tested me for Rheumatoid, and throw in this, that, and the other, and I was just plain having a hard time.  Not to mention, my mom’s cousin had died of lupus a week before her wedding date.  Cheers.

So.  Richard decided he needed to do something about all that. The lupus he couldn’t fix.  (The Crohn’s later was LE cells branching out.)  He wanted to cheer me up.  So he called a number of our friends and they all threw me a surprise half birthday party.

When they all yelled, “SURPRISE!” I was going, What?  What is this? A surprise party? But this is June!  My birthday’s in December!… Huh?  Well, oookay.  Chocolate and friends, who’s complaining.

There was a cake: half a 13×9 sheet cake, baked and artfully decorated by our friend LaRee with the words

Hap

Birt

Ali

on it going down the cake.  Which was dark chocolate.  Yum.  And a very good time was had by all, with much laughter.  My husband’s a genius.

Turns out, LaRee had had the same initial reaction to Richard’s proposal but had been perfectly willing to go along with it, and hey, let’s party!

So, months later, it was going to be LaRee’s birthday.  I found out.  My chocolate torte (recipe in the comments here) was already well on its way to what it is now and I decided to bake her one, dark chocolate ganache on a nearly-flourless cake.  But I’m no good at writing with a tube, so when I surprised her with it, I gave her a card instead, with the inscription:

“Hap Birt Ali,” she said.  Happy birthday to you, too, she re-torted.

(And you know?  Somehow we all muddled through just fine.  And life is very good.)

This is Friday as I type. Well, sort of.  By extension.  I’m too wired to sleep (although, the time stamp’s an hour ahead of me.)  Anyway, my husband suddenly said to me tonight, Tomorrow’s your birthday and we have that thing at church going on then; would you like to go to Flea Street Cafe tonight?

Asking someone who eats if they’d like to go to Flea Street for dinner is like asking someone who knits if they’d like some qiviut.

Even when I saw the side door unlocked and thought in puzzlement, when did I do that? and locked it on our way out, it didn’t dawn on me.  Richard said later that he’d unlocked various doors three times and I had locked them all.

He managed to walk out just behind me so he got that last one after all, and quietly texted “going!”  He also got permission from Phyllis and Nina in case he needed it to persuade me–I did want to go to Kepler’s after dinner, but I really wasn’t up to it and he easily talked me out of it.

“SURPRISE!!!” The house was full of people.

Okay, I should have seen that one coming.  And I did wonder if someone would do something Saturday night. I most certainly didn’t expect them to do it Friday night.  I now understand why my husband kept trying to tell me all the way home that I was actually already 50, by any reasonable argument, while I was telling him he was just jealous that he was an old man while I was a youthful 40-something-er.  He even had the audacity to tell me that by Chinese counting I was 51.  Nuh UH!

I had no idea.  And they could tell, given what my kitchen looked like.  Not a clue.

A great time was had by all, and it is now Saturday, so I guess it’s true: I’ve tumbled over the hill and joined my sweetie into fiftytudinousness.  Thank you for the amaryllis bulb, Richard.  (Ed: Oh, wait, that one was from Alyson, I’ve been corrected.  Thank you, Alyson!)  Thank you for the flowers, Nina and Phyl. Thank you everybody for coming and for the cake and the veggies and the mulled cider and the chocolate and the apricot flan and the fruit pastries and the…

And you know? Richard passed on the dessert menu, but Jesse at Flea Street, after coming out to say hi to this pair of longtime customers, sent out four dark chocolate truffles anyway.  (Jesse! Those were the BEST EVER–THANK you!) …yes I ate my two, I couldn’t miss that, that’s part of why I skipped out on Kepler’s just in case, Crohn’s blahblahblah–SO worth it…

But my Richard said no to ordering dessert at Flea Street Cafe. THAT is when I should have been tipped off.  Totally.

Over the river and through the redwoods, to Aunt Mary Lynn’s house we go…

Sixteen adults, four small children, one visiting dog, one house in the Santa Cruz mountains.  One husband-and-wife pair’s birthdays, so a large pecan pie got roasted and sung over.

I didn’t catch the eighteen-month-old before my camera battery died, but I did get the youngest on her determined way.   Doggone, but Cinnamon the Norse (I think that’s what they said) terrier learned fast that tiny people who walk funny or crawl are to be kept a distance from–it was amazing watching how adept the dog was at ducking around, under, and between those chair parts.  Not in an overly big hurry, just, nope, kid.  Must be so big or bigger to come play.

In the kitchen, I told Aunt Nancy at one point, “Here, let me do that,” and her reaction was, “Are you kidding? I found a chore I could do. This is mine!” Which is a lot of how the day went: people looking for their chance to pitch in and help, when there were already so many ready hands.

Aunt Nancy is the wife of my father-in-law’s oldest brother. She has beautifully-done dark strawberry blonde highlights.  I looked at her and grinned, “It’s not fair; some of us, you know, our roots don’t grow in dark.”  (Not that I’m dyeing mine anymore anyway.)  She looked at me and my gray, a good generation younger, and guffawed appreciatively.  We had a wonderful visit.

I brought my Lisa Souza Timaru yarn in Peacock and had a few of the women going oooh! over it, telling me how gorgeous it is.  And it is.  I’d show it to you, too, except I forgot to recharge that camera battery last night.

And a very good time was had by all.

Open that door for me, wouldja?  Thanks.  Wait–no?  You’ll walk into it and burn yourself?  You are SO my child!

(Waits ten minutes.  Checks email.  Child/perpetrator wanders off. Back in kitchen, alone now.  Opens oven door.  Waits.)

Dustpan and brush?  Check.

No. Wait. Synthetic. Might melt. Hmm.

(Re-establishes dominance over oatmeal pie crust: you WILL adhere to those sides this time thankyouverymuch.  No playing trampoline this time.)

Opens oven.  Broom proves a little awkward–let’s not sweep old hairballs all the way across the kitchen onto the newly-reestablished pie crust, okay?–moves upper rack to the top and recommences sweeping oven. Thinks might not ever again get a chance to actually sweep an oven.  Thinks how cornstraw makes a nice fire starter and about being at the other end of all those starters–but at least they won’t melt.  Uh, yeah, fire extinguisher still good.  Sweeps oven some more as the piecrust bits run and hide under the heating element.  Sees more bits go down inside the hinge socket of the door: entombed forevermore, to be excavated by some future Egyptmeofpietologist.  Pokes at run-and-catch-me’s with a wooden fork.

Child enters.  Oven devoid of major pieces, down to the last sandyish bits.  Exclaims, I didn’t mean for you to have to do that!  Tells child to look at pie crust.  Oh Mom, you did it!

Blows across fingertips.  Heh.  Puts rack back in place. Turns oven back on.  Tells child she can prebake her pie crust shortly.  Doesn’t mention not actually liking banana cream pie child is looking forward to, much less banana soycream pie. There’s another crust, safely baked, spread with melted chocolate, waiting for strawberries and strawberry puree filling; that will definitely do the job nicely.

(With a bajillion thanks to the fellow at Whole Foods on Emerson Street in Palo Alto, who, after four stores earlier in the day, got the phone call asking if please please did they have Earth Balance Sticks for the severely dairy-allergic kid who wanted to make a pie she could actually eat on Thanksgiving Day with the relatives. Who said, We discontinued that; no, wait, let me check. We stocked it for the holidays! We have it! Come! And whom I thanked in person as we loaded our basket with four boxes, to his very obvious delight at being thanked in the craziness that was a grocery store the day before Thanksgiving.)

Michelle flew home last night from college.  And boy are we going to celebrate.

She and I spent today at the clinic with a break at home for a quick lunch.

The tumor on her eyeball–the eye doctor’s description of it a year ago, not mine–that they’ve been keeping track of got finally laid to rest today as a simple small growth of cells leftover from her cataract surgery at age 7.  No tumor. Normal. Class dismissed.

The hematologist sent her to other departments for further testing.

No arteriole blood clot.  No bone marrow biopsy: no need now or hopefully ever.  Platelets high, but no cancer.  Class dismissed.

So. Suburban Correspondent and I exchanged a few emails offline with me giving her a little more background story: my daughter had had surgery at 18 months and the plastic surgeon had had us put paper tape, available on scotch-tape-style rolls at the drugstore, on her incision site 24/7 for six months minimum to keep the scarring way down.  Granted, she’s 22 now and that advice is a little old by now. But it also means I can affirm that given how large an area he operated on and how small and faint her scar is–and the fact that her father grows massive scars when he scars–the doctor’s advice clearly was good.  Suburban Correspondent’s little one had just gotten stitches, so the topic was of interest.

Suburban’s husband Larry teased her about taking advice from her imaginery internet friend. And so our pair of posts ensued, with her insisting I really was real; I’d written this!

The kicker of a follow-up is that my husband was then up in the night with a migraine and did not turn on the light.  Light hurts. Light might wake up his wife.  Darkness, yes, darkness good, light bad.

Unless you happen to turn around in mid-stride, misjudge, are taller than the average doorframe–we replaced most of the doorframes with non-standard ones for this very reason–and you smack your forehead.  HARD.

So, hubster puts some tape on it like the plastic surgeon said long ago, whatever he can quickly find, which happens to be the superduper deathgrip stuff rather than the flimsy paper variety, and goes to bed rather than waking me up to take him in for stitches.

Somehow sometime he took that tape back off.  I guess his forehead bothered his sleeping self.

I wake up in the morning, and dude!  Not only is his face Frankensteined, but he’s got two faint rows of white (glue from the tape) embedded in his skin.  You hit the wall so hard you sank the paint off the wall into your forehead?!

So I reminded him, 24/7 paper tape, hey Frankenstein, you know, you gotta keep that scarring down.

And I got this rolling of his eyes and a not on your life! reaction back.

I guess the moral of the story is, I can tell an 18-month-old in friendly terms that she IS going to wear that tape, end of story, and thus it was.  But not someone that much bigger than me. And hey, Larry–it really did happen.

And the fact that no way no how will he let me photograph it to memorialize it forever on the Internet is all the more proof that he’s real, too.

A few more pictures:

This is Jill at Kaleidoscope.  If you ever want to support a really nice LYSO, and you’re shopping online, and you like really nice yarns and soft yarns and quick delivery, I highly recommend her and her shop.

And I had to throw in this Ben and Jerry’s shot just for fun.  Euphoric stuff indeed.

Saturday night two weeks ago after Stitches was over for the evening, Karen and I went to the Boogie Knights concert benefiting the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Tommy Fund.  Kate in the middle here sang.

(Okay, I have to do the designer thing here and add, Karen’s wearing the original Water Turtles shawl–we looked for more turtles at the Canal, but it was just the wrong time of year, I guess; Kate’s wearing her Kate shawl, no, the pattern’s not out yet, and Deb is wearing her Michelle shawl. Deb and I wrote to each other and compared notes and supported each other as our kids were going through their teens, and my Michelle is the same age as her Kate, so knitting that pattern for her seemed just the thing.)  Note how the lights above them look like a halo glowing out from their heads, centered particularly on Kate’s. I quite like that. It fits.

Okay, this one’s for my family: this is what the old homestead looks like now that the remodeling and painting is complete.  It’s built into the hillside; from the back, there’s California-like high and long window space all across the back looking out on the woods.  The house has been turned into a small private assisted-living facility in the middle of the neighborhood by the woman who bought it.  If I were elderly and infirm, looking out on those gorgeous woods every day is exactly where I’d want to be.  There’s now a large wooden deck out the living room with sliding glass doors stepping out onto it.  Perfect.  I debated knocking on the door and telling them about the cute chipmunks under the carport who will cautiously take peanuts out of your fingers if you hold still a very long time, and the raccoons, turtles, foxes and deer in the backyard.  But I let it go.  I have quite a few memories of possums landing in the trashcans and unable to get back out: you should see the teeth on those things.  Dad would tip the can over on its side, whack the bottom with a broom to make it unfriendly in there, and go back inside where we would watch till the thing waddled out of there.

A few photos from the trip, with more to come:

Amanda aka NHKnittingMama.

Karin, who gifted me with the black baby alpaca that became my friend Amy’s shawl, holding Lucy, and Kristine, Lucy’s mother, who took Jennie some Ben and Jerry’s emergency room medicine.

Paula, wearing her spindle-spun Blue Jay shawl in an absolute perfect imitation of the original, color-wise, with Sue, and that cute tall guy standing behind her.

Joan, who lives in Vermont and whose blog is called knittingbytheocean.  My daughter, when she moved to Vermont, described it as being like California without the ocean (and with real weather), so Joan’s blog name has always made me chuckle.

My sister Carolyn, who met me at JFK Airport during our layover on the way home.  It took her as long to get there as it took us to fly from Vermont, even though she lives in Manhattan.  She scheduled her son to fly home to coincide with our stop and we had a wonderful, albeit all too short time together.  But at least I got to see her!  And I did not risk missing my flight this time, given our four-hour layover.  I snapped this picture as she was answering a call from him saying his plane had just landed.

This is a shot my childhood friend Karen took near the Potomac, looking up at Swain’s Lock at a point where there’s an overflow release for the C&O Canal.

The spot where I fell through the canoe, several steps away and looking the opposite direction from the above picture. Yes, that’s straight down.  I knew you’d all want to see the spot.

Fell into bed at home at 2 am Eastern time, woke up early here waiting for the sun to hurry up and rise already.  Got some catching up to do.

Our grandcats were so funny: they were not allowed in the room we were staying in at our daughter’s for fear of them getting into the knitting and who knows what all else.

Unfortunately, the wireless mouse to my husband’s laptop got left out, never to be seen again, at least not before we left.   I was seen playing with the mouse so it must be important, so away it vanished into the night.

Eve the kitten has gone from a tiny little thing from the last picture I saw of her to being fluffed out now into a beautiful black cat with longish hair and large round green eyes that Sam said make her a perfect Basement Cat.  She’s got a small tuft of extra-long white fur immediately above each of her claws, making her look like a totally soft fluffball of innocence–which didn’t stop her from rolling her eyes at me at one point, glancing upwards while narrowing her eyelids.  Stupid human, just wait till *I* have opposable thumbs! I will open that door *myself*!  My guffawing at her for it did nothing to mollify her. 

Eve tends to follow Anya, the older cat, and copy her.  I left our door open at one point.  Eve was hanging back this time.  Anya came barrelling down that hallway pell mell, trying not to be thwarted this time, and skidded out while trying not to splat into the bed, then did a 360 around it on the slippery newly refinished wooden floor, claws and limbs flying wildly.  I was out of her sight inside the room as she came running and got to hear her coming and then watch her ballet act.  When I laughed, there was the usual cattitude of licking a paw and “I didn’t do that” after I picked her up and escorted her back out.  Too funny.

And when I read a newspaper page on the floor, both cats promptly sat on it, totally covering  up the article.  Sam laughed and said that was classic cat, right there.

But would someone explain to me Anya’s need to lick my pink wool and silk skirt?  Gently, as if it were a kitten. Curious.

I was afraid I would forget my Tuscan cheese from the Cabot factory, and I did, but that just means Sam and her husband get to enjoy it; no complaints there.  I deserved that. I went to the fridge to get it just before we left for the airport after they left for work, let temptation get to me, and swiped a small spoonful of the Ben and Jerry’s Creme Brulee instead.  (Oh. Um.  Hi, Sam!)  That’ll teach me.  But it was definitely a freudian slip, because I knew how much they would love that cheese too. I looked up the local suppliers here of Cabot cheese this morning, and the number of stores within ten miles made me laugh–welcome home to northern California where everybody’s a foodie!

Now if only I could get someone here to start making apple cider doughnuts. I hadn’t ever heard of those before you all said something, and now I have to either find some here (not likely) or try making a batch myself.

A little Cabot’s on the side would go nicely.

Thank you all for the kind words yesterday!

The Ben and Jerry’s plant was full of Ben and Jerry’s whimsical and colorful cartoons, both 3-D and painted on the walls; even the tubes in the factory were painted in lavender and the like, a very cheerful place.  The tour guide clearly enjoyed giving out the free samples at the end.

From there, we went to the Cabot’s cheese factory store, the Lake Champlain Chocolates factory store–their hot cocoa is enough to get me back to Vermont right there–and a brief glance into the teddy bear factory next door just out of curiosity.  Later, running an errand, our daughter asked if we wanted to take the short route or the scenic route. I laughed and answered, This is Vermont: it’s ALL the scenic route!

Which is true.  I can see why she and her husband fell in love with the place so fast. It is just so gorgeous everywhere you turn–and this is with the trees bare for the winter, pretty much.  Lacy bits of very white fog drifting through the peaks everywhere, black marbled granite to either side of the road as you drive, pine trees offering some green among the endless tree trunks and bare limbs of the highly forested views… Beautiful.

And then we took them out to Butler’s for dinner at Essex Inn last night, the restaurant of the New England Culinary Academy. I can just hear all the Vermonters swooning.  As my father once put it, How many meals do you eat in your life?  Now, how many do you remember?  That was definitely one for remembering–and then the head chef came out and greeted us at the end of the meal: he’d seen our son-in-law go by, a friend of his, and came out to say hi.  We got to thank him in person for the exquisite meal.  And then after he left, an extra dessert mysteriously appeared at our places: the best dark chocolate truffles I have ever tasted, bite-size cheesecakes, tiny chocolate cookies.

He didn’t have to bribe us; sure, Vermont, we’ll come back!

Home tomorrow.

Karen picked me up this afternoon and we meandered: first, we drove past the house I grew up in.  It’s been sold and remodeled.  It’s lovely, but it was an odd feeling–after 44 years of my folks being there, it’s definitely not home anymore. We drove past the driveway going down to the Frank Lloyd Wright house around the corner, too, where you could just see the outline of the ship-shaped roof through the winter-bare tree trunks.  Wright’s grandson lives there still, an elderly man who a few years ago welcomed his neighbors by special invitation, including my parents, to a tour of the insides, right at the edge of a nature preserve and overlooking Cabin John Creek.  Like all Wright buildings, it blends right into its landscape.

Then Karen took me past her daughter Amy’s office, where Amy did a really cool braiding job on my hair.  In my Kaffe Fassett coat, my Begay turquoise necklace, Birkenstocks and handknit socks, and my ready-for-a-wedding braids, I felt like I looked like a Californian somehow in the air that was finally beginning to chill.

Karen announced to my surprise that we were going to Cunningham Falls so I could see the falls this time when it was no longer a drought. Oh GOOD! I’d really wanted to do that, but I wasn’t going to ask; it’s way out there in the Maryland mountains, on the opposite side of the road from Camp David.  COOL!

The woods near the falls were surprisingly open to the sky, with tree trunks on the ground, many of them sawed into chunks.  What happened to my park?! Turns out a tornado had ripped through there right below the falls.  More water in the falls now, but fewer trees in the forest.  I look forward to going back to see what changes and rebirthing comes there next, to see what tree varieties grow up in place of the old.

Catoctin? I asked Karen?  Absolutely! And so the two of us turned north a mile or two and went to Catoctin Mountain Orchards, where my family had picked fruit every summer growing up, weighing our boxes before and after we went through the strawberries, the cherries, the you name its, stooping low for hours or, better yet, climbing ladders up into trees with our parents’ actual permission to be up there.  They have a large roadside farmstand now.  I bought one of my daughter Michelle’s favorite foods, their homemade apple butter, and talked to the woman about shipping it home for me.  I’d once hauled an extra suitcase back to California filled with their jars, very heavy, wheels or no wheels, worrying about breaking glass and sticky jam; I had no desire to do that again.

She had no idea about any of that.  She showed me the chart with the shipping charges and warned me that that was besides the cost of the bottles themselves.  Yes, I understood that.  Karen and I hemmed and hawed over a few other purchases–I got a gorgeous matted 8×10 photograph of the falls in the Fall for $25 to take home–and the elderly woman felt the need to tell me twice more just to make sure I understood what costs I was about to be in for.

Yes, thanks.  I got it.  Twenty for the shipping: “Well, yes, those jars are heavy!” I explained to her that I didn’t want to haul them through not one but two airports.  I didn’t feel the need to explain about me doing airports in wheelchairs, about how happy I was to let the UPS guy do the work.

But more to the point, I wanted those jars home safely. My daughter had just had a major health scare last month, she was coming home at Thanksgiving for some doctor time, and I needed to do something to make it all better.  Catoctin Mountain Orchards apple butter was exactly the right thing, and I couldn’t wait to see her face light up.

Sometimes, it’s knitting that I do to try to get that effect.  But I can be flexible.

(ps And then Richard, Karen, Amy and I went out to dinner afterwards and got The. Best. Waitress. in the entire state of Maryland.  I made a point of telling her manager how much we’d enjoyed her as we left.  And if she reads this–THANK YOU!)

(The colors are more subdued in real life.)

When my grandfather died in ’94, the coat that I wore the winter day of his funeral up in the Rocky Mountains was my Kaffe Fassett one, knitted in one strand of mohair with one of wool on size 5.5mm needles: in other words, it was dense and surprisingly warm, even with snow on the ground.  My feet, on the other hand, froze memorably.

I felt somehow like it wasn’t quite right, though, to wear that there. I just felt it called too much attention to itself at a solemn moment.   So not longer after, for the first time since I’d gotten married, I splurged on a new, more formal, long wool-and-cashmere charcoal-colored coat.  Gorgeous.  When it came, though, the sizing was generous.  Um, like, real generous in the sleeves–I’m short-armed to begin with.

My children are tall.  Returns are a major hassle.  I kept it.

My oldest went off to college, and at the first snow, she called and told us she had her electric blanket set to “Deep fat fry!”

Two years later, her brother was packing for his first semester at BYU too, and she was having far too much fun telling him just how cold he was going to be out there.  Heh.  I heard her, thought about it, and it was clear to me I should have done this two years sooner:

I had bought that long coat for all the wrong reasons. I had bought it to fit in with my husband’s co-workers at their Christmas parties.  Did I think it would be more impressive than my Kaffe Fassett?  I had bought it so as not to be loud come the day that my grandmother should pass away; I did wear it to her funeral two years after Grampa’s, where we were, again, standing in snow at the gravesite.   But my husband and I had run out of 90-something grandparents to have leave us; we were done with that need.

And what nobody could have foreseen was, the thing now drove me nuts: the bottom of it flapped and wrapped around my cane with each left-foot-forward step, now that I was using a cane post-accident.  When your balance depends on your muscular feedback, this is the equivalent of my coat trying to throw me down on the ground in rhythm with my gait. Tell me, do your clothes do wrestling moves on you?

So my daughter upgraded to a longer, nicer coat. She traded it back and forth later with her little sister’s navy peacoat, each as she saw the other needing whichever.

…And I am hanging onto the memory of being warm at Grampa’s funeral, because my Kaffe Fassett is going to have a large job to do at my older daughter’s house in Vermont.  The sleeves on this thing came out too long, and I’ve never gotten around to going back and fixing that.

My children are tall.

The housesitter’s got the keys, the flight’s leaving soon.  Baltimore first, here we come!

As I mentally pack for my trip before starting the actual packing:

I inherited this pin from my grandmother. I was startled to see Gov. Palin wearing a replica of it at one point, but I guess it means she can’t tell me I’m not a real American; I’ve got the jewelry to prove my bona fides.  Heh. (What did they do, hand these out at a Republican convention once? I’d love to know the story behind this. Mom? Uncle Bob?)

My late grandfather, as I’ve mentioned before, was a Republican senator, and he amassed an eclectic collection of elephants over his 24 years in office.  When he passed away at 95, each of his grandchildren was told to pick one out and take it home.  I chose a small mostly-roundish handblown lead crystal one, beautifully crafted; note that the tip of its trunk is 4″ high and the little thing weighs over 10 ounces.

I wrapped it carefully in my knitting that morning to cushion it from harm.  And late in the day, heading for the airport, totally forgot it was in there.

My knitting was of course in my carry-on bag for my flight home; I would never trust my projects to baggage handlers, much less fly without something to occupy me.

This was before 9/11.  The airport screener ran my bag through and freaked, and I thought oh crud: I brought those because they’re not my favorite needles, but I should have remembered they were metal. I tried to reassure her: “It’s just knitting needles.”  She shot me a look of oh you drop dead! that I thought was totally uncalled for, and in her panic, dropped everything and ran for the manager.

Leaving me with free access before me should I happen to care to nonchalantly pick up my bag and stroll away whistling.  Which of course I wasn’t about to do, but…

The manager and the screener came running back.  They started throwing everything out of my bag onto the conveyor helter-skelter.  Given that I was only flying in and back for an overnighter, everything, actually, was in that carry-on, including my underwear, being shaken out and thrown aside during their search.  Thanks, guys.

Then the screener saw the elephant.  She suddenly knew.  It had looked exactly on the screen how she’d been trained to see that a bomb would.  She screeched in relief, grabbing it and holding it high for all the other screeners and the manager to see, starting to sob in relief.

While everybody behind me in line waited for me to repack my delicates.  Joy.

During the flight afterwards, I dropped one of my straights as I was changing rows and it instantly rolled somewhere far behind me in the ascending plane. I never saw it again.

And I never knitted with metal straights again.  Enough was enough.

Note the new category.  I wanted to make it easier for people who were curious to find old posts such as about the Pony Express rider‘s daughter–who is still alive–to be able to go look them up.

Reading Sharon Randall‘s Sept 16th column reminded me of this.  A few years ago, one of my sister’s sons had a school assignment: he and his I think fifth-grade classmates each made a book, putting together so many blank pages, and mailed it away, asking that it be forwarded around and then mailed back by a date towards the end of the school year.  Each person it was sent to was asked to write about any particular historical date that they had memories of and might wish to write about and then to pass it on to the next person who would be interested in adding to it.

I quite honestly don’t remember what I wrote.  Having grown up just outside DC, I remember there were a lot of things I debated telling them about:

The announcements crackling badly over the PA system at Seven Locks Elementary School, with Mr Newcomb, the principal, telling us of yet another loss: President Kennedy.  Helen Keller.  Martin Luther King.  Robert Kennedy.

Watching the lunar landing.  Finding out that my little brother‘s new friend at school was Neil Armstrong’s son.  Living where we did, connections such as that were common.

The hitchhikers we passed, as my mom drove me from DC to Peabody Institute in Baltimore for the Maryland State Piano Competition, their thumbs up and signs held high: New Jersey.  Delaware.  Maine.  Asking for a ride for any part of the distance to help them get home after the March on Washington to protest the Vietnam War, hundreds of people along the freeway where it was illegal to hitchhike, but hey, that’s where the cars were, and hitchhiking was the norm in those days.  Not a one was hassled by the cops for it, as far as we could tell.

It’s so different now: when was the last time you saw someone with a thumb up along the side of the road?

The DC mounted police and the protesters at our picnic…

But what I do remember is, my brother and my father got that book before I did, and before I passed it along, I photocopied their pages so I could pocket their memories, too.

I’d never heard the story before of how my dad had found out about Pearl Harbor.  Of his being squished down among 49 Christmas trees bumping along in the back of a pickup truck coming out of the forest, doing his part in a Boy Scout fundraiser. (I always pictured the truck white. I have no idea what color it was. I never realized it till I typed this, but, I always just assumed it was.) I could smell the intensity of the needles and the bite of the cold on my face from here as I read Dad’s words.

They were met and stopped by his father, who had raced to where they were to tell them the news: the US, too, was now at war.

Dad’s brothers served, as did Dad.

Mom sent this to the family two years ago, a story of forgiving and reconciliation.

I think that covers the posts that ought to be in the History category so far.

May we pass on a world with good stories for our children to tell.

One last thought, leading to perhaps the point of all this: when my grandfather turned 90, it was the same weekend that my brother got married to a girl in the same city, so there were a lot of family members gathered together.  A cousin prepared a list of questions to pepper Grampa with, and he and Gram and their five children were seated around a table at my aunt’s house, the rest of us playing audience around them, with a tape recorder going and a video camera running.  The questions got Grampa reminiscing and telling stories and it was wonderful.

Eventually the cousin manning the camera announced with chagrin that he’d run out of videotape.  We of the cousins generation watched from the sides with amazement as our parents all visibly relaxed around that table and started elbowing and teasing each other like the teenagers we’d never before seen them act like and started telling the REAL stories on each other now, and hey, do you remember Fran’s pony?

There is history in our older loved ones.  If you at all can, go grab something to record it with and go ask the questions that will help a part of them last forever.

While the aunts and uncles were laughing and telling on each other, the cousin with the videorecorder turned to my husband and whispered, “The audiotape’s still running.”

(Edited to add, found one more, about Abraham Lincoln and my ancestor.)

Thank you, everybody. I especially loved the image of the angels blowing on their fingertips.  If you feel so inclined, if you could say a prayer to help speed Kyle along his way on his recovery, and for his mom, I’d be most appreciative; thanks.

Here’s what happened:

Newbie.

Friend’s new skateboard (how do you stop this thing again?)

Mountain.

The doctors couldn’t believe he’d survived.

It makes me wonder once again at my own very existence and that of my siblings and cousins: my dad and his brothers used to have summer jobs as caddies at a golf course atop Lake Tahoe and ride their bikes straight down the mountain home to Carson City, Nevada.  Dad told me this while we were driving that exact spot, and looking down that mountain, I was speechless and he was chuckling and allowing as how yeah, it wasn’t the brightest move.  He described the speeds they would hit by the time they got to the bottom and how very fortunate they were that a car never appeared at the wrong place or wrong time or that a rock never got in the roadway, because they were going far too fast to safely turn to the side.

But I have to add: in my own experiences, the people I’ve encountered who went through major traumas or illnesses in their youth generally grew up to be deeply compassionate individuals who are a great blessing to society.  A heck of a way to get there, and I have no doubt Kyle would have done just fine in that regard without this; he’s a good soul.