A friend’s funeral is tomorrow, and there were so many people in town today whom I hadn’t seen in years. Kids I saw grow up who now have their own kids going off to college, or in some cases, kindergarten. Hugs and catchings-ups and grief and love. George with his music would have loved that we’re doing an encore in his name in the morning.

And then we bugged out of there to go hold the baby and see Richard’s sister, who had flown in to see the new little one and be yet another surrogate grandparent for what time we have together.

My little brother and his best friend from across the street, the photo gifted to our family when the Colberts were about to move away. Paul was my older brother’s age, Peter was mine, Little Stevie and Bryan were the babies of our families.

You know you grew up on a quiet street when… I’ll just quote my brother here:

The coastal afghan on small needles is just long enough that I can begin to see how it really is going to be, but there’s not really enough to show it off yet. Eight and a half by 49″, five rows per inch or six and a half as the black hole yawns, either way, it takes time.

I found the color I’d wanted all along but couldn’t find and didn’t think existed in Rios: a near white with a touch of not gray but blue for the fog. Littleknits had it. Cosmos. It’ll be here when I need it.

I just got a good reason to push hard and get this done at a not-leisurely pace: there is a third person I really need to knit an afghan for between now and Christmas, I mean, like, I really really do.

P.S. Peregrine update here.

Pretty sure my reaction was, Damn!, because at 2:00 a.m. and the fifth time of this I was not at my best, but I was asleep immediately before and after reaching up for it and I don’t remember.

Decades ago, my husband changed some of the light switches to dimmer-function ones including in our bedroom. What we’d forgotten, because it’s an old system and that part stopped working long ago, is that you could control it remotely.

Someone else in the neighborhood has that same old system. Someone else’s remote was getting to our bedroom. This only started a few months ago. And that someone else does not live by our time zone.

I know exactly which house those hours would track to–but I don’t *know* and I don’t know them and how do you ask your neighbors which one of them is turning your own lights on at you at dammit o’clock repeatedly when how would they know that that’s what it was doing?

I was so done with this problem.

He looked up what was available these days, got the package a few days ago, got out the tools today, and that switch is out of here. My hero.

They decided to do something a little different for today: so they asked ten people to give two-minute talks on Mother’s Day.

I was second to last. I didn’t mention all the national parks, I didn’t reference Simon and Garfunkel’s “We’ve all gone to look for America,” I kept it short.

I said, When I was ten my family drove from Maryland to Wisconsin, where we rode a boat up the Wisconsin lakes, to the Peace Bridge, across western Canada, then down the West Coast, to Texas, into Juarez, Mexico, and home. Six kids and a camping trailer. Two months on the road. Mom spent it knitting my sister a sweater and I wanted one like that and I would study her hands. She taught me how to knit on that trip.

I said that my brother as an adult had told Mom he didn’t think he could ever have the patience she had to raise a future family like that.

Mom answered in astonishment, How do you think I learned it?!

I said, If you wanted any help, if you needed something done, if you needed a kind word, my mom was–is, at 95–the one to do it. I want to be like my mom when I grow up.

A friend told me afterwards that the two little girls sitting behind her, sisters, had protested in unison out loud in outrage: “But she IS a grownup!”

Like, She KNOWS that, doesn’t she?!!!

66/34 cashmere/cotton. I finished it this morning. The weather is going to be cool through Friday, then start being hot–I wanted her to have it now.

And so I broke my own rule: I did not block and dry it. I figured those were both limp fibers and the pattern wasn’t curling up like it would in wool. Good enough to go.

This was for a friend who looks out for everybody. When Richard was in the hospital for nine days, she brought me a half gallon of homemade soup to eat when I got home from the hospital for the night not wanting to do anything but just sheer survival.

She told me not to worry about bringing that giant Ball jar back.

Today she was talking to her cousin, who is going through a rough patch, and I slipped a small handled bag next to her trying not to interrupt; I got a small nod of acknowledgment and got out of the way.

Richard had watched me with bemusement as I’d pulled a sheet of blank printer paper into a circle, put the ends of it into that jar, stuffed the cowl in the center, and pushed them both on in there. I adjusted the paper so there was no gap to let one see what was inside it and with the lid on top, there you go.

I didn’t have to be there when she pulled the jar out of the small bag to put it away. When she went What? over the paper. When she opened the lid. I got everything I needed just out of anticipating it all and yes when she did she immediately called, deafness or no deafness on my part, to exclaim over it to me.

I told her her husband had told me her favorite color.

And now she needs to tell me her cousin’s.

This afternoon we got the text we weren’t expecting quite yet and I quickly assessed: no, it wouldn’t do. I changed my clothes because only the softest cashmere would do against her sweet face, should it be that I might get to hold her.

We both got to.

We visited for about an hour, not wanting to wear our niece out, telling her and her husband stories from when she was born that she hadn’t known and there was no longer anyone else who could tell her. How she’d slept so well vs my newborn who didn’t. Eight hours.

We reminisced over how, when Richard and I had just started going out, he was two hours late for a date and I was thinking I had just been stood up for the first time in my life–but by him of all people?! What was going on?

My doorbell finally rang. He had been at her folks’ house an hour away and her dad had been woefully late giving him a lift home.  He knew this was not good. So to keep me from getting mad he’d done a master move:

He’d borrowed a baby.

I opened my door and there was this 6’8″er while I was still trying to get used to that and he had a small baby over his shoulder and my immediate instinctive reaction was to think, What is that baby doing so far off the ground?!

Which made no sense and has been a joke between us ever since.

That of course, I told her, was your big brother.

So many stories this new family will make of their own.

At the sound of it, I am just not that adventuresome. And yet if you put some in front of me, most likely life and being a good example to my grandkids of being unafraid of something new would require that I gamely give it a try.

Maybe.

In a NY Times article called “13 Dishes You Should Eat to Understand Food,” the first thing mentioned is Rommegrot.

Sour cream porridge with smoked reindeer heart.

…Say what now?

Can you just hear my Swedish ancestors laughing and going, C’monnn, you can do it!

I’m picturing those reindeer we met on a farm in Palmer, Alaska, gently eating little bits of dry reindeer chow out of our hands (reindeer are surprisingly small.) The guide told us to be careful not to touch their antlers, because the soft velvet stage while they grow out caused, as a matter of protection to the animal, a great deal of pain if you did. Once the antlers were fully grown and hardened and much less vulnerable to damage and no longer full of blood they could lose, then they were fine.

They were gentle and trusting and happy to be fed.

On a cool day after we got home from our trip, I put on a sweater–and felt something in the pocket.

A single small piece of reindeer kibble had fallen in and followed me home.

Eat their hearts? But they’ve won mine.

Six of them: if it’s April, it’s someone’s birthday around here. The phone rang, FaceTime buzzed, then the doorbell: Surprise! Doordash, two mini cakes, making sure things were done right.

The next birthday girl chimed in: the baby should arrive late next week.

So her new daughter, too, might join the Aprilization of this family if she wants to. It is possible they’ll have the same day.

I asked if she wanted to see a photo or wait till we could bring it to her?

A photo!

And so she got this and the story of the clover chains and loved it.

I wondered if knowing her baby afghan was finished was that one last thing she needed in order to feel ready to go.

With you all the way, honey, with you all the way.

With a few edits on the names, this is what I wrote tonight for my expecting niece after being asked to write a memory of her late mom to include her in with the coming of the new baby. Our niece was the other baby who was on the way at the time.

—

Dear Jessica,

When we found out we were expecting our first, I sewed a bunch of cute little baby outfits in great anticipation–and then miscarried at 12 weeks.

I gave everything away. It was too painful.

There was a family party, I think it was the next day, and I found myself going to the basement of your mom’s house to get away from it because everybody was being joyful and didn’t they know?! People were acting like it hadn’t happened. Turns out Grandma H had told them not to say anything, thinking with the best of intentions that it would give me a break not to have to think about it.

Uncle Duane followed me down those steps a moment later because he knew exactly what I was going through. He heard me out. He then told me about the baby they’d lost at six months along that I had known nothing about, and twenty-something years later here he was crying quietly as he told me and heard me and was there for me.

When we were expecting again later, I wanted to prepare for my baby, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Eventually we were getting close and I had essentially nothing and knew that was stupid and knew I had to get going but the what-ifs kept stumbling me.

And in that context the local aunts and uncles on Richard’s side decided to throw me a baby shower because this time it was a celebration that we could all freely celebrate (and I needed that kick in the pants to believe that I really was going to get to have this baby. She was almost here!)

So we came, and your mom was there, and I assumed the whole time that it was a shower for the both of us because our due dates were only about a week apart, and yeah it was my first and her third but still.

So after the food and the talking and the preliminaries they started handing me presents.

I kept expecting them to hand some to her, too. It kept not happening.

I finally blurted out, But what about Cheryl?!

Well now there was an awkward moment.

But the reason I tell the story is because I was in awe of how she handled it. She totally deflected anything about herself and said Well but this is your first! She’d been in on the planning of it for me and that was what it was about as far as she was concerned.

She was gracious, she was loving, she was inspiring, she understood exactly where they were coming from and where I was coming from and it left me wanting to be a lot more like her when I grew up.

Love,

Aunt Alison

The big Costco-box strawberries were good but had been in there since Thursday. Cooking them would definitely extend their shelf life.

So I blenderized them with a quarter cup sugar and about 2/3 a teaspoon of King Arthur Instant Clearjel, ie very processed (corn?) starch for, y’know, sour cherry pies and the like. Nuked it twelve minutes and poured it over sliced mangoes with leftover sauce for tomorrow.

And that was going to be the end of that.

Until he looked at the ice cream maker.

Can you put corn anything in ice cream? I asked, knowing that of course you can if you want to, it just sounded so strange.

Why don’t we try it?

So: 3/4 c. strawberry sauce, cream to fill it to two cups, two more tablespoons of sugar after a taste test and into the machine it went.

A few minutes later while doing a puzzle.

Him: I think we should check it to see if it’s done.

Me: It just started!

Him: I think we should check.

Me: If we check every three minutes we’ll run out before it’s done!

Him with a grin: Is this a problem?

Turns out the machine wasn’t turning so it’s a good thing we did check. Fixed that. We let it finish its business in peace.

And the verdict is, next time I think I’ll go half sauce/half cream because that was super rich. The sweetness level was not too much, just right.

It was very very good. Ten stars.

My sour cherry was impersonating cheerleaders as it waved its pompoms in the wind.

What I was trying to capture with the camera, though, was how the sky had suddenly turned a strong yellow. Yes it had started to rain and yes sunset was ten minutes away, but it was at the speed of a light dimmer and I’d really love to sit down with a meteorologist or physicist and ask, How do the particles do that? Why don’t they turn the sky pink, or even purple, since you get those at sunsets? Why just yellow?

And why does it sharpen all the colors and make them brighter when cataracts also do a yellow overlay and make everything duller and fuzzier?

I can just hear my mom chuckling and going, You were the kid who followed me around asking, Whyyyyy? after every explanation in answer to that question. Nonstop.

If you heard that squeal just now, I came around the corner to explain to him, I went to smash an ant on the wall, it fell, I didn’t see where it went but I felt it land on my foot and suddenly found myself kicking real hard and jumping back and, yeah, it got noisy there for a second.

His face! He was still back at the wait wait wait WHAT?! He exclaimed, You can’t. Feel. An ANT! Land on your FOOT!

I laughed because I had–and I knew exactly where he was coming from. What the nerves no longer transmit, you gradually forget they used to be able to do. I studied harmonics in a physics of acoustics class in college so I know what they are in theory and they must sound divine, the pure math of sound and all that (anyone else remember the Harmonic Convergence group in the news? Was that related to the start of Burning Man? I digress.) But asking me to report on hearing them in our experiments in the lab? It was already ten years too late for that.

That is the one specific class grade I remember from university.  A-. Never was quite sure about that one.

A quick question, prompted by a conversation where two of us mentioned using a spatula to lift assembled puzzle pieces over the established edge and into the center once you know where they go and a third person marveling that she’d never heard nor thought of doing that and she could not fathom how she had not.

So.

Do you ever spatula your pieces?

I recounted the bit to Richard, who thinks my puzzle techniques are sacrilege, and he said with a suppressed guffaw betraying his mock indignation, *I* do it right!

The NY Times ran an obit for the guy who wrote “Wild Thing,” which the Troggs turned into a #1 hit that launched Chip Taylor’s career.

Which I mentioned to Richard over dinner. He immediately ordered the Siri equivalent to play it.

The look on his face as it announced William Shatner’s Pants as that music kicked in instead.

I was torn between Idon’twannaknow and the look on his face of You.have.got.to.be.kidding.me/theWHAT now? that was so befuddled and horrified and curious in spite of himself that I laughed and laughed to tears.