Got to the hospital ugly-early, they recommended I go home because I wasn’t going to see him at all for the next several hours anyway, he told me to go take a nap, so I did. Which helped a lot.

Immediately after the doctor messaged a few hours later to say the ablation had gone well and he had tested negative for other problems, yay…

…I heard someone trying the front door. What?! Like he’d skipped out on the whole shebang and Ubered home? I don’t think so!

Next, the doorbell rang. I saw the young man, I don’t think he saw me, and I don’t open my door to unexpected strange men. Especially not one who tried to get in before he tried to ask to.

He jimmied the doorknob again.

I picked up the phone and called the cops and AT&T committed the hell of killing my landline dead just as the 911 operator picked up:  from working to “Check tel line.”  I grabbed my cellphone. The cop was at my door within two minutes.

I told her that after that, I saw him going up to the door of the house across the street but the angle is such that I can’t see if he went in and I didn’t see him after that.

The neighbor next door came out and said he’d come up to their door too.

Just then, there was the neighbor across the street.

She said he was her pest control guy. She was horrified that he’d tried to walk in unannounced, but since she’d vouched for who he was and he hadn’t actually gotten into my house, the cop decided we were good and left.

Went back to the hospital to keep my sweetie company for several more hours of observation on their part and found he’d gotten a message that someone dear to us got hard news today–but it could still be benign.

Bleep all of that that needed to be bleeped. We headed to a local ice cream shop that makes all their own from scratch and now has Indian immigrant owners and got (oh look what they have now!) Alphonso mango milkshakes. Two. Size large, and I never order large, but I did.

So good. Totally rescued us. That, and having him home, safe and sound.

Today walked me back home.

A post from eighteen years ago was found by the granddaughter of my childhood piano teacher this morning; we messaged back and forth and it was a treat to hear from her. Those lessons were a big part of my life–and they were not just for me, in the long run, but the effects extended forward throughout my kids’ lives and now my grandkids’. I told her about my son minoring in organ performance and playing the Mormon Tabernacle organ for his final.

Then I put down the computer and went off to Leeanne’s funeral.

Her sister-in-law was of course there.

Richard and I grew up with her in Maryland. And with Leeanne’s cousin, small small world. There was a lot of catching up to do.

This evening I saw another note from my piano teacher’s granddaughter and told Richard she’d gone to his high school. Note that we went to rival schools and have been teasing each other over it for decades.

His face lit up: She’s smart! I win!

Cracked us both up. Nope. I win!

I win!

We both do!

Our parents lived across the street from each other when they were newlyweds, and he’s the part of my growing up that has stayed with me all along this sweet road called life.

We were out celebrating a friend’s birthday when a call came in and when he saw who it was he excused himself and stepped outside a moment.

They will know more soon and right now there’s nothing we can do. And so, while we pray, we wait.

The mail came.

I’d wanted darkening gradations of the color mix I had in an out-of-print colorway and I could not have asked for better than what was in that package. I opened it in the moment of truth hoping hoping almost not daring to hope–and then stood there just staring: They. were. perfect. Thank you Alison in Australia!

Then in the evening we went to hear our niece’s husband playing in a band in a local park. He’s in the symphony but he also plays bluegrass for fun. This was the fiddle’s turn and those guys were good.

A kid put on a purple dinosaur costume that I hadn’t seen coming. He had to pull the clear chest part down a few times so he could see but eventually he got the hang of it.

A two-year-old girl with a big princess flower clip in her hair ran over to investigate this brand new thing in her life.

He pulled his head out from the opening just below the clear part to show her not to be afraid and waved hi.

Next thing you know he was back inside and they were dancing together to the music in wild abandon.

Oh! her face said. I stepped on its tail. Is that allowed?

Yes! Dance!

Yay! (Twirl.)

It was just the most adorable thing you could ever have hoped for.

So there I was, finishing up that fifth repeat before the distance between the waves starts to shrink going towards the shore, and I was remembering that time we went to the beach with my little brother and his wife. Pacific Grove. After a visit to the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The tide was out and there were large rocks strewn across that beach. Not much in the way of sand, just smaller stones everywhere. The kids started climbing up to play king of the mountain and they were having a good old time, so, hey, why not. We’d already cautioned each other about never turning your backs on the ocean and sneaker waves and all that, even if the water was a fair bit away.

So I climbed up on one, too. Above waist high as I remember. So did our visitors. We were all a little spread out.

Now, this is a really dumb thing to do when your sense of balance died in a car crash and there’s this ocean thing that means the visual ground isn’t holding still.

My sister-in-law took in the situation and quickly ditched her rock to climb up on the platform that mine made, and just barely in time–I suddenly in spite of myself started to pitch forward headfirst onto the rocks below and she grabbed me hard and fast and pulled me back to safety.

We took a deep breath and I thanked her as I got immediately off that rock, common sense reclaimed. I was and will forever be grateful to her.

Stitch after stitch after stitch… What would make this more interesting and more of a memory…

That day at the beach!

I started thinking how I could add rocks. With yarn overs? Add stitches, since lace expands and crossed stitches contract, then cable them? I tried to visualize possibilities.

If you make like a honeycomb cable, only bigger, so that you have three or five stitches in the center at the widest part, you could with that center do a yarnover-p2sso-yo. It would be a depression within the cable-raised circle with a focal point at the center. You could have another bit of Old Shale bumping up against it with the k2togs split and the purl ridges sweeping around the outer edges. I’ll have to try it out.

I might not have perfected rocks yet but I just figured out how to knit tide pools by texture rather than color and I am inordinately pleased with myself.

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