I was covering the mango last night, lit by a misplaced flashlight and the Christmas string on the tree, tripped on the novelty of muddy ground, and fell twisting sideways into the tomato bush. No way to know if the pop tent that covered it is damaged; that plant grew right through it like a–okay, kids, ask your folks what a chia pet is. So yeah, a little cushioning there, definitely.

It’s a next-day thing, it always is, but it took me by surprise that when I lifted a more awkward than heavy thing this morning it quite did me in.

I still am having a hard time sitting up straight and I am walking like a ninety-year-old: stooped and slow and watching each step carefully. Must have fallen a lot harder than I thought.

And all day long I’ve been just amazed, going, I only fell and twisted with my own body weight–my daughter’s took it at freeway speed with the force of the weight and momentum of two cars. How does she DO this?! Me, pass the icepacks and I know I’ll be fine in a day or two. Or at worst three.

She amazes me. She’s a trooper.

I covered the mango a lot more carefully tonight. And then, since we hit 39 last night, I put a second cover on top. Just because.

1. Today is the 15th anniversary of a speeder totaling my car and my balance. And life has gone on just fine. Changed, though, so somehow I needed to acknowledge the anniversary.

2. Meantime, Maddy might not know what all those shiny wrappers mean yet but they crinkle and make lots of noise and are shiny and were desirable to her brothers so they made her happy.

3. My sweetie happened to glance past me towards my bird book this afternoon and did a double take. He knows each piece of electronics he’s ever ordered but that one totally threw him: what was it? Where had it come from? (How could he not remember this?!)

I laughed and reminded him that I’d ordered new glasses yesterday and had taken my identical backup pair with me to put new lenses into in case they didn’t have anything I liked as much. Which is what happened. And so this old case had come out of hiding and the dusty glasses inside washed off and turned in: I’ve alternated for eleven years now which pair has the current prescription. I want my face to look like what I want my face to look like, and so when I found just the thing I bought two.

Actually three, after one met a size 13 foot one night–I replaced it while I still could.

And he’s right, that doesn’t look like a glasses case. Put wheels on it and it could be a toy express train. Or wings and a tail, a plane.

Soon I won’t be flying quite so blind.

A four-year-old and her two-year-old brother: one single doorbell ring tonight. But oh so cute. Clearly coached to take just one, and they did, but then subversive me I told them to have some more and that little boy’s hand moved faster in response than his daddy could possibly say anything to. And then hey, you can’t penalize the older one for obeying the rules, so, to her, (remembering my late grandmother and her candy bowl), “Have some more.”

I’ve probably told this one before, but when our own were little, there was one Halloween where they all woke up with a stomach bug and that was that.

Our neighbor, then not yet a grandmother but hoping, had, it turned out, gone out and bought a gift for each of our kids: a delightful gingerbread-house-looking paper box with See’s chocolates and candies inside. We had the only small children on the block and she’d gone all out for them.

And then they didn’t come and it got later and they didn’t come and they still didn’t come. She’d so been looking forward to them ringing her doorbell and all of us being so surprised.

Finally, she walked over and rang *our* doorbell. And immediately on hearing the news cried, Oh, poor kids–to be sick on Halloween of all days! She was very sorry they couldn’t eat any of this yet, sorry they hadn’t gotten their chance to dress up silly.

But now after a bad day they had something to look forward to.

It hadn’t gone the way she’d planned, but the way it worked out, her generosity and empathy would never be forgotten.

Found a Department of Agriculture page on Africanized honeybees, a ‘contact us’ link, and fired off a note about what I saw the other day.

And here’s what came back to me:

Good Afternoon Alison,

Thank you for your concern and for sharing your experience. African honey bees are present in California, and from what I have read, have continued to move north from Southern California. Behaviorally, African honey bees differ from European honey bees in that they are more defensive of their hive, and will exhibit this defensive behavior further away from the location of their hive than European honey bees would.

During the Autumn months, there tends to be less for honey bees to forage, which can lead to a phenomenon that we call “robbing.” This is essentially the invasion of one hive by one or several other hives, but their intent is just to consume the food stores of the invaded hive. If an African honey bee colony is being robbed, defenders of that colony may pursue robbers from other colonies for extended distances, and this pursuit could end in the defending bee stinging the robber. 

I’m not saying that this is what happened or that African honey bees are involved in this situation; I am just offering an explanation about what you have seen. Regarding the abduction of one honey bee by another, I have no explanation. Perhaps what you saw picking up the assailed honey bee was not a honey bee, but an insect of similar appearance. Nature is variable and often times things occur in nature that are inexplicable.

Lastly, if you are concerned about the dead honey bees at your back door, you should make sure not to leave anything outside that could attract honey bees, for instance cans and bottles of any kind, jars, any receptacle that could have a sugary residue. These things will attract honey bees, especially if there is no natural forage to be found. There is also the possibility that there is a honey bee somewhere around your home. If you see signs of this, please do not look around for it. It would be best to contact a professional to inspect around your home if you suspect that you have some unknown neighbors.

Best,

(And then he signed his name)

————

On a different note, my sweetie tripped over the cord to the charger to my laptop last week and pulled it out of the socket. I plugged it back in, made sure he was okay, didn’t think much of it.

Today I picked up that laptop and noticed for the first time that right where it snaps into the Air it was bent tightly–and not only bent but the plastic coating was actually pulled open so that the wires inside were exposed.

And they were sparking. Tiny little–ongoing–sparks. Smallest fireworks show I ever did see.

The laptop still works, the charger is out of here, and the house didn’t burn down starting in our bedroom. We are really, really, really, say it again, really, lucky.

Trying to write a blog post after getting home late from Convocation at Stanford and then chocolate afterwards with friends…

While here’s my husband sitting down at the computer next to me and exclaiming over a new batch of grandkid pictures that came in while we were out. Sorry, this post is hosed, I gotta go look over his shoulder with him.

But I gotta say, four year olds playing soccer? Swarmball. Totally swarmball. And totally adorable.

You slip the next (two, in this case) stitches coming at you onto a short double-pointed needle (aka a dpn, the light-colored one here) and stab it into the knitting, either in back or in front according to the pattern, to hold it out of the way. You knit the next ones on the regular needle, then bring that short needle back up and knit those delayed stitches. Voila: your cable.

When we moved to California it was several years before I knew anybody besides me who knit. It wasn’t till some time after that that I finally learned, after knitting since age ten, why those dpns were sold in sets of four or five.

To me they had always been, and had only been, cable needles. That was their name. I know because that’s what my mom called them. A memorable part of my childhood had involved watching her use them while knitting Aran sweaters for my dad and my next-older sister and an all-over-diamonds one for my grandfather.

On size 2 needles. In endless tiny hanks of tapestry yarn, because that was the only thing available back then if you wanted wool yarn at that fine a gauge. For her father, who treasured it the rest of his life.

Socks? They’re called dpns and they’re for knitting socks? Or even hats? On a kind of a scaffolding arrangement, and that’s why so many, and not because the manufacturers know you’re going to drop one somewhere down the cushions of the doctor’s waiting-area chair and never find it again and they’re just being helpful?

And none of the manufacturers even call them cable needles? Who knew?

It got down to the 40s last night and it will tonight, too; it was time. I restrung the Christmas lights on the mango tree (I’ll clearly need another strand this year) and had to remember how to program Richard’s homemade thermostat. 13C is a little low–I changed it to trigger on at 14C, not sure if the line was connected all the way given the tomatoes growing over it.

They clicked on about 9:00 pm. Okay, that works. No cover quite yet.

Meantime, the Meyer lemon leaves were showing a bit of yellow and needed some micronutrients; I stopped by Yamagami’s Nursery.

Where I found myself in a conversation with one of their people and he was an avid fruit tree enthusiast so of course we hit it right off.

I described the bugs that had utterly devoured my sour cherry’s first attempt at leafing out, that I had caught in the act on the second round, just a giant horde of black beetles, so many that they were climbing all over each other in their attempts to get at those leaves and I asked if they were Japanese beetles?

“Sure sounds like it. They only come out at night.”

“Yup!”

(I had read that traps just attract more to your yard, so I wasn’t surprised when he said) “And nothing kills them. There’s really nothing you can do.”

In happy anticipation of being able to help, I grinned, “Oh yes there is”–and I told him what I’d done. Having found a suggestion online, I’d asked around for the ashes from anyone’s barbecue grill, was given about a half gallon’s worth, and I went out that night and doused those beetles with that powder.

They struggled and fell off immediately and died, and according to what I’d read, it breaks their joints. Very satisfying. As was watching the doves pecking around near the base of the tree later. Git’em!

And then, what I didn’t say to him but should have, was, I then scattered those ashes across those leaves every night and rinsed them off in the mornings so that they could get their sunlight. Back on at night as a protective layer. And it worked.

He had this excited ‘Wait till I tell Nancy…!’ look in his eyes. And I came away feeling like I had just solved a big problem for a whole lot of people. Spread the word. Grill baby grill! I wish I could put the real credit where it belongs but I don’t remember where I found it; I do remember I spent a fair amount of time trying to look up an answer to that very vexatious problem, so afraid I was going to lose that tree, so I’m hoping this post will help the next person find the idea a little faster.

Ashes for crashes, grill dust is a must.

I smiled at a shy, fussy baby at church today, playing peek-a-boo and I’m shyer than you are–no, I am! with him till he grinned. At last, he even let me hold him for a minute before almost-walking back to his mom.

He can manage two careful steps and hover unsteadily a moment and if he moves fast enough even three before going splat but that third, hurried one was always just too much to readjust his balance to in time. The arms go up, the bottom goes down.

Today. Such a brief snapshot of time. Tomorrow he’ll make it halfway across the room and fall into his daddy’s arms giggling, the next day he’ll really be walking and right after that he’ll be running, and then he’ll be off to college and his folks will suddenly have to learn not to buy Costco-sized bunches of bananas and to chop fewer onions. It took a lot of calories to get my older son to 6’9″.

But for today, this one was simply a tired baby boy who needed someone to smile at him, who needed a snuggle and who crowed in delight a little louder–okay, a lot louder–in church than his mommy quite wanted. (Oops. Sorry.) The whole room smiled around them both.

He was the gift my day had needed, and I am grateful.

This picture is of her face puckered up just before the laughter.

How do I do justice to all the love and all the memories. RobinM was not often in the comments because so often our conversation was already happening, and many a time she put up with my day’s blog post being a second draft of what she and I had already talked about.

We met through a knitting list long ago and occasionally emailed, and then more and more as we discovered more connections. She lived so close to where I grew up that when I said the name of the street in Maryland, she went, Oh! Which house?

And when she found out where I live now, she exclaimed that she’d once lived within view of my street here, in a home she would later point out to me. Small world.

Then her husband became ill and our conversations became a daily, ongoing thing.

The night he died in hospice care at home, she sat down at the computer to let me know the news. She has missed him deeply ever since, and from time to time has mentioned how she felt guided by him still, that whenever she wanted to know the right thing to do she thought about what he would say–and that when she did, he never steered her wrong.

I tried to be a comfort and a friend and so many times now she has been a better one to me and she grew into a very dear part of my life. With her brother living here and my family (for a time) still back there, we were able to get together in person every year or two.

She marveled, my first time at her house, that her dog, a Westie rescue and a shy dog at the time whom she said had never warmed up to any strangers immediately, he took to me as if we’d been best friends forever and I felt the same, sweet puppy, appreciative of his compliment; at the last he put his head down in my lap with a happy sigh and fell asleep.

“He never does that!” She was both astonished and admiring.

And I found I adored her in person as well.

That was about ten years ago.

She caught pneumonia recently, and in someone fifteen years older than me this is not a good thing. When things didn’t seem to be going well, I urged her to call her doctor, but instead she went to the ER, probably a better idea. They sent her home, and she seemed to feel like been there settled that. But from there on out she was suddenly sounding very different, just short notes, a sentence or two, and it felt from my end as if she could barely get the breath to sit up and type.

Then came a note asking if purple swollen feet were normal. For her not to be able to think clearly, or at least that’s how it sounded, was a huge change, and with a symptom like that, I tried not to sound as alarmed as I felt as I told her that congestive heart failure or kidney failure can cause those. (She knew I had gone through temporary bouts of both and could speak to the subject.)

I wondered whether to call her brother. She called her daughter and son-in-law. They had quite the drive but they came right away.

I got up this morning and ran to the computer first thing, highly aware of our three-hour time difference, to see if there were any news. The last message had been from Robin in the ER several days ago, waiting for a room to be checked into. Cardiac, tests were being run, was all she said.

And then nothing. I hoped it was that she simply didn’t have a device with her that she could respond from and I knew the hospital wouldn’t give me her room number to put a call through.

There it was, waiting: a mixture of grieving and wistfulness and love and one last bit of hope. And so her daughter had my email address.

Within the hour she was sending a second note and the news was different this time. But the love, it felt only stronger.

She told me a little of what it had been like to be at her mother’s side in her last few moments, a story that is hers to tell, and I can only hope I do right by my own mother like that come the day.

And just like her mother: she had sat down shortly after her unfathomable loss to let me of all people know her family’s news. I cannot begin to say how much that means to me.

……

My own daughter drove over briefly to give me a big hug.

At the last, opening the fridge at 5:00, one of us simply had to go do the grocery shopping. It felt just too strange. Richard wasn’t feeling well so I said I would.

I hadn’t been to Costco in weeks. I wondered whether I would run into someone I knew and how I would do when it was all just so soon.

Turns out I did, though, and it was a couple my kids knew well when they were teens. They were in the middle of selling their house and moving away and were glad to get to let me know and since they had enough on their plate it was easy to smile and cheer them on and just be glad we’d gotten to see each other. Serendipity.

And so I almost made it through.

I found myself turning and turning and threading my way down aisles I don’t normally go through to get towards the front and was quite surprised to find myself behind a line with only two people ahead. On a Saturday near closing? How does that happen?

The clerk turned my direction a moment and suddenly I saw who it was. Oh cool: he’s such a nice guy. I really had lucked out.

When I was up, he looked me in the eye and told me it was good to see me and that it had been awhile. (He noticed?!) “And how is your day today?”

It wasn’t a throwaway line; he clearly meant it, and as his hands passed the groceries across the scanner, that word ‘today’ and the complete caring in his demeanor just did me in.

“It’s been fine…” was all I meant to say, and then, “except that one of my best friends died this morning.”

A long, quiet, Oooh escaped him. He grieved.

She had had pneumonia, I explained quickly, not wanting to hold up the line behind me but not wanting to leave this good man unhappy, And she hadn’t been sounding like herself. Her daughter drove four hours with her husband to be by her mother’s side and took her to the hospital. Her heart gave out this morning. Her daughter was right there with her. She was not alone.

That mattered to him. I thanked him and hoped out loud for him to have a good day.

He handed me my receipt just so such that three of his large fingers closed gently over mine for one, two heartbeats, as we saw each other eye to eye. Those thanks went both ways.

And I left feeling like, I don’t need to write to Robin to tell her that or to miss being able to. She already knows, right now. She might even have steered me to that man’s line where he was all ready to truly hear.

And to be fully present.

Amazing how much knitting you can get done in one day when you want to get past the fiddly stuff to the mindless part by knit night time. And I did!

I was wrong the other day. It wasn’t rubber from the plate frames, they were plastic, the rubbery grit was maybe road dust? Tire particles, I think. Whatever, still, I tossed the old ones from both cars. Who needs to advertise car dealerships?

The lady at the DMV was right: the car does look better with frames around the plates.

And so at knit night tonight, I half-jokingly, sure I was being outlandish, asked if they sold any that had, y’know, a knitting theme or something.

Sure! Okay if it says I’d rather be knitting above and Purlescence below?

Me, quite surprised: Sure!

How many do you need?

Two?

Got’em, and Greg went into the storeroom and to get one for someone else at the table and came back with them.

Me: How much?

Pamela (new employee, old friend): Free, they’re free advertising for the shop.

Me: But but but. Thank you! Cool!

And then I came home with them.

A certain someone grinned, rolled his eyes in great exaggeration, saying, I drive that car, too–and he patiently put up with me.

Well hey, I was just opening a discussion here. His and hers. We need to find/have made a ham radio one for you to go with mine for me, right?

He’s thinking about what he might like his to say. I think it might be a good idea for me to either take my second one back or find someone else who would really like one too.

Photo courtesy of my son from Saturday.

And on a different note. Wow, that was mid-July. Didn’t realize it had been so long.

Okay, so, this morning I got up thinking it would be a great day to go to Copenhagen Bakery in Burlingame: I could drop Richard off at work and go straight there.

With the next thought being a glance upwards at the skylight, thinking, are you kidding me?

It drizzled off and on all day yesterday and today started off with just a little of that–the roads are always oilslicked after an early-season rain here.

And yet the thought was both persistent and happy. Enough to make me pay attention to it and take stock.

Did either of us need the calories? Certainly not. Was I craving my favorites of theirs? Oh heck, always a little bit but nothing out of the ordinary, so, no, not really. Would I personally be just as happy if I didn’t go? Sure. It’s a trek. If I were going to Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco too, maybe I could combine the trips and justify both but that wasn’t in the plan either. (More on that tomorrow, probably.)

I said a prayer: is there something I don’t know about, some reason I should go? Again and again, I felt, You Should Go. Well alright then, if that is to be, and if there’s a reason for it, I certainly can’t know and I’m very good at being too human; please help me be my best self to clear the way open for whatever’s and whoever’s supposed to happen.

On impulse coming away from Richard’s office I found myself turning towards this freeway rather than that. Was I sure I knew how to get there that way? Not at all. I almost did a U-turn but found myself relentlessly going thataway. Huh, well, good luck then.

280 is a far prettier drive with much less traffic anyway. Less stressful.

There was a huge cloudburst that lasted about twenty seconds, then almost dry, then a lesser shorter cloudburst and from there on out it was only a few random drops. Not too bad.

I realized pretty quickly, as I wondered if that had been my exit, that this was going to be even more guesswork than I’d thought. Note that GPS is for people who can hear it clearly in a noisy car–I’m a little too conditioned towards not trying it. I ended up meandering a bit after taking an exit that was actually one too early, trying to find my way downhill towards town. Overcorrected on the sense of direction, backtracked, took my time sweet time and finally, I got there. I think I added at least fifteen minutes to the trip.

The manager from last time? She was nowhere in sight. The woman who’d messed up last time? I do believe that was her helping me. I was wearing the same sunhat, using the same cane, and we had a fun time going back and forth: if I was going to make a trek like and get lost like I did than I was going to get enough fun stuff to make it worth it all. Hazelnut mousse pastry? Yes please. Raspberry? I’ll have to try it.

She winced at that road trip description and I laughed it off with, “I got to explore!”

The chef’s surprises. They freeze well. There were actually four of my favorite filled almond meringue danishes left this time–I know they sell out early in the day every day. “Are those all there are?”

“Yes.”

“Mine,” and we both cracked up, and I thought, It WAS you! And you do have it this time. Cool. This was so much better an experience to leave her with.

Carrying that great sense of goodwill along on my way out, there was a man maybe ten years older than me seated at a tiny table, talking quietly into his cellphone and then staring into space and looking like the whole world was on his shoulders in a way that suddenly made my heart reach out to him. I could just picture my Richard looking like that when I was in the hospital, though I cannot know, here, what….

I found myself stopping a moment and glancing at my cane and then at his very nice, hand carved one that had seen some use but was still quite a work of art, making the visual connection, then nodding quietly with a smile, *Nice* cane!

A touch of pride, a sense that someone had noticed him in that moment when he’d so much needed not to be alone: he looked up into my eyes and he seemed to suddenly melt, letting go in some inner relief. I don’t quite know how to describe it but I felt it.

Another nod in goodbye and I was out into the sunlight heading quickly for my car. Grateful. Wondering.

So much I don’t know. But I’m so glad I went and that I got there when I did.

All in one hour a sudden flurry of incoming plans, emails, texts, phone, of, oh if they’re coming I wouldn’t miss…!

And suddenly I’m ready to start hanging the Christmas decorations right now.

Let me see if I can get that new kitchen flooring done first, at last. I’d needed some major motivation and there you go.

And look at it now. A weekend ago it was shorter than the stake and all those groups of new leaves were each just one fingernail-sized dormant-looking bud at the branch ends. I suddenly have a lot more mango tree.

Meantime, I grabbed Michelle and treated her to chocolate at our favorite shop to share pictures from our trip and catch up a bit. We walked in and suddenly there were dairy-free truffles created on the spot just for her. In an allergic world where food in public can be a difficult thing, I love how good they are at making her at home.

Someday, when they’re not too busy (but I’m glad their shop is busy), I’ll ask the owners about the timing of tipping that top point. They’re the only people I know who once grew a mango tree.

Oh wait, of course! I take that back: Dani grew up with one. In India, though, so not the same climate. Still…

If you ever wanted to see where the Oz books were written, this was L. Frank Baum’s home.

And the children’s section of the library near it, with Dorothy, the Tin Woodman, Munchkins, the Scarecrow and I think the Cowardly Lion is in there somewhere.

There was a tot-sized area to rest in. Genius. The one who was the most tired is a climber like his daddy was and couldn’t resist. (He was helped down immediately–no matter how enticing it was, let’s not, kiddo.)

There was a huge killer whale of a stuffed animal atop one of the children’s shelves; Hudson asked about it, I found one of the librarians, and she thought out loud a moment with, Well, we don’t normally let children play with them–and then she brought it down and held it out and he petted it on the nose in awe. That was all he’d needed.

We ran into a young family who, when I found out who the dad was, I exclaimed, I used to babysit you!

But no–it had been his older sisters, he’d been born just after they’d moved away from Maryland. That’s right. But same idea: I knew his folks and his sisters as little kids, I’d run into the whole family at a wedding fifteen years earlier and that’s where I remembered the son from, who was now neighbors and friends with our son’s family, and it was all quite the small-world moment.

Hudson had been up late the night before but had been so excited that we were coming that he’d bounced out of bed early. It finally hit him when it was time to leave that glorious library: he clung to the railing. He didn’t want to GOooooOOO!

I scooped him up after a minute and asked, You really like this library?

Uh HUH! And as I said soothing and understanding things he let me carry him almost to the car, then his daddy the last few steps. Conked out as soon as the motor turned on and was still fast asleep when it was time for us to leave for the airport. We opened his door and I silently blew a kiss and hoped he wouldn’t be too upset to wake up to find us gone.

It is amazing how tiny little bundles of energy become when they’re run out of all their awake.

On an entirely different note–but in a way kind of not–back here at home tonight, we watched the eclipse, and I have a question: why did both the photos my iPhone took show twice as much moon as my eyes saw? There was just a corner of red, then at 8:32 half of the moon was lit up brightly, no more.

And yet, the camera saw past the shadows cast by the earth to let the moon shine brightly and whole.

I can’t wait to see them again.

There was this sweet face today.

And this one. (And somehow no pictures of the baby? There are in my son’s camera, but still, how did that happen!)

When I went to snap these (it’s the only time anyone was holding still) I said something about my camera and Hudson, perplexed, pronounced, “It’s a phone.”

Yes it is, and in camera mode I showed it to him with my fingers wiggling on the other side of it and showing up on the screen. It was the funniest thing they’d seen all day and they let me know it. Hudson: “Way cool.”

This was the first visit where the boys didn’t have to spend any time warming up to us; they were right there right away claiming us instantly, snuggling for books to be read and Legos to be played with. Even Maddy crawled over a few times and sat up against me sitting on the floor so she could. Her big brothers had vouched for us so we couldn’t be too stranger-y.