Part two.

We got to see Janna and her husband. We walked into the presence of such an immense sense of love.

She was joyful, she was exhausted, and I hope at just under an hour we didn’t stay too long. I have more experience than most at how wonderful and tiring it is to see people even when you love them so much when you’re so ill and we were all trying to be mindful of that, though I’m not quite sure we were mindful enough. But man, it was good to see her and to meet her prince of a husband. (Her first one died years ago.) He is so good to her.

I had four more hats ready (Richard says five), including one begun in the airport, and two balls of yarn to ask if she’d like those colors next. She said sure. She had one on that I’d mailed earlier.

But she gently let me know that all of these were really more than she could wear.

Not knowing that I had thought of her beloved as I packed this thick warm greens-etc Mecha one and that earlier one and was thinking of her granddaughter and her two older sons and the son I’d knit the Christmas stocking for years ago: her mom had knit one with the name knitted in for each of her grandchildren–but he hadn’t been born yet when she died.

When Janna told me that of course I made him one.

I had never knitted such a thing before and I couldn’t find a pattern for one with the kind of cabling I wanted, so I just winged it. I can do socks, right?

Um. Sometimes letting the object be its own size swatch has its idiosyncrasies, not to mention Malabrigo Rios is not sock yarn.

So I asked her if he wishes he had one that weren’t so big and she exclaimed, He LOVES his big stocking! You can fit anything in it!

We all laughed.

He’s in his mid-20s now. We sat there a moment with the unspoken thought between us that his future children likely won’t know their grandmother, either.

An experimental med in ’03 snatched me back at the edge of life. If only. You never know.

I will have my work cut out for me. I’ll let him and his future love decide what size to aim for.

But meantime, any of her family who want to wear a Malabrigo hat in solidarity with her in this beautiful month of June, maybe when the hot sun dips below the mountains? I think with these last two coming along, if she wants, we’ve pretty much got them covered.

And I can always knit more.

Part One.

All my siblings came. Mom got feted, Dad’s stuff got divided between us, and as my older brother said afterwards, “I am amazed and grateful for how well everything went.” Everybody was mindful of everybody else and trying not to be too eager about any one thing: we didn’t own it before and if we didn’t own it after, what’s the difference, right? So. Your turn.

There was a painting I loved. The others noticed the two gouges in the paint before I did, two white canvas spots showing, about the size of the inside circle when you hold thumb to forefinger.

Bryan, who along with Anne has entered juried arts shows and done well, instantly offered, “I can fix that for you.”

Two days later my sister was holding it out for me to see.

Now, I’d been expecting to have to pay to ship it to Atlanta and then to our house and to wait for however long everything took.

But, but–where were the spots? You can’t even tell! Where were they? as I bent close to see.

Bryan happened to come in the room in the middle of that, so I said again, “You can’t even tell!”

He laughed. “That’s the point!”

I just couldn’t get over how very very perfect and untouched it looked.

He was staying at a cousin’s; we were at a hotel a half hour from there.

So it was with great delight this morning that I looked up at the TSA station where you retrieve your stuff and exclaimed across the conveyor belt, “BRYAN!”

He looked over, laughed, and we got one last big hug across that metal space before he raced off to his flight while they finished patting me down. (Holding my arms above my head while circular glass walls move rapidly the way they do, close to my face, makes me fall down. So, yeah.)

So, so glad we got to go.

She said maybe brown.

It’s going to be over 90F. I’ve got some dark brown ready to go after this but for the moment I’m thinking let’s try a lighter version and see how it flies. I can always keep going.

One of the camera crew did a hatch-to-fledge four and a half minute compilation of the 2025 season so far, here.

Meantime, the three newly fledged females were immediately spotted yesterday; one was rescued from behind a glass balcony so she wouldn’t hurt herself trying to get out and was put in a box and taken to the roof of City Hall above the nest. Got her feathers sprayed so she wouldn’t panic-fly to get away from the humans as they set her down but rather wait a moment drying off while they disappeared. She’s fine.

The male, though, nobody knew where he was.

So one of the BOGs (boots on the ground during fledge watch) was looking today when she saw a homeless guy looking up. He told her there was a hawk that had a bunch of crows harassing it, so he’d been keeping watch to make sure it was okay–and there was our Chico!

When she explained that it was a peregrine falcon just learning to fly and that multitudes of people were going to be grateful to him for finding him and looking out for the little guy, you can imagine how that felt to someone who doesn’t usually find himself being looked up to.

They chatted a little and she found that the birds mattered to him, all of them, and he felt for the one being harassed and stood by him.

And so he became a hero to the falcon community.

Our little Chico got retrieved, went through being boxed and hauled upstairs like his sister the day before, and is now living happily ever after.

Meantime, chemo cap #6 got finished, #7 is started, and I have been invited to a sisters and female cousins lunch where I can get to give it to Janna in person. I can’t wait to see her.

He said see if you can find any appointments or does it have to be walk-in.

Appointments. On a holiday weekend. Five o’clock today was the only time available to do two people. I clicked yes.

Only then did I look at the clock and realize it was 4:48–forget dinner, we had to dash out the door now! and hope we hit every traffic light green. Which never happens.

But it did.  We are officially covid-proofed for now. It was also an excuse for ice cream because dessert is the most important thing you can eat after a vaccination: they do their medicine, we do ours.

A fried light switch out of a set of three outside the kitchen. A package delivery. Time to play electrician. He had as a teen done the wiring for the addition on his parents’ house, the work duly signed off on by the inspectors, so a simple light switch shouldn’t take very long.

Mutterings commenced.

That plate had a really terrible edge on the inside where nobody was supposed to ever see it: sharp and wavy. The wrong lights flashed on and off when he was sure he hadn’t even touched that wire. The insulated screwdriver hit the floor.

He looked at me and in a self-mocking tone pronounced, Tarnation.

Now there’s a Southern cuss word for you, I told him. Thinking further, I wondered if I’d ever heard a northerner Yankee type say such a thing (we lived in New Hampshire for four years.) I was pretty sure I had not.

He thought maybe yes they had.

The short, great linguistics debate of the evening (feel free to chime in–that way one of us will find out we were right.)

And now I have my kitchen lights back and everything works the way it’s supposed to and nobody can see the inside of that plate.

Meantime, my new zucchini stem had twins this morning. I have never heard of such a thing before.

We have some Cherry Garcia in the freezer, he said. We need some.

Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry’s said in protest at a Congressional hearing yesterday, Congress kills poor children in Gaza and pays for the bombs by kicking poor children in America off MedicAid.

This good Jewish man stood up and said Congress needed to let food into Gaza for starving children. The cameras were rolling. He spoke again and again on behalf of the little ones as they zip-tied his arms behind his back, giving voice at long last to his anguish and to that of so many millions of other people, knowing that a famous rich white man and a political donor at that, they might at least pay some attention to.

He was frog marched out of there during his arrest.

Here at home: some for him, some for me. Cherry Garcia was always his favorite and definitely not mine, but in that moment it seemed like the best ice cream there ever was and I knew I wanted to never turn it down again.

“In solidarity,” Richard pronounced, raising his bowl to me and to Ben out there somewhere in thanks.

Called my mom and we didn’t talk long because my niece (not the one she lives with) answered the phone while waiting for Mom to come to it and explained that she and I think she said her sister were whisking her off for dinner with them. A whirl of happy to hear from you’s and they were off.

We should all be so lucky at 94. Made my day. And it was great to hear from my own kids. Hope you all had a good Mother’s Day, too, whether you are one or have one.

Just for fun, here’s video of a peregrine chick in its first attempt at climbing out of the nest box.

Banding day is Tuesday, based on the hatching date of the older three. It’s supposed to be before they start being able to wander out of the box so that they don’t scare right off the low edge of the runway when this big human suddenly rappels down from the roof while the parents throw a fit.

But this big eyas, and the one that copied it a few minutes later, didn’t read the memo.

Personally, my guess is that they’re going to declare it three females and that the one that hatched two days after the others is also smaller because he’s a male. But we’ll see.

The news today was horrific, again and again and again.

The new pope was the one great and shining beam of hope. A good moral leader calling on the best in ourselves towards one another is exactly what the world needs right now, badly.

I made myself walk away and pick up my knitting. I will still have nightmares over what people caught on camera being done by our own government on our dime and in our name to innocent people and without so much as a warrant.

But I talked a little to my sister and then I knit for her and tried to be a good voice in the world and found I felt just a little better because I had.

Slippery yarn on slippery needles: I ditched that circ at long last and was surprised at what a difference it made in how I feel about working on this. I’m not having to death-grip them every moment for fear of constantly losing stitches, like the 50 off one end while the other end dropped just a few.

My father grew up in Nevada. Ain’t a whole lot of freely growing lush green around there, and he took so much delight in what grew spontaneously in our yard in Maryland: *wild violets! The tiny wild strawberries, the buttercups, (hey, look! Science!) and under the tree canopy, the mountain laurel and the dogwoods. He played suburban dad with the lawnmower and the grass and all that but he and Mom taught us to love what was there. To blow on a dandelion seedhead and watch how it all floated on the breeze rather than freak out at the weed. To know a chickadee from a titmouse. To notice how the grackles were shimmery purple in the sunlight and black in the shade in disguise.

*That link is to an Etsy shop because all the good pictures I could find were from sites that were either telling you how to kill them off or else selling them.

Packing at the end of the most recent trip home, she’d tried, but it just didn’t all fit in; did I have a rollaboard she could borrow?

You can have it, I told her, or borrow, whichever works for you. I quite liked that one but it was just a little small so I hadn’t actually ever used it. The local Costco had cleared them out at all of $13; those FULs sold out in a flash.

I got a text today telling me she was sure I wouldn’t mind. She was sure this was what I would have wanted to do with it.

Oh honey yes and amen.

A single friend of hers had just found out she had breast cancer and then died a week and a half later. Her grieving family had come to collect their daughter’s things the best they could.

My daughter had given them her luggage for it. On a whim, feeling silly about it because she couldn’t see how that size would work out, she grabbed the FUL bag too in case they could use it.

It was perfect. It was exactly the thing that exactly solved a problem and they were so grateful.

They are not people of means, she told me, and this is what I could do.

I nearly cried. In pride in my child, in grief for theirs, and I thanked her for letting me help, too, without hesitation even when I didn’t know yet.

And now I know why I found and bought that bag.

The green baby alpaca is here! No extra costs that I was told about.

Meantime, I…I… I’m torn somewhere between I have no words and I have lots of words but wow, if you ever wanted to find a fellow knitter in the wild and the KNITTER plates are already taken this is definitely the way to do it: this pattern on Etsy.

I’d just be afraid someone would rear-end me while staring at it. Don’t count the stitches, don’t count the! *Crunch*

Also: I skipped out on the whole Knitted Support Chicken fad but a pelican with fish in its beak? That pattern, I bought. My grandmother at 96 had a large glass candy bowl out next to her for my young kids when we visited; I can just see me in my easy chair at that great old age, pelican by my side offering finger puppets to one and all.

Although one could also put wrapped candies in there for the future great-grands, most definitely.

That’s what Gram did. There were several pounds’ worth in there. While my mom and I were trying to discretely nudge the kids to just take one (they were 5, 7, 9, and 11), Gram got a twinkle in her eye: she ignored us, looked straight at the kids, and said, Have some more!

They each picked and unwrapped and ate a second piece.

Have some more!

(Glances our way from the older two, like, uh, are we allowed?)

Have some more!

There was no hurry, they were being on their best behavior, they took turns.

Have some more!

She got them going to where they ran out of pocket space and were stuffing them, in one case, down his socks, desperately hoping Mom and Grammy (us two generations in between) were somehow, uh, not noticing, while Gram was managing not to laugh. She got all the way to her last, Have some more! when finally there were no more left to have. And she was quite fine with that.

We were walking to the car afterwards when the seven year old burst into tears.

What’s wrong!? Didn’t you have fun?

I DID! But I feel like I’m never going to see her again!

I gave her the biggest hug, suddenly wanting to burst into unexpected tears myself.

It was true. Gram quietly slipped away a few months later, a flight away from us. I figured out that what she had been doing, having lost her own mother as a young child, was making it so that her great grandchildren would remember her and how she had been on their side.

And they do.

Last night:

And so the Grinches puzzled and puzzled till their puzzler grew sore.

Maybe tomorrow, she said, I don’t want to do any more!

So they set it up on the spiral, (it’ll never go viral) with a few pieces missing. With the sections not connected, the thing’s kind of listing. A history of Earth, trilobites to elephant girth, under the same blue sky but what changes by and by!

Today:

Y’know, I told him, every time I walk past that darn thing out of the corner of my eye some part of my brain registers layered chocolate cake.

Him: Me, too! in surprise that he wasn’t the only one.

I figured that when you’re dealing with a new cancer diagnosis there must be moments when you need both a distraction and something to look forward to. So I ratted myself out and sent her the tracking number.

Plus I had this Zoom-knitting hat ready to go in a particularly soft skein of Rios, a lighter weight than my usual thick winter-warm Mecha.

I’ve been fine/no big deal/not worried/it’ll all be fine/I’m sure it’ll be negative/ about the whole biopsy thing. But today I was  remembering the GI doctor who diagnosed Crohn’s: she suddenly realized she was talking about it without taking my measure on the news she’d just thrown into my life and abruptly asked, Wait–are you okay with this?!

What–that I have a life-threatening disease? I laughed ruefully. So what’s new?

Today I found out my cousin went to the ER in pain and found herself with a stage 4 aggressive ovarian cancer diagnosis. If I’m in shock, and I am, I can only imagine how she and her kids feel.

Somehow that broke through whatever facade I had with myself and now I am just really really really wanting to have my news given to me and over with, whatever it’s going to be.

So I threw myself into hanking and scouring coned yarn and deciding that yes, that blue really isn’t the right blue and yes, I’m really going to go order more and have to wait again for it to come–and then I did–because I can control what I put into my little sister’s project and by golly I am going to do it right.

During that thumb-twiddle wait I wonder if any of my wool, any wool, would be soft enough for my cousin’s head while going through chemo. If you have any experience on that, (I mean, I’ve certainly made them, I’ve just never gotten any feedback on them) I need all the guidance I can get.