No one was doing anything with water this afternoon when he heard the big gurgle sound and hurried to check it out.

The tub was filling with water. The bathroom floors were in Deep Splash mode and flowing out the doors, with ours flowing under our closet and soaking any clothes that touched clothes that touched the floor, and I am married to a tall man. I instantly knew what a huge job this was all about to be.

But everything had been fine a half hour earlier!

And if you mop it up with towels–I had this moment of oh I’m so glad we got that dryer in time! immediately followed by, wait… Water was pouring out of the laundry room too. With no machine in use all day.

At least it was clear. It was clear it was clear it was clear. Not that I’d trust it for that but at least it felt better.

Shortly after, a friend drove up with his shop vac as I was twisting out towels out front and told him I was watering the azaleas.

Dave pitched right in. We sent him home with Andy’s peaches and a pound of dried apricot slabs and he asked about how to take care of the apricot tree we gave him a few months ago; I showed him mine so he could see what his would look like at a year older, and at the difference in growth since he’d picked up his.

This city owns its own utilities and they answer to the voters, which I love because it means their emergency guy came out within minutes to check the city’s line to the house. He was actually apologetic that the problem wasn’t there so he couldn’t do anything about it; we sent him off with thanks and a peach.

We sent yesterday’s installers home with a small box of peaches each.

We’re hoping our favorite plumber can make it tomorrow.

And after that I’m going to have to go back and pick up more peaches at Andy’s because we’re going through them pretty fast.

A hey, how are you. A response of, It’s been too long. A, How about we…

And there we were in an impromptu dinner together after a your house or ours we don’t care we just want to see you guys. Fruit from Andy’s. Her yarn in bins over there so she could choose the colors for the next big project, just like mine are over here at the moment. She pulled out my book and said she was going to knit a shawl for a friend and I pointed out the simplest to do (the Julia) vs the more involved (like the one named after her.) I said doing a three-stitch idiot cord for the neck edge makes a stronger one than what’s in there (hey, you learn something 20 years down the road) and you have the cast-on three, the ones you pick up the stitches along the length of it and then three last ones along the far side. You want a wider edge than I made some of those–start at the count at row 2 on some of those if you need to so it drapes better in the front if it’s for a larger person.

I like doing i-cord, she said, not quite sure what I meant.

Oh right. Idiot cord–it got shortened to i-cord, it’s where the i comes from.

Didn’t know that. Learned something new!

And a great time was had by all, along with a wondering why we don’t do this more often. Maybe we will now.

Do you ever feel, after finishing a big project, that you suddenly have to Do All The Things, quick! Before the next one?

The plan had been to dive right back into the grandkid afghan that’s a picture of the Big Sur coastline that I put aside to make my brother’s. It’s beautiful, and I really like it, but part of me needs an in-between something before I tackle all those intarsia strands again.

I finished a hat and went looking through my stash.

And looked again yesterday. I can’t go around without even a carry-around project! I put needles and red Rios in my purse but it protested that it was not its turn.

So, again today, feeling like I just hadn’t found–I didn’t know what, but I knew I would know when I did and I hadn’t yet.

Which is exactly what happened: there, the moment I laid eyes on it, put away in the wrong place, was a quarter pound of merino super wash from Karida at Neighborhood Fiber Co. Color: Waverly.

Seeing her is one of the things I miss dearly about Stitches West no longer being a thing. I loved her and I loved the saturation of her colors; you’ll never find white fibers at the center that the dye didn’t reach to, she got it all.

Deep burgundy for a teenage boy’s hat. Because it told me so. Even if I can only guess why so far; the yarn knows, even if I don’t yet, and it says it wants to be cabled. Oh, okay.

Man, it feels so good to be knitting the thing that needed to come to be next.

Summer, college town, new people moving in, always a new medical intern or two. (Being sick at a teaching hospital in July means the new ones haven’t yet had time to get a little experience, but what I saw years ago from the patient side of it is that they are very very earnest about it and trying.)

So: to welcome everybody and help them get to know people, it was announced at church that there would be a picnic in the park next week. Potluck. With a pet parade. There’ll be a softball game that anybody can come and go as they wish, any age; last time, they said, we had a four year old–and Hank!

A bunch of people laughed.

I noticed that some clearly wished they were in on whatever that was all about, so I raised my hand and said, For those who are new: Hank is 95.

A four-year-old playing ball on a great great grandpa’s team: the rest of the room laughed for sheer joy at that mental image.

And, I have no doubt, at being noticed and included, too.

It was a good start.

Clara Parkes on her Substack today asked, if you were to make a sign to welcome people in here, what would it say? A fact? Something humorous? Encouragement, wisdom, suggestions. What would it be?

It took me instantly back to a moment when I was at the point of death and in no way sure which way it would end up. But what I felt!

There was also this: that it was required of me now, that it was more important than there could ever be the words for, that every person I ever encountered after that should feel that, too.

Which was utterly beyond mortal power but I knew in my bones I had to try, while grateful to still be here to give it my best.

So my answer could only be this:

You are loved.

Blame my friend Trish. She showed off hers. Five bucks.

Baaaaad news, I tell ya, and yeah, mine came today.

Waiting for a certain someone to notice.

They were talking in church about the importance of service and asking for stories of times someone has made all the difference to you or you to them, and of course there’s the thought of, how do you sum up what all (sweeping arms wide) of life is about?

When it came to me, I said, I’m wearing socks that H made!

Which took her by surprise. She was thrilled. She tried to wave it off a little by saying it was the auction fundraiser, but hey, we were on to her. It was love, pure and simple, that got her to spend all those hours on them. All I did by donating to that camp fundraiser was to give her a direction to point it in for one moment out of many.

Went out tonight, and turns out another couple was celebrating at the table next to us. Great food, good times, Flea Street Cafe has served us more of our anniversary dinners than anywhere else for a reason.

Till he got out of the car at home and went, in complete bewilderment, Wait–where’s…(checks inside car, checks under the car) my shoe??

We called. I headed back there and found myself following another car most of the way. Walked in.

They saw my returning face and went, Oh good, here it is.

And tried to hand me a credit card that I had never seen before. That’s not mine. I’d called because my husband has neuropathy and can’t feel his feet and he had somehow lost his shoe.

The woman who’d checked us in just a little earlier ran to retrieve the well-worn singleton for me–and laughed and laughed when I thanked her but added with a grin/shrug, I was kind of hoping it was lost forever and I could finally get him to wear a new pair, he loves these. Thank you!

Meantime, the driver of the car I’d followed had come in. It was her credit card. She was also the woman who’d been sitting at the next table and was delighted to see me again. She looked at the shoe in my hands and said she and her husband had been mystified why they’d seen a shoe sitting in the parking lot near the door on their way out–well, there you go!

We chatted like old friends, the way women tend to do.

It was their anniversary, too.

Forty-six.

Fifty-six!

Alright!

Took some of Andy’s fruit to the neighbors with the new baby.

And found out that the mom’s birthday is our anniversary. How cool is that?!

40″, past the part where I constantly have to think about how I’m going to do it next, on to the trees above the surf!

Meantime, there was a small dinner party tonight. At the end, people were to ask a question of a randomly-assigned other person in the group and they to them in return and then share with everyone.

I marveled at how, having known each other for decades, there was so much we didn’t really know as to what our back stories were about why we like what we do and why we do it. I shared a story that was old to me but not to them.

Mom, the woman your age in our ward is in awe of you and Dad at the trip you were willing to take with six kids and a camping trailer in a circle around the country and across Canada and down the West Coast (with a stop in Mexico) and back to Maryland for most of that summer where you taught me to knit. She has eight kids. She was going, And you were all in one car?! For two months?!

I said, And then in high school I found a sweater in my mom’s knitting magazine that I really really wanted and I asked Mom to knit it for me. She told me, Go make it yourself!

I wasn’t about to admit I didn’t remember how. I did have to ask to be reminded how to cast on–and then, playing snotty teenager, I went in my room and worked out how to do it myself.

Which means I do it totally different from how my mom does.

Which meant that when my lupus began and my arthritis was severe in my hands, I found I could knit–my way. Had it been the more elegant way my mom was taught I would never have been able to become anything of the knitter that I am now. Grab then drop the yarn in the right hand each stitch, and I can do it really fast, too (or thought I could, till I saw Stephanie Pearl-McPhee knitting in person. Wow.)

I asked C how she got into theater, and she said her dad was in a play when she was a little girl and someone had to watch her so he took her with him to rehearsals–where she quickly memorized every person’s lines and corrected them when they got it wrong.

And I laughed, thinking of trying to speed up a toddler’s bedtime story: they always know. You can’t get away with it.

I knew she’d grown up on a farm on the plains of Alberta and I had always wondered how on earth theater and she had found each other.

Clearly someone else out there, whoever they were, refused to not have theater in their lives and I wonder how many communities in how many places have benefited because that person kept doing what they loved doing no matter what ninety years ago. And roped C’s dad into it.

C has written plays, she has produced many, she has given so much to the community. She has definitely played it forward.

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.

The neighbors were out taking a walk. Their three-year-old showed me the tiny purple flower and a few of its leaves he’d been holding tight in his hand.

I silently thought as I admired his find, oh, some neighbor would be glad those future prickly weed seeds didn’t happen.

They asked about the tree?

The city had come by this morning to take on that fire blight. Which would have meant removing nearly every limb, but it looked surprisingly better when they got done. Maybe we’ll get a few more years out of it after all.

Look! I said to their little boy. There’s a bird’s nest! We moved under the limbs and looked up so he could see it better.

He was very excited about that and you know he’ll be telling them about every bird he sees for the next little bit and he’ll probably think he knows where they live.

She had outlived her initial prognosis by several years with the help of a study at NIH, but in the end cancer and age took her.

The first Sunday of the month is our Fast and Testimony meeting, where traditionally Mormons fast for 24 hours (or whatever one can in their own circumstances) and then donate the money that would have been spent on that food towards feeding those in need. In that meeting we take turns as the spirit moves us to get up and speak briefly. Or to sit in quiet contemplation, listening.

I took a turn.

I said, My children were 2, 4, 6, and 8 when I was diagnosed with lupus at thirty-one. About a year later I found myself being told I needed a cardiology appointment.

Leeanne found out. She insisted on coming over and picking me up and taking me to the clinic for that appointment. (I don’t remember whom she got to watch my kids at home.) She stayed there with me, reading quietly outside the exam room where I got to watch my heart beating on the screen. It would not have occurred to me to ask, but she was determined that no young mom who had to be worried about her kids’ futures (I was) should have to go through that alone. She was there for me.

At the time, I barely knew her.

I wanted her grandchildren who were in the audience to hear this story from me directly. I said, I don’t know if she remembered that later but I never forgot it and have been grateful to her for it for all these years.

Serving by love is what living the Gospel is. And she did.