I wonder how her life turned out. She would have been able to reach people nobody else could have.

When I was at the end of my first semester of college in 1977 at BYU, facing my first finals, my dad surprised me with an amaryllis bulb kit in the mail for my birthday.

He had given one to my mom every year for hers. To be included in that celebration felt like my dad telling me quietly that I was an adult now in his eyes. And that because of his faith in me, I was. Finals? I could do this!

One of the girls on my floor in the dorm asked me about that box with the pretty flower picture on it and was so taken with the idea that my dad would do that that we got to talking.

And talking.

We found ourselves walking the campus. Around town. Walking, walking, till hours past our bodies ached to be sound asleep. There was no way to stop.

I was her first witness. She had to tell someone.

When she was younger, her parents had lost a child in a house fire.

Her father, well regarded in their community which had rallied around the family, at home was someone who beat her mother. Often.

The day came when Becca stood between them to make him stop. He knocked her out.

And again.

At one point, and I don’t know how she met him, some older man told her he loved her and would protect her and brought her home to his place, where she was his plaything for a week. I think she was 17.

At the end of that week, though, she considered all the Sunday School lessons about waiting for marriage and knew she hadn’t done that and the ones about loving your family and she knew her father hadn’t lived up to that–but that this wasn’t how she wanted to live, either. She went home. College was coming soon anyway.

My father had sent me a flower bulb, simply to surprise me and make my day, and because he believed in me. There were actually people out there who loved their kids and lived that way. That, that was what she wanted ahead of her in her life. Love. Kindness.

She confessed to me then that a few nights earlier it had all become too much and she had sat in a tub with a knife in her hand, looking at her wrists, prepared to do the deed.

But something had made her hesitate. She felt an intense empathy reaching out for her personally, with a question, and I will never forget her saying these words describing how it felt: Yes. This life *will* be hard. Do you want to continue it?

She felt a promise holding her in its loving arms that she was not alone, that it would be so hard, but worth it, worth it, worth it, if she did. And so she lived.

Then she saw my amaryllis box.

And knew that good, loving people were out there, that they were more than just a Sunday School wish, that they were trying to live up to what they profess about following the teachings of Jesus to love one another. They were real. That could be her. She could want others to feel that same sense of being offered rescue that she had.

Yesterday morning, surely from the stress of what last week’s election means for the whole world and worried sick over my friends in Ukraine, I woke up from a nightmare. In it I had relived the pain of her telling me what had been done to her.

Becca–her parents had called her Rebecca when they were mad at her, which had never made sense to her because they had in fact actually named her simply Becca–had, shortly after our long nighttime walk, gone home at Christmas break to her folks in the South and she never came back. She told me just before she left that she had decided to go home, trying to reassure me that it was okay to now.

I never heard from her again.

I have never known if she was okay, and all my adult life I have wanted her to be, wherever she is out there.

She could be there for others going through what she had had to in a way I could never know how to. We opened up each other’s worlds. If we saw each other now we would be throwing our arms around each other and telling how this whole life thing had all turned out for us.

I told Richard the gist of that long walk.

It was a hard story for him to hear on top of the overwhelming grieving going on re the election outcome, wherein half the nation had returned to its abuser.

I had a thought–and went and pulled out the Nautilus puzzle of a sunrise at the Grand Canyon.

Pouring out the pieces. Getting out the cookie sheets to sort them into. Heads bowed together, turning each one over to see its true colors, searching for the edges, finding where it turns its corners, slowly, slowly over two evenings going from setting up the boundaries to filling in the center, the rocks and the sky and the river coming to be, slowly and painstakingly at first and then faster and faster towards the end till the picture was complete.

The laser-broken pieces now a glory of a view.

That was the question I wanted to ask.

So.

That third of a ball: in the sunlight, it just wasn’t enough of a match.

(Tap tap tap.) Yarn store number one in that color: zero inventory.

Yarn store number two: three skeins. It was a long way to go to check dye lots for that little of a chance.

Yarn store number three, and the one I’d most want to go to anyway even though it’s a trek. I knew I would have to call to find out, but Kathryn has a lovely deep voice that is easier to hear than most on the phone.

Rios in Ravelry Red? Wait just a minute while I go check. …Lots!

So I gathered up my project, my last skein attached, and headed to Cottage Yarns. Where they don’t have space for classes or gatherings because there’s just too much yarn to squeeze them in. Wasn’t it Mae West who said, “Too much of a good thing is wonderful”?

They had a full bag all ready for me when I got there. I explained that mine was a couple years old and I knew Malabrigo tends to shift the shades slightly from year to year so it was a bit of a long shot.

They were a bit too pink. Mine was more on the orange side.

How about this bag?

Oh, much closer, and I almost bought two of those but then Kathryn’s husband found three skeins that had found their way into a bag with another color altogether (so that they would stand out and could be found while staying mothproofed) and once again stepping out into the sunlight and back under the store lights for comparison, that was what I wanted.

Meantime, while I was focusing on that, the shop’s phone rang.

He went off to wind the two balls for me while she was answering the call, which didn’t take long.

They wanted to know, she told me, trying really hard not to laugh because everybody’s a beginner at the beginning and sometimes non-knitters buy presents. Did we have any red yarn?

Just, red yarn.

(Photo from two years ago. I had no idea this one was going to be so huge when I ordered my first gerdan, I had no frame of reference yet.)

I wore all-black to church today. I’d asked after one of my friends in Ukraine and had gotten an anguished message back wondering where would they go, whether they would even live, how would they get through this.

I knew in my bones that only the color of mourning would do. And my very large, bright yellow sunflower gerdan: there have been Ukrainian refugees living next door to that church and I wanted them to feel seen. I wanted to bear witness to the importance of supporting the innocents whom American voters just sold down the river. It was my I Protest outfit. But anyway.

There are two people in that congregation who–well, one once showed me her official socks with that name on them.

The monthly senior potluck was this evening and I looked around and thought, hey, look–we’re not the youngest ones anymore!

People were chatting, the hostess was trying to get people to get started; Richard motioned me over to where he had a seat at a table ready for me.

Ms. Socks was to the other side.

Note that she and I do not discuss politics because it would do no good–but I have noted that as her guy’s behavior got worse and worse over these past few years she avoided me more and more, which is a shame, because other than that one (very big) thing I consider us old friends. More and more though with a sense of wistfulness and loss.

Why should I let him of all people call the shots in our personal lives. So I turned to her and asked her about her house and how the remodeling was going.

She seemed surprised that I would want to talk to her, which struck me as terribly sad, but answered my question and we went on to have a normal conversation like it should always be and she enjoyed a bit of my blueberry cobbler, too.

I think Bill of Penzey’s Spices has a point: Cook. Feed people. Love them.

It helped.

I picked up my friend Karen and we headed down the freeway towards Andy’s Orchard. As we were talking, I said, well, my potassium’s always low–to the point they actually treated it for awhile, awhile ago–and one of the best sources of potassium in food is dried apricots. By far, compared to, say, bananas. (Side chatter about stocking up for the winter on this trip.) So it’s not just food, it’s medicine, right? Hey, when life gives you an excuse to do what you want to do anyway…

She laughed.

I was hoping for Comice pears, too, but they were out today.

So, she asked me, standing in front of the recently-dried varieties: regular, premium, slab. How do you know what’s what?

The slabs are the ones that were so perfectly ripe they went smush when they cut them open. Those regulars? Nice and round and pretty. The slabs? Sweet and melting in texture with no added sugar but the shape is ‘gone splat.’ They are perfect.

Turns out it was her son Andy’s birthday. I was his Sunday School teacher back when he was ten, and now he’s ‘the answer to life, the universe, and everything‘ (MIT link with happy mathematicians) per Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (It appears the answer really IS 42!)

Got her back home. I opened my car door, went around to the back and of course I pulled out a pound from me. Go celebrate with Andy for me, willya? Tell him I said happy birthday. He was always one of my favorites.

A comment at church yesterday by an avid reader that will stay with me, quoting a friend who loved books as much as she did. The friend was, at the time, a young Mormon missionary, and was trying hard to stay close to the Spirit. To go where she could do good. To do what someone out there needed.

The friend’s favorite conversation opener was to ask, What’s your favorite book?

One time, having been taught all her life that G_d knows and cares about us personally, while trying to focus her thoughts in prayer she found herself impulsively asking G_d Himself, What’s Your favorite book?

She felt immediately silly–but also, to her astonishment, an answer.

“Anne of Green Gables.”

Wait. What? Her favorite from her childhood, but. Why would G_d care about that of all things? What? So that was the second question; she really wanted to know.

And the answer and the experience, passed on to her friend Sarah and now to the rest of us, came just as quickly and just as close to her heart:

“Because that is the first book you read that made you want to be a better person.”

I’ve been determined to get back to Fillory Yarn to try to run into the woman who helped pick out Rios in a color that seemed moose-y two months ago, especially now that I really had something to show her.

She’d particularly liked the golden brown, and I did, too–and even better after I’d paired it with this darker one. I probably would not have bought the lighter without her definitive opinion that it was The One and my moose would have been much less without it.

So. That group meets on Thursday afternoons and today seemed like a good day to try. (The adhesive in the heart monitor is super itchy. A week from now it is definitely not going to be less itchy and distracting, just go!)

So blame it on the heart monitor, but it got me there.

I saw a long-ago familiar face, exclaimed, Oh, HI! and she welcomed me to sit down next to her.

It wasn’t till she said something about once babysitting my youngest and what was his name? that drew a complete blank from me that I finally asked her to remind me her name again?

LILLY!!! Ohmygosh yes!! She’s one of the people I’ve most missed with the ending of Stitches conferences. It’s been years. And–it’s John.

YES! That was his name! He’d come one year to push me around in a chair.

Then there was the time we were both having our scooters repaired beforehand, at the same place, turns out, going in at different times but with both of us saying what we needed it for and it apparently stuck with the guy: a conference. Of knitters. In the thousands. Who knew.

The thing is that when I came in to pick up mine he was dumbfounded. Was I alright? I had lost so much weight. So quickly. Surely there was something I wasn’t saying, but he wanted to know, and said it again, trying hard to be supportive, was I okay.

(what on earth is he on about)

He said something else and I went, Ohhh. You’re thinking of my friend Lilly not me. Huh. Well she does kind of look like my big sister. (And I am definitely not one to complain about people getting faces mixed up.)

Speaking of which, one woman across the table asked if I could pull the mask down for a moment. I did. She studied my face, and asked, Did you ever go to a little yarn store on such-and-such street in Santa Clara years ago called…

I did!

She’d been sure of it. Yes!

That had to have been a good twenty-five, thirty years earlier. Wow, you’re good. (Somehow I remember that LYSO as being younger… When did we age.)

A great time was had by all, the moose-yarn-finder was thanked, showing off happened all around, a ball of Rios was bought “to pay for my afternoon’s entertainment” and wound up for me, and at last I headed out to try to beat at least some of the rush hour traffic home.

Lilly had reached for her cane first–and spent a quick second staring wondering what on earth–as I laughed that wait, she’d grabbed mine. Our canes even matched. Wood, hand carved.

As she had said several times by then, Great minds!

So much better of a day! And then it got better yet.

In the afternoon I noticed the sign was gone.

In the evening a car went past the window–and we’re almost at the end of the street.

So I did what anyone would do, right? I finished up my conversation with my husband and went outside to pull the recycling and trash bins back in from the curb for the day.

That didn’t do it.

I wasn’t going to knock on the door and interrupt them on their very first day, but I thought creating possibilities not a bad thing.

I came inside, grabbed a pitcher, and walked back out to water the little columnar apple tree out front by hand, a gallon at a time. All those strange 100F+ days this past week, it could use a little extra.

I had just poured the fifth gallon when she came out of the house to get something out of her car.

And that is how I got to exclaim, Welcome to the neighborhood! while introducing myself to the new neighbor.

When we moved in we were young parents; our last child was born a year later, and the couple living in that house had kids in college and made our little ones their adopted grandchildren.

And now there will be a baby in that house, once they do a little work and move in for good next month. I can’t wait to pay it forward and get to see their little one grow up.

Somewhere out there, though, you know there’s a skunk (I once saw one on our welcome mat through the window thankfully just before we were about to open the front door) that heard their dog in garden territory it might well by now consider its own and it was probably thinking, Oh honey I can give you something to bark about.

So many future stories for that house to tell!

Two wonderful speakers at church today. The second was a man who started off by saying that my husband and I lived in the ward he grew up in in New Hampshire when he was a teenager, and so, he joked, “They have signed a nondisclosure agreement.” Brought down the house.

The first was my Richard.

With a very simple message, quoting from scripture about how dissension and anger are not of G_d: that we can disagree, but it must be with civility. That if we give in to rancor we are failing ourselves and those we’re talking to and G_d himself, who loves us without reservation and to whom we so much owe love by loving His children.

Nobody ever changed their minds by being argued with, he said. Only love changes people for the better.

It was the shortest talk I’ve ever heard him give.

It was all that needed to be said.

I drove four hours to go two miles to see an old friend today and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Kelly’s kids and mine grew up together, or most of the way before she moved away. It’s been way too long.

Today also happened to be one of the very rare times when my husband had to go into the office, one of those, weren’t we going to buy a second car one of these days? days.

I can affirm that morning and evening rush hour across the Bay Area say the economy’s doing great!

As I was coming home, there were three people walking by taking in the feel of the area, a couple and, lagging behind a little, an older gentleman, whom I had to wait for before I could pull into my driveway–just as the woman was about to get into their car across the street.

I got out of my car. She closed the door on hers after seeing me looking her way and we all four converged eagerly on the sidewalk to make introductions.

They are putting an offer on the house next door tomorrow. I had the same reaction to getting to meet them that she’d clearly had to getting to meet one of the neighbors before doing so: YES!!!

I asked, Does it still have the koi?

A quizzical, Well, it has a pond, I didn’t see any koi…

Me: I used to feed Alma’s koi when they went out of town, and they forgot to tell me it was on a timer. Went over a bit late one day and got zapped hard with water by their raccoon defense set-up.

They laughed. We talked gardens briefly.

And I thought, that full bath Alma and Jim added onto one bedroom for a caretaker’s use would be great for their family’s grandpa to have his privacy.

I came away so hoping they get that house. But there have been so many people coming to see it in person since Saturday that, well, whoever gets to have these good people as their neighbors will be very fortunate. I just selfishly hope it’s us.

A talk in church today:

He grew up in the more rural outskirts of DC, not all that far from where we did. His parents grew up very poor, the children of immigrants, one grandfather a refugee Ukrainian Jew.

His family had bought a small wheat farm in Maryland with the intent of as much self-sufficiency as they could manage in order to supplement their paychecks.

But it needed a new well, so his father took a branch from, he thinks it was a peach tree, and used it for divination.

Nathaniel hastened to add that divination has been debunked, there’s no science in it, it’s an old folk tale, he made sure we knew he knew that. But that’s what his father could afford to go on so that’s what he did.

Seems the peach seemed to tell him there was more water where everything was greener. Worked for him. So he got some help and dug himself a well and when there was a drought it kept right on going.

On finding out his neighbors’ wells had gone dry, he shared his water with the farmers around him–because when you’re in a position to be who and what someone else needs, that is a gift from Above.

And then Nathaniel read the scripture that whoso comes to God to take part in His love, “It shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”

Love thy neighbors.

Help them water their much larger fields. Because that’s the one thing they most needed that they couldn’t do for themselves right then, and his family with their very small farm could do something about it.

The children and their children have never forgotten the lesson.

They left for their 7:00 a.m. flight and we woke up to a house that felt far too quiet.

Walked in the laundry room and eyed the distilled water bottle next to the iron: Wait. That one was new, right? I hadn’t opened it yet. Why then…?

…!!!

And so life with its wry sense of humor handed me back one of those blankets nice and wet again along with just a few other things in reach of that water. No mildew yet, not this time. After all, I needed that extra laundry to distract me from missing them so much, right?

Our guests were back here in time for dinner. They’re leaving around 5 a.m. for their cross-country flight home and I will miss them so much.

Heading out, the burning question is, will those Reine Claude Green Gage plums from Andy’s grow in Maine?

I told her Trees of Antiquity not only sells them but considers that variety the best tasting stone fruit they have. They’d be a good one to ask–and I reminded her that our Sam grew a Meyer lemon in Vermont because she wanted to enough. Go for it.

Her glasses are bright pink with sparkles and they fit her gregariousness perfectly. You would want to be her patient. She’s a nurse.

The lace cowls: I had handspun lime-ish green silk with sparkles. I had a solid vivid red silk from a tubular yarn. I had handpainted merino in a heathery bright turquoise, the yarn bought from Serendipidye at Kings Mountain Art Fair last year.

I lined them up flat in a ziplock and pulled it out of my purse today and asked her to pick one.

She loved them all, she assured me, but that red! Definitely the red.

I quietly remembered knitting it a few months ago thinking, someone out there is going to love this color so much and I have to knit it right now and not put off weaving in the ends. It has to be ready for them.

I had not at that point actually met her yet.

Today it was the most perfect thing.

So is she.

My friend who took me to Kings Mountain? I took her to Andy’s Orchard today. It was only fair.

Meantime, how is it that never in my life did anyone tell me that young zebras are brown with black stripes? This picture a few days ago made me do a double take and eventually sent me looking for more.

There’s an extinct type called a quagga that, after sequencing its DNA from a museum specimen and finding out how closely related it was to a particular subgroup, researchers are trying to bring back through breeding and luck. They’ve got a small herd going that looks pretty close.

The stripes cool the animal against the heat. Quaggas were the southernmost type, living in cooler temps. They protect against biting flies. There were fewer of those flies there. And thus of stripes.

People were still talking in the 1800s about trying to domesticate that most gentle of zebras when they found out they couldn’t. They wouldn’t breed in zoos. They’d been hunted by colonizers. Animals that are less afraid are easier to catch.

There weren’t any left.

And now, or close to it at least, there are beginning to be some again.

On a side note, I kept trying to figure out why the name made me think of clams. The answer is, there’s a Ukrainian quagga mussel whose fading stripes are such that it was actually named after that zebra.

How on earth did I ever hear of a type of mussel in a river in Ukraine. Oh. That’s the invasive one they’re fighting in the Great Lakes.

Rabbit hole, I tell you. But fun to learn a little bit more about the world.

So much laughing. Such a good time.

It was the daughter of my high school best friend and the daughter’s husband, doing a long driving trip of a lifetime to see sights never seen before, with our house as a crash landing spot mid-California.

Amy and I each took a turn at generational double taking: she said they were going next to see her aunt, her father’s sister.

I started to say, I didn’t know he had a sister–and stopped and realized I meant her mother’s father, and of course she meant her dad and he did and silly me.

Just before they left this morning, I told her she reminded me of her grandmother: she was a sweetheart.

There was this flicker of confusion and she was trying to figure out what I meant. The only grandmother she ever knew was a step; her grandfather had been widowed around the time she’d been born and had remarried to someone who’d never had children, to whom Amy had been her only grandchild.

Your mom’s mom, I said gently. The one you never knew. I did.

She took a deep breath inhaling the essence of that thought and held me in a long, long hug.

I know what it’s like to grow up missing a grandfather lost to an early death. I know that wondering and I feel that strong wistfulness.

At long last, at least for her, I knew I could do something about it. The connection is real.

I sent them off with Andy’s peaches to share with her aunt and they will be back here Sunday before turning in the rental and flying home across the country. I cannot wait to see them again.