Someone was at church today whom I saw at the play last night but did not recognize.

I had no idea she was the granddaughter of one of the members whom we had all been asked to pray for a few years ago: she had been pregnant, then the pandemic began, then she found out she had stomach cancer.

It had not looked good.

Today is the first Sunday of the month, when in the Mormon Church people take turns coming up and addressing the congregation as the Spirit so moves them.

She stood.

She was so grateful for all those prayers, and for the ones she knew were to come because there had recently been some bad news again… And that was all she said about that.

The important part, she wanted us to know, is that our good works matter. Our love matters. It matters. Always. Never hesitate.

Later, during a Sunday School discussion, wanting her to know she was not alone on the human front as well as the heavenly, I described being in a hospital bed fifteen years ago too ill to do anything for myself much less anybody else and very very close to death.

Except: I was still me. If I had to go through this (and obviously I had no choice in the matter), then the one thing I could still do was I could pray for every single person who came into my hospital room.

And you can’t pray for someone, and mean it, without loving them.

One doctor confessed later that he’d written on my chart, Patient looks deceptively well. Do not be deceived. Because I was too cheerful.

I said, I knew that the doctors and staff in the hospital see people in their worst moments. If I could love every one of them, that could reverberate forward through all the years they serve there. It could help them to see the best in other patients in whatever circumstances the way I was doing with them, it could potentially ease the burdens on thousands and thousands of people.

The young mom was going, emphatically, YES! YES! You could see the relief in her face that someone got it, how she’d felt and dealt with her own experience a few years ago and that was rapidly coming at her again, someone knew, that what it had been like for her had been like that for me, too. And the result had been blessings. So many blessings. Oh the stories we both could have told each other.

I so loved her for her loving–everybody.

And renewed my prayers for Jordan. And her family, and her medical team. That much, I can do.

And it is no small thing.

We will all be telling the tale with a laugh for a whole long time to come.

We have in our ward a woman whose heart belongs to the theater. She’s been writing plays for the community since before I was born, often at the church with and for the kids.

But it had been a number of years. Colette is 91 now. The bishop asked her if she wanted to do a production again–and she was instantly the happiest I’ve seen her in a goodly while. She felt seen. She wanted the kids to feel seen. We’re on!

And so there were rehearsals every Tuesday for Jack in the Beanstalk. Two wards were involved, not just ours, over a hundred people got into it.

Tonight was showtime.

So: Jack lives in Texas. His mother is a witch, a sweet fairy godmother type, sparkles and all, but a fairly inept one. She tells him to sell their cow and go buy some magic beans so they can make their fortune.

Bull, he corrects her.

Right. Bull.

So off he goes, wandering through various story lines, including: Hawaii (we have a seriously good ukulele player in the ward, and watching one of the hula dancers I suddenly realized oh that’s right her mom grew up there), there was Mary Poppins and adorable little girls who about brought down the house, Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat (which I think was included in honor of the late JoAnne K, who’d sewn that incredible coat years and years ago for one of those productions and which instantly delighted a whole lot of us adults who knew. Joseph was the tall teenage second-generation of these productions), there was New York City with little boys wearing Mickey Mouse ears and long narrow tails and throwing pizza boxes and chip bags in the air in great delight. Rats in NYC.)

And at long last a dance and a solo by a bunch of men in suits with briefcases playing Wall Street.

They had been searching. They needed a logo.

They saw Jack. He had a bull! That was it! That was perfect! Sell it to us!

No can do, says Jack: I promised my mom I would only sell it for a beanstalk.

WE CAN DO THAT! They exulted. Out came half a poster from offstage: Bean. We have an IPO and we can make you part of it! The rest of the poster came out, then another on the other side, spelling it out: LL Bean stock!

“Ginny?!”

She stopped in her tracks and exclaimed, “I thought that was you!” as we threw our arms around each other.

I was at the clinic for my follow-up to see if they needed to do retina surgery yet.

That department has always been busy in the extreme when I’ve been there, with an employee lounge turned into an overflow waiting room, but at that particular moment there was a single person in the original waiting room and the receptionists were waiting for anyone to show up. One of them called over to me with a smile, Name? Birthdate? so she could check me in without interrupting the joy any longer than necessary; it was putting a smile on her face, too.

We caught up a little bit and then they called Ginny back.

Since I wouldn’t be interrupting any other patients, I turned to that receptionist and explained, My kids are 36, 38, 40, and 42 this spring, and she was the kindergarten teacher to all of them.

Kindergarten! Wow!

I waited my own turn, sitting there remembering the time I’d attended the funeral of our favorite fifth grade teacher, gone far too soon. Ginny had been there. At one point after the service, a 6’9″ young man was helping the family move a tall easel covered in flowers to where they wanted it for their luncheon, and he spotted us talking and came our way with it.

“Alison,” Ginny said, “You need to step out of this man’s way.”

“Ginny,” I said–“That’s my son Richard. He’s coming to say hi to you!”

“OHMYGOSH! Ohmygosh, he’s not little anymore, is he!”

I wished we’d had more time. I always wish for more time when I’m with her. Soon enough they called my name. Did some tests, dilated my eyes, talked to the doctor and the med student tagging him for the day, came back out, and once again as I approached the desk, needing to schedule the next followup, she was coming out, too.

This time we had about fifteen minutes to ourselves. It was glorious. And you know a retired kindergarten teacher would love hand knit finger puppets and she did.

Both her kids had had twins, all four grands were born the same year, college is coming up in a couple of years, and everything is all at once for everybody. She asked after mine.

She had retired, then she had subbed, then covid, then–

–Parkinson’s, and she couldn’t risk falls around the little kids now.

“Oh I’m sorry!”

“Yeah,” as she looked me in the eyes, “I am, too.”

But she knew I knew about living with…stuff, health wise, and I think it helped to be able to talk about it to someone who simply understood and that you just go on with what you have the best you can.

She had put those finger puppets on and she kept them on and we laughed about flamingoes in her lawn and they were still on as they called her back to finish her appointment; we said our goodbyes.

Her one kid who lives a plane ride away is coming with her family next week, the other is nearby. There will be a grand time and Ginny will be surrounded by love and by teenagers, who are such interesting people to talk to, always.

This was our teacher who’d built a little enclosure with hanging beads, ’60’s hippy style, with the monarch butterflies inside it that she had had her students raise. If a kid was getting angry and full of feelings he didn’t know how to deal with, he got a few minutes to calm himself in the butterfly room.

Where the rule was you had to be absolutely still so as not to scare nor injure these delicate, beautiful creatures the kids had put their hearts into seeing coming to be.

The orange and black monarchs would peacefully land on their shoulders or head or arms or everywhere, wings gently folding and unfolding.

It was Ginny’s cure for Nature Deficit Disorder.

Oh, and I got to tell her when I came out: they told me things looked better than they’d expected and for now I don’t need to do surgery.

Because I knew that when you’ve struggling with a new diagnosis, when hope seems a difficult thing, borrowing a piece of someone else’s helps.

We were given the honor of being invited to our neighbor’s senior piano recital, to be held at a lovely old church.

We surprised them when we said we knew the place well: our son had had his organ recital there. The acoustics in that building are amazing.

The daughter, heading off to college in the fall, plans to minor in music.

Not only was she a joy to listen to, but her every movement conveyed the sense of what the composer was trying to offer to the world. She is *good*.

We told them our son had minored in organ performance and had played the Mormon Tabernacle Organ for his final.

It felt like passing the baton to the next generation and saying, You’ve got this.

Our parents were three thousand miles away, her kids were off at college, and Alma became our kids’ surrogate grandma when we moved in.

When our youngest was born a year later, she was insistent that she was going to come take care of the kids whatever time of day or night it might be while we went to the hospital, so at 10:30 pm that Sunday when I said I was two minutes apart she came right on over.

As I told her daughter today, we have been grateful all these years that we so lucked out on who we got to have as neighbors.

Richard hurried home around 2:30 a.m. to thank her and relieve her, bearing the news that we now had two girls and two boys.

About 8:00 a.m. she was ringing the doorbell to come take care of the kids again so he could go off to work.

Going to work that day had not occurred to him. Nor his boss. He had been going to sleep in a bit but who was he to argue with someone being so kind–and he could see that from her generation, that’s just what you do, and so he dutifully got out the door and went off to work for a few hours.

He never told her he went and found a cot there and snoozed under his desk for a bit.

Alma and Jim had a big, old plum tree and freely shared of their harvest. (My kids would later plant me my own Santa Rosa tree as a Mother’s Day surprise.)

One year there was enough that I made a batch of jam and gave them two jars.

Jim thought this was great!

And so I ended up coming back to their door with I think it was four more jars, which is how Alma found out that his eyes had lit up at the first two and he’d gone back out to the tree and when she wasn’t looking he’d shown up on my doorstep with forty more pounds of plums. Forty. He’d slightly staggered coming up my walkway with that big bag. And you know they had to be processed quickly because the ones on the bottom all nice and ripe like that were definitely going squish under there.

Not that I said any of that out loud but she instantly knew.

JIM!

The two of us laughed and then she did too but somehow they never gave me quite that many again even if it was fine with me.

The last few pounds were pureed with lemon juice and thrown in the freezer, but I did it, I got them all done.

There was the time I walked next door a moment with toddler #2 in tow, and when Alma opened the door he promptly chatterboxed her ear off.

She listened in amazement, and then turned to me and said, He really does talk when his big sister isn’t there!

Jim’s beekeeping. The hive that swarmed and were every bit as peaceful as I’d heard described. They were in a cloud just above and next to my mango tree by the fence line. I surprised myself at suddenly wanting to inspect its flowers just then and they all but invited me to come join them in their life dance in the air. I suddenly understood why people would keep bees, and I will forever be grateful for an experience I can only describe as glorious. I would never have known.

So many years of good memories.

Jim passed a few years ago at 86.

Last night, just after I posted here, I got a note from their daughter: her mother had quietly passed away. She had been so fortunate to be there with her when she did. She knew I would want to know.

I knew the day was coming but the reality is that I cannot fathom not having Alma and all her love and shared memories right next door.

We exchanged messages and love and then by light of day today threw our arms around each other.

She travels home tomorrow and I will so much miss her, too. She and her brother are so much like their mom and dad. The best.

In photos and stories a couple dear to us gave a presentation tonight on what it was like to be the volunteer presidents of a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in central Africa these past three and a half years, arriving just as Covid was starting up. They already spoke French, and with the legacy of French colonialism there they were able to fit in pretty quickly linguistically.

They told stories of wonderful people. So kind. So generous.

You could not get medical treatment unless you paid in advance. They had a missionary who was in a motorcycle accident and found him in the hospital: in that country where almost everybody had almost nothing, someone had found him, brought him in, and had paid for his care, which surely would have been a serious financial struggle to do. They did not know who.

They told how they realized that they could make a huge difference in the lives of the African-born missionaries serving under them by getting them lessons in speaking English: those who did, their earning potential went up by 30-60% after their missions. The need for education was so great. School was only for those rich enough to pay for it.

And so they set up daily online English sessions. With the Church’s help, they added college courses as well. You might not have a bachelor’s yet, you might not have an associate degree yet, but if you had a certificate verifying that you had finished a course in (name that subject) you were already way ahead in the job market.

But the human brain being what it is, the story that will probably stay with me a long time is of how when they had to drive between the two cities, there was no rule of law out on the road. But there were plenty of people who saw white people who had a car and thought $$$ and they would stop them, pretend to be cops, and demand a bribe in order to be allowed to continue.

It is illegal for a US citizen to pay a bribe. Period. Not that they would anyway because all it does is make it worse the next time.

So Todd would just talk to them, being his sweetest self, actually caring about them personally, hail-fell0w-well-met, determined to live this religion of brotherly love he believed in, till they gave up and waved them on by.

There was one time when that did not work. The men were determined and working themselves up into serious anger despite his best efforts at deescalation. In our friends’ most intense moment of silent praying, suddenly some random guy they’d never laid eyes on before rushed to the scene going, Hey! Leave those guys alone, they’re my friends!

And they did!

On the return home there was no one and their path was clear.

And on their return home to the US he just got offered a job to help expand that BYU Pathways program to more areas like that. Education, education, education.

We were offering finger puppets to the parents of every toddler coming on board the flight for home. It had been much delayed, they were on Texas time, and we knew those kids were going to be tired. Their folks could use all the support they could get.

A woman holding a box full of exquisite, perfectly matched white flowers watched the family boarding just in front of her getting one and something in her smile had me offering her one, too. Her choice.

Oh cool! She quite liked the little gray cat.

She and her very new husband were coming from their own wedding and looking absolutely radiant.

We settled in our seats, Southwest flight 1489 took off, and I was alternating between book and needles; having done an awful lot of knitting that weekend, I was trying to take it easy on my hands. When the crew served apple juice I used the little cup with its ice to hold against tender muscles.

About an hour in it dawned on me: I was knitting an infinity scarf in a colorway Malabrigo had named Anniversario. A blessing of an infinity of anniversaries together to come. How had I not seen this instantly.

There were about three hours left in the flight and I had maybe a little over half a cowl at that point. I considered, a little doubtfully at first.

I could do this. If I didn’t stop at all, after having already knit for two hours in the airport, then yes, I think I could. G_d, if You want me to, I’m going to need Your help because my hands otherwise aren’t up to it.

And so the marathon began, with a prayer for the outcome to be whatever He wanted (including stopping if I needed to to protect me.) I was leaving it in His hands while trying to thank Him with mine. We had gotten to our family’s wedding after all the Friday stuff. We had shared in so much happiness. And here was a chance to bless another new marriage with a story they could tell their grandchildren someday, of love from the whole wide world on their day.

I found to my half-surprise that my wrists had stopped twinging. I did stop every now and then and stretched my fingers and wrists but then I got right back to it. I timed how long it was taking me to do a repeat and when I would need to stop in order to be able to cast off and work the ends in before we landed.

I did it. At sixteen repeats it was long enough. I was quite happy with it. I did it! I even still had time to read just a bit.

Then the trick was to find her again, and I knew if I didn’t then it would happily go to someone else. But also that I’d be a little disappointed, maybe even a lot more than a little.

Baggage claim. Maybe they’d gone straight out the door. I didn’t see them. With my face blindness I probably wouldn’t know anyway unless she smiled–facial expressions are easy for this damaged brain to do still, and also, if, hopefully if, she was still holding those flowers, that would make it easy.

Those suitcases were very slow to start coming out. It was nearly 1:30 a.m. Texas time.

Suddenly there she was again with her box of blossoms, right next to us.

I told her what I’d done. She was blown away. What it was and how to take care of it. I explained that the lace would lie flat and show off its pattern the moment she rinsed it. She would have to finish that one last step I could not do there (oh, and snip those ends, they’re already woven in.)

An infinity of anniversaries to come. To life!

The postscript is that somehow my hands are fine today. But they had earned the day’s rest and maybe tomorrow’s too (like I could stay away from my afghan project that long) to help stay sure of that.

I called the realtor this morning and thanked him for the gloriously dark night last night.

I just looked: there is a light left on, but it is muted as if on the far side of the house and with no direct line of sight between bulb and us. That’s so much better than how things were that I’m not going to complain.

Karma reminds me of the time when we woke up at the usual hour in the morning to a message on our answering machine from next door: Sandy was pleading in vain with us to wake up and turn that thing off somehow.

One of the charms of our late ’99 Chrysler minivan was that about every 18 months its alarm would totally randomly start blaring, and when it did it would keep on going till you–get in the screaming car that first time, run through the owner’s manual, go why??, scramble back out, put the key in the driver’s and only the driver’s side door, twist it the wrong way, hold, let go, quick do it again–and at last blessed silence.

Of which there was none that night for Sandy, her visiting son and daughter-in-law, and their young triplets who were all having to get up at 3 a.m. to catch their flight to Thailand.

I’ve written about the day there that they were going to go to the beach, but somehow it just all fell apart and they didn’t go…And then how Sandy was gone a month past when she was expected back and everybody was worried. Had anyone heard? No.

She had decided an older white woman driving one of the relief trucks into stricken rebel territory wouldn’t be shot at by anybody’s soldiers during the aftermath of the tsunami they had just just missed being swept away in at Phuket.

The annual neighborhood block party died in the pandemic, and then the people who ran it either passed or fell into dementia; they were parents of college-age kids when we moved here thirty-seven years ago.

It occurred to me that it had been before the pandemic, too, that I’d last shown up on her doorstep with a batch of fresh-baked I forget what by way of saying hi. I did see her about a year ago coming towards my block with a walker.

I had to start somewhere. I googled their names. Still there, looked like, both of them; oh good, because you never know, I mean, she’s someone who once asked me, Do you remember in this neighborhood in 1952 when… And I grinned and went, I wasn’t born yet.

For that matter, neither was my house. It was apparently among the builder’s last.

Monday the city crews came by to trim the trees at the power lines and suddenly there was even less to block the effect, essentially nothing now. That was the final push–I had to do something.

I didn’t have her phone number. I couldn’t expect her to answer the door if walking was that hard a year ago.

I did have her email. I thought so! I sent her off a note asking after their health (and deleting the detail about their gardener cutting their 10′ hedge by 4′ such that the debris fell on my side for us to clean up, plus the peach tree damage–nah, forget it.) But, as gently as I could work it in there, I said I had a favor to ask her.

She and Dan had done us such a great favor all these years that we hadn’t even known how wonderful it was: they had blinds that they pulled down every night that covered the floor-to-ceiling windows.

(I didn’t say because I knew she knew, we can’t do that because our roof line is angled.)

Since the back of their house faces straight into our bedroom with its high transom window, this was wonderful. But for the past few nights (two solid weeks!) those blinds haven’t been used but (all!) the lights in the house were being left on 24/7.

I didn’t say I didn’t think I’d gotten more than two or three hours of sleep at a stretch in what was starting into a third week. I didn’t say, I can’t wear an eye mask because I just spent two months fighting off a staph infection around my eye. I didn’t say and that’s why I got so worn down I caught that blasted stomach flu. She didn’t need to hear any of that. I had all this that had been building up but it wasn’t her fault nor her problem. I remembered one of Richard’s grandmothers who in dementia got day and night backwards, and had wondered if that was what was going on; they’ve got to be pushing 90.

I was so glad at the email that came back to me the next day, though the news was hard: Dan had died last year. She had moved to an assisted living place–she wanted me to know that it was one where she was independent and taking care of herself–and her house was on the market.

(Ahhhh… The realtors….)

I expressed a heartfelt condolence at her loss; Dan was a good man, I really liked him. I wished her all the best in her new circumstances.

She was so glad to hear from me.

I can only imagine how different and difficult all those changes must be for her; I knew she’d wanted to stay in her house. I’ve spent all day thinking I need to go visit her, if she wants.

And then. It seems to be really hard to find who the listing agent is for a house, so I sent a message via Zillow to the one at the first Google entry that came up, throwing it out there in hopes it would be passed on.

Turns out it was the right guy.

I emailed my dilemma. It’s like a spotlight straight into where we’re trying to sleep, bouncing off the white walls. I didn’t know if the blinds were still there, but either way, could the lights please be turned off at night? I was getting slightly desperate for a good night’s rest.

I mentioned how I’d baked goodies for Shirley and Dan and how I looked forward to meeting the new neighbors. I did not want him to think he was dealing with a neighborhood of cranks but a more welcoming group than that, y’know?

He got right back to me in the morning but with my hair still wet and my ears out I missed the call. I called him back and he missed the call.

But it is just past sunset and at long long long last those full-moon-shaped 1950’s-NASA’s-aspirations-inspired hanging lights with my friends’ mid-century-soft bulbs replaced with those !%#*&!!! fiercely regretted super bright ones are all off. That one and that one and that one and that one and that one and the ones out of direct sight down the hall, too.

We got our total eclipse after all.

There is someone I seldom see and whom I’d like to be better friends with, but where my hearing has gotten in the way as much as anything and we just haven’t made much of a connection.

She is a woman of faith but not of our particular flavor of it, although her husband is.

So I was surprised and delighted to find she’d been asked to give a Palm Sunday reading from scripture of the passion of the Christ to us. And she’d said yes.

She found herself stopping mid-verse a moment to wipe a tear quickly out of the way, and I think I did, too.

After the meeting she happened to be just on the other side of a door I was walking through. I stopped when I saw her, unable to find the right words to convey the power of what she’d offered us all, and simply said, Thank you, as we held each other’s eyes in our own.

Everything felt transformed right then and there for the better. She had no words, just joy, and finally gave a pat on my arm, nodding.

Love. It is all there truly is.

The Bay Area Yarn Crawl continued, and so did we today: Nina and I got to five yarn stores, three of which I had not known existed before we started getting ads telling us about this DIY Stitches on the part of the local shops.

There were poofy white clouds against bright blue skies and it seemed like every time we got out of the car we’d get this little burst of rain on our heads and it would stop while we were in the stores: we were little strings the cloud-cats were playing with. But since there was just enough water to tease, not to soak, it got pretty funny.

We had so much fun! There were other people following the same order of stores at the same time that we kept running into.

We snacked on homemade blueberry orange and raspberry orange muffins.

It was 5:35. There was a store I had scratched off my list because they also sold fabric, and in my experience the sewing stores have almost no yarns so why bother? But it was between us and home without going much out of the way at all and Nina headed for it because why not? We should be able to beat the closing this time.

There. At the eighth yarn store. There in that shop that sold fabric too and only there was the exact shade of the exact yarn that I’d wanted this whole time for a particular project I had not cast on all week because I just didn’t have what I wanted for it (and boy had I looked) and it had been dyed exactly the way I wanted it, heathered but with no splashes of black like so many of those have and I would be more specific but then it would spoil a surprise so never mind. I came out of there telling my old friend Thank you thank you thank you! for taking me there.

What you can’t see in this picture is that the wall past that mannequin on the left is solid yarn–and we’re talking the good stuff. Malabrigo. Woolfolk. Which I’d told Nina she had to come feel this.

She’d never heard of Woolfolk. Oooooooh!!! Five hunter green skeins came home with her, along with two skeins of the Malabrigo Rios that I had picked out one of–we can be each other’s backup plan.

That shop was for both of us the biggest purchase out of the whole two Saturdays’ worth of expeditions.

That’ll teach me.

At last we got home, got the menfolk, and took them out to dinner, and I am sitting here typing way too late, marveling at how much living got packed into ten short hours in one single stretched-taffee of a day.

My cellphone rang. I was in my knitting group Zoom and ignored it, noticing though that it went on and on. I finally silenced it–noticing a tenth of a second too late whose name was showing. The landline immediately rang. I picked it up and said, Hi, Phyl!

She was heading out to watch a women’s broadcast at the church the next town over and suddenly had the thought that she should offer me a ride since I don’t drive at night. I did a quick goodbye to my fellow Zoomies, who were almost done anyway, and waited for her car.

I realized only after the meeting had started that the less-local people had not thought to enable the captions on the video part of the meeting because why would they ever need to, nor was there a Zoom link for it. But they did have the sound turned way high.

Booming, echoing, painfully loud radio static in that room. It made me wonder how anybody with normal ears could make any sense out of that.

The evening was rescued by the two friends who had carpooled with me. It was the generosity, the conversations in the car, the time spent in person that made me glad after all that I’d gone.

The one thing that if only, if only I could have changed, was the news they gave me that a mutual friend went to the doctor a few weeks ago about the increasingly bad back pain she was having for no reason that she knew of–but it turned to be widely metastasized breast cancer. She is now in palliative care. She’s younger than I am. I just cannot imagine the him without the her in that couple, but it’s coming.

I will schedule my overdue mammogram first thing in the morning.

With Stitches gone, the yarn stores set up a week-long Bay Area Yarn Crawl, and I understand a lot of other areas are holding them, too. You print out your Bingo card, you have each store stamp their name in their little box on your card (Nina printed out three out of curiosity and they were all different) and there are goodies. People get out of their ruts, run into old friends (we did) and discover new stores and help them out a little bit.

It’s the closest the shops can come to setting up a Stitches conference on their own.

It would not have been something I would have paid much attention to–it is safe to say I do not currently lack for yarn.

Nina didn’t need any either, but what she did see was an excuse for us to spend a day doing something we would both enjoy. And man did we ever!

She wanted to start off with Fengari’s in Half Moon Bay. I hesitated, remembering tourist-town yarn prices, but caved quickly as I reminisced about how, when Holz and Stein, makers of the best knitting needles I’ve ever found, made from the leftover wood from making musical instruments, announced that they were ceasing to export from Germany anymore–shops everywhere sold out of them quickly as people stocked up.

But a year or two later, it turned out, Fengari’s still had some.

In a back room, not as well lit, and you had to know and you had to ask. I don’t remember who tipped me off. It took me two trips to the coast to talk myself into spending what it was going to cost, but good tools last a lifetime and I treasure every pair. I bought about twenty.

My favorites were rosewoods, several varieties of which were now on the CITES endangered list, and that may well have been part of H&S’s calculus.

A knitting needle speakeasy. (I kid. It was remaining stock.)

So! We were at Fengari’s, a good twenty years later, and I asked if they had any, still, shaking my head and declaring it an obvious no because, hey.

And they said, We don’t–but actually, Royal Bee up the coast might well.

Royal Bee was next on our list anyway.

They actually had some: three pairs. In size 7 and 7.5 mm. Not US sizes, millimeters. In US sizes that would be like 10 3/4 and 10 7/8 and there isn’t quite a Harry Potter train station reference in there but there ought to be.

Nina likewise had declared them the best needles there are and took a pair home even in that size because you take what you can get.

We drove up the coast from there, reveling in the ocean to our left and the beautiful countryside to our right. The tunnel! That was on my bucket list! I told her. When Devil’s Slide collapsed into the ocean again and Caltrans got tired of making bridges and then watching them go poof, they finally after years of arguing bored under the mountain so that the wildlife corridor could continue above.

I had wanted to see that view (the Mavericks surfing spot!) and then that tunnel for years: not enough to make the drive over just for that, because it seemed silly, but I’d wanted to anyway. And now we had! Score! And she got to, too! It was silly and it was wonderful and we had a glorious time of it.

At the end of the day I’d bought: that pair of needles and a jar of fig ginger chutney at Royal Bee. Who goes to yarn stores to buy bespoke chutney, but for $12 I could be curious once.

So, needles. A jar of jam-ishness. And a single, vivid, colorful skein of Malabrigio Rios.

From Fengari.

And after the bridge alongside the long narrow Crystal Springs Reservoir (N-Are you looking for the Flintstone House? Me-I always do! N-My husband always does too!), then a few minutes later wending through Stanford’s greening hills of Spring rising above the roadway as we neared home, I looked up at the small wild oaks dotted here and there rising to the tops above and told Nina I suddenly realized for the first time where some of the inspiration for this afghan might also have come from.

And I would never have realized it had we not just spent the day we had.

And to think I considered not going to that dinner.

I had biopsies–“just one more?” the doctor said apologetically this afternoon–to rule out uterine or endometrial cancer. Probably just autoimmune related but worth making sure.

I was bleeding, I was tired, all my body wanted to do was rest, or barf, and what on earth that had to do with anything from that procedure I do not know.

But there was to be a get-together of half a dozen women friends this evening that I’d baked a chocolate torte for. I’d been looking forward to it for weeks and I knew that it would be energizing to go. I had a ride.

Man. We had such a good time. I feel so great. Laughter really is the best medicine.

And everybody took a piece of leftover torte home to their husbands so they wouldn’t feel too left out.

Eleven years. So she was 79 when she drove here from Woodside.

Mary (her website) was a musician, a composer, and a woman much admired for her gentle graciousness. She was also a knitter. That post is about the day we got the call that my mother-in-law’s cancer had finally taken her, and Mary’s showing up for us, having no idea, meant so much.

She was 90. Her funeral yesterday was overflowing with people come to pay their respects. I went, but there were so many stories to be told by the speakers that I just could not wait to mingle afterwards; I absolutely had to get home and take my next antibiotics dose. I’m not messing up on those, and I didn’t have it with me.

Thus my surprise at church today when I did a double take, stopped dead in my tracks in astonishment, and then threw myself into Kim’s arms. Then Karl’s. Thirty-two years since they’d moved to Colorado, thirty-two, our kids were babies together! But they had come. Because of Mary and all the love she had brought into their lives, all these years later, they had to come.

We’d lived here about six months when Karl had mentioned to someone that the person they were talking about was actually his great-grandfather. Richard heard that and went, wait–that’s my wife’s great grandfather! And that’s how we found out we were second cousins.

And old friends too, catching up. Man, it felt so good.

One last gift from our Mary, and you could just see her smiling up there over it.