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.

The mail came.

I’d wanted darkening gradations of the color mix I had in an out-of-print colorway and I could not have asked for better than what was in that package. I opened it in the moment of truth hoping hoping almost not daring to hope–and then stood there just staring: They. were. perfect. Thank you Alison in Australia!

Then in the evening we went to hear our niece’s husband playing in a band in a local park. He’s in the symphony but he also plays bluegrass for fun. This was the fiddle’s turn and those guys were good.

A kid put on a purple dinosaur costume that I hadn’t seen coming. He had to pull the clear chest part down a few times so he could see but eventually he got the hang of it.

A two-year-old girl with a big princess flower clip in her hair ran over to investigate this brand new thing in her life.

He pulled his head out from the opening just below the clear part to show her not to be afraid and waved hi.

Next thing you know he was back inside and they were dancing together to the music in wild abandon.

Oh! her face said. I stepped on its tail. Is that allowed?

Yes! Dance!

Yay! (Twirl.)

It was just the most adorable thing you could ever have hoped for.

Seven sons and a dad who could fix anything. One said, Dad never took the car to a mechanic and so now neither have I, and described starting out sitting on a chair handing tools over as directed, to actually helping his dad do the task, to, many years later, his dad sitting on a chair holding the tools and handing them over and doing the watching.

Their dad was a friend to every human being he ever laid eyes on. He told bad dad jokes to embarrass his kids, because that’s a dad’s job. To anybody. His ice breaker question was, What kind of music do you play?

George was an electrical engineer and a tinkerer. One of the sons called out my husband on the time he and his dad were shopping electronics parts and ran into him. We were all nerding out, he said.

When one kid described his dad taking the dashboard apart on his car to hunt down an electrical short and the adventure that took them on (they did get it fixed), I quietly laughed: my husband did the same thing back in the day, only in his case he couldn’t quite claim the same success. He got the turn signal working again–except that the inside lever and the outside signal were now switched, so you had to remember that signaling left was actually signaling right. He was not going to go through all that again just for that: up lever or down. You know, you do. Good times.

As a boy George started off with piano and quickly went to fiddle and guitar. Loved him some high brow, loved him some bluegrass. Went to every music festival he could. One of his kids described his own friends in high school going, What are you *listening* to! to then deciding, since he kept playing it, that they liked it.

That kid plays professionally now and he described meeting one of his bluegrass heroes.

The man looked at him and exclaimed, You’re George’s kid?!

He took off his battered hat, threw it into the dust, stomped it with his foot, picked it back up, put it on his head and said, Kid? You’re alright.

While the young man (with his own signature suede hat with a feather) watching this, thought, What just happened here??

George is the friend who’d been checked into the hospital just before Richard got checked out. In the months since, nobody was completely sure he was still in there very much but they all came to see him and they say the hearing is the thing that stays when all else goes.

So they played the music they’d jammed with their dad so many many times. They kept him and their mom company. They strummed those strings. They sang. They talked to him. They brought their kids.

One of them was singing to his dad and playing his own instrument when, he told us, I don’t know. Telepathy? He just felt like he needed to put it down and play his dad’s favorite guitar. So he did.

His dad’s breathing relaxed and slowed down. Slower. And then quietly, with love, he slipped away from them. He was just shy of 84.

A friend’s funeral is tomorrow, and there were so many people in town today whom I hadn’t seen in years. Kids I saw grow up who now have their own kids going off to college, or in some cases, kindergarten. Hugs and catchings-ups and grief and love. George with his music would have loved that we’re doing an encore in his name in the morning.

And then we bugged out of there to go hold the baby and see Richard’s sister, who had flown in to see the new little one and be yet another surrogate grandparent for what time we have together.

My little brother and his best friend from across the street, the photo gifted to our family when the Colberts were about to move away. Paul was my older brother’s age, Peter was mine, Little Stevie and Bryan were the babies of our families.

You know you grew up on a quiet street when… I’ll just quote my brother here:

They moved across the country about twenty-five years ago.

I had no idea she was going to be visiting today. She wondered if we would recognize her.

Crystal!!! as I threw my arms around her the moment I saw her.

Well, that answered that question.

Love tesseracts time. It’s an amazing thing.

Back in the day, the elementary school let out twenty minutes earlier for the little kids than the big kids; there were no school buses after Proposition 13 passed and they wanted to stagger the parent pick-up times a bit.

I had both for awhile there. So I would come for the first set and wait for the second. I was The Lady Who Knits, adding a bit of adult supervision to the playground.

My youngest graduated from high school twenty years ago.

I was at the eye doctor this afternoon. It took me a moment. It was a jolt to see the years in another parent’s face and halting walk.

You wait, they call you, they measure your eyes and send you back out, you wait, they call you back, they dilate and at last you see the doctor. So there was a lot of coming and going on repeat in the waiting room.

On the last of her returns before I was done I managed to catch her eye and smile–and to see her face go, Oh wait. I think I do know you.

She came over, nodded at the lace cowl on my needles and referring to both it and where we were, said, simply, I bet you could do that with your eyes closed.

I laughed. I said I could. (I’d been knitting a fair bit of it without looking at it.)

She walked back to her seat halfway across the room before I could reintroduce myself, and that was fine.

If she does figure out where she knows me from it’s definitely the knitting that will clinch it for her.

—

Edited to add: the banding video. Could you put your legs over that wall and let go? I most assuredly could not. The ledge that they’re rappelling down to is 18 stories up.