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.

How have I never heard of this?!

Okay, back up, back up. We went to a potluck with friends tonight and the hosts had visited Italy during April, and after we were done eating Sue showed us what they’d seen. Florence. Rome.

The Pope speaking.

Randomly running into a fellow Mormon in the crowd whose parents they knew in Germany!

There was a notice that due to the Exploding Cart, the buses would not be running on this date.

Yeah, she hadn’t known what that was either. She showed us a bit of it in video.

Wikipedia gives the history, and, um, the Crusades and stealing flints from a church did not help make those soldiers more righteous and nine hundred years of celebration with the spoils of war (they use them to start all this.)  But whatever.

Five hundred years ago some rich guy discovered fireworks. So they upgraded.

A mechanical dove shoots across the inside of the cathedral along a cable (about 4:20), lights The Cart, which looks a bit like someone saw a drawing of a Japanese tea house and decided that a metal version of that was just the thing, and shoots back into the cathedral while fireworks start to go off out there. The crowd is crazy-close but doesn’t try to come closer. There’s video here from last month that I haven’t found my friends’ faces in yet but they were there.

My favorite (10:21) is the deelie-bopper thingy on the top of this strange contraption twirling in glee.

Then shooting out miniature roll-down flags for the grand finale. Who knew.

They decided to do something a little different for today: so they asked ten people to give two-minute talks on Mother’s Day.

I was second to last. I didn’t mention all the national parks, I didn’t reference Simon and Garfunkel’s “We’ve all gone to look for America,” I kept it short.

I said, When I was ten my family drove from Maryland to Wisconsin, where we rode a boat up the Wisconsin lakes, to the Peace Bridge, across western Canada, then down the West Coast, to Texas, into Juarez, Mexico, and home. Six kids and a camping trailer. Two months on the road. Mom spent it knitting my sister a sweater and I wanted one like that and I would study her hands. She taught me how to knit on that trip.

I said that my brother as an adult had told Mom he didn’t think he could ever have the patience she had to raise a future family like that.

Mom answered in astonishment, How do you think I learned it?!

I said, If you wanted any help, if you needed something done, if you needed a kind word, my mom was–is, at 95–the one to do it. I want to be like my mom when I grow up.

A friend told me afterwards that the two little girls sitting behind her, sisters, had protested in unison out loud in outrage: “But she IS a grownup!”

Like, She KNOWS that, doesn’t she?!!!

66/34 cashmere/cotton. I finished it this morning. The weather is going to be cool through Friday, then start being hot–I wanted her to have it now.

And so I broke my own rule: I did not block and dry it. I figured those were both limp fibers and the pattern wasn’t curling up like it would in wool. Good enough to go.

This was for a friend who looks out for everybody. When Richard was in the hospital for nine days, she brought me a half gallon of homemade soup to eat when I got home from the hospital for the night not wanting to do anything but just sheer survival.

She told me not to worry about bringing that giant Ball jar back.

Today she was talking to her cousin, who is going through a rough patch, and I slipped a small handled bag next to her trying not to interrupt; I got a small nod of acknowledgment and got out of the way.

Richard had watched me with bemusement as I’d pulled a sheet of blank printer paper into a circle, put the ends of it into that jar, stuffed the cowl in the center, and pushed them both on in there. I adjusted the paper so there was no gap to let one see what was inside it and with the lid on top, there you go.

I didn’t have to be there when she pulled the jar out of the small bag to put it away. When she went What? over the paper. When she opened the lid. I got everything I needed just out of anticipating it all and yes when she did she immediately called, deafness or no deafness on my part, to exclaim over it to me.

I told her her husband had told me her favorite color.

And now she needs to tell me her cousin’s.

Immediately after getting home from the hospital yesterday I looked at my phone to see if there were any messages.

There was one.

Since the baby was supposed to be delivered today, we had tentatively planned between my friend who wanted an Anya apricot seedling and the local Mormon missionaries who’d offered to help move the thing for them to pick it up Friday–or else next Monday or Tuesday as things worked out and plant it for her. We hadn’t asked; they’d offered, because lifting that heavy pot with a tree on its third year was beyond us and someone else had clued them in.

They are here to serve, they said, so, cool, let’s go!

So here I was looking at my phone at 4:45 and they’d asked if they could be there at 5:00 and I sent a quick message to the friend who thankfully was paying attention to her phone and got immediately back to me and then there they were.

That tree has grown a lot and a lot sideways these past two months. It took careful maneuvering with the dolly to get it through our gate door without damaging anything. They lifted it in and then strapped it down carefully: it was not going to budge an inch in the back of that pickup they’d arranged for.

The friend is ecstatic.

My backyard feels odd with it gone, but a very happy odd because it is where it was meant to be. My old and dear friend gets to see it flourish in its new digs. We get to race to see whose tree fruits first.

It had been growing robustly and then somehow this past week it didn’t seem to be. I took a closer look.

Then I asked a friend at church and the instant seriousness on her face as she named it made it clear you do not mess with this.

But I thought only pears and apples get fireblight?

Peaches can, too.

I looked it up: those heavy winds we’ve been having can cause small points of damage where the bacteria can get in, and the three days of rain to finish the job, yes, my two-month-old Kit Donnell tree had it.

I put on trashable clothes this morning and followed her instructions.

Hair pulled back out of the way. A small jam jar with about a half cup of straight bleach in it. Heavy latex gloves.

I went out there and took pictures to compare against later. I bleached my pruning shears, took a single cut, walked it straight to the trash can around the house, came back, bleached the shears again, cut, walk over there, do not touch any parts of the tree except to take them away.

It surprised me that it took about twenty-five minutes. I’d thought there were two spots affected. I found six that definitely were; some leaves were a little lighter colored but well away from any blackening–I wasn’t sure and put them on a watch-and-see list. I didn’t quite want to know because I really didn’t want to lose a whole major branch or two. I’m hoping I don’t regret that.

I really, really want it to thrive and live.

When Richard was coming out of the hospital in February, a friend in his eighties had just gone in and as we waited for the obligatory wheelchair attendant at checkout, we debated asking them to push us briefly to George’s room–but didn’t because we knew it wasn’t a fair thing to ask them to add to their schedule while other patients waited.

That was the right thing to do, but I will always be a little wistful over it.

He never recovered from his pulmonary embolism. I asked if I could visit. Was he lucid?

Karen gently let me know it was time for the innermost ring to be the ones present.

She and their children, who came in from all over, kept him company nonstop all these weeks. They assumed George could hear them but past that they really couldn’t say for sure. Hospice got set up at home. They had a big family, there were lots of grandchildren, and every one of them got a chance to tell him they loved him. I can just picture their son who plays in a blues band strumming away softly at his dad’s bedside and his dad wanting to pick up his guitar to play along.

She knew she was going to be a widow.

That doesn’t make it any easier.

It was good to see people hugging her again and again and again and again and again at church after they announced his passing. Everybody wanted to be there for her every second.

Just like she had been for him.

After ten years of trying there was some serious celebrating to do. Saturday morning was the baby shower. Lots of friends, lots of good food, lots of baby gifts.

I found myself sitting next to a woman who introduced herself as the other grandma and she was delighted when I said, You’re S.’s mom!

Yes!

I knew that meant she had flown in for this. This is to be her first grandchild. So excited.

The friend handing the mother-to-be the presents picked mine up almost at the end.

G. opened the card and read who it was from and instantly realized why the wrapping paper was the size and squishiness it was. Her eyes went huge and straight over to mine, as if to ask, Is it?! Is it!?! while absolutely bursting with love.

My eyes loved her right back and I gave her a little nod. Yes!

Her mom’s a knitter. Her sister’s a knitter. She knows.

She leaped to her feet with the Rios baby blanket held nose to knees, wanting everyone to be as thrilled as she was. “It’s so soft!”

Fillory Yarns in San Jose had held a sale-by-mail during Covid lockdown. I knew that yarn would be *the* yarn for–something, that it would tell me what, when. And it did. It instantly did when my friend told me her daughter was expecting and that it was a girl. Even for Rios it was particularly soft. And washable. And a color she wears a lot. That yarn.

I said to the other grandma, I’ve known G. since she was born. When she was three she told us she was going to grow up and marry our John, six months older, and I wanted to hold her to it, but, no (said with a grin.)

Given that her son is the one who did marry her, it took her a split second and then she laughed and laughed at how we were rivals in mother-in-lawing and she’d won.

She was so grateful over that baby blanket.

It and the shower were a message that in this town where she didn’t know anyone except immediate family, she belongs, too.

Great times.

I decided to start a ninth repeat because why not. So the baby blanket isn’t done, but the progress picture is stalled out in the ether. 179 stitches on size 5s and past 40″ square unblocked in 18 days.

Meantime, the next mom-to-be is getting her finished baby afghan on Saturday and I can’t wait.