Random count-the-fruit-on-that-branch photo. The flowers are starting to drop in tiny stars on the ground below.

Richard dropped me off at the clinic this afternoon, where I hoped the doctor would tell my hand was all healed while he headed off to the airport to pick up our daughter.

I was knitting when the doctor came in. That part of my life is nearly back to normal.

Nope. The bone in the knuckle isn’t done yet: five more weeks. But the pinky is healed and I can now take the velcro off when I’m showering or washing my hands. Good, because those things are sponges–after the last five weeks, they were getting pretty rank. I got a new set and spares.

Richard and Michelle picked me up and we took our famished daughter out for a quick bite before dragging ourselves out grocery shopping for the weekend.

I wanted to go to the nearest place and be done with it. She said, you know, that huge Safeway (in the next town over yonder) has more stuff that I can eat.

And so that’s where we went.

Which is how we ended up in the same store at the same time as the guy who’d given up his place in line at the post office. He saw me before I saw him and he stopped right there, his face lighting up in recognition and delight. I did the same.

It was enough. We held each other in our eyes for just long enough–and then, with a nod, carried silently on, with him not wanting to interrupt my daughter next to me but both of us sure to have a merrier Christmas or whatever holiday one might wish for for having had that moment.

He had no way to know what had happened the day after he’d seen me–the c-spine, the ER.

But he got to see that yes, I was using a walker. And I could get across that store now, supported and safe. It had all come together. And I got to see how happy that made him.

Years ago, I designed and knitted something that my friend Jean thought would be really special if I were to make one for a relative of hers whom I’ve known and admired for years. She really hoped.

She had no idea what it’s like to knit an intense fair isle pattern nor that that’s a type of work I just don’t do often enough to have it come naturally. It was, in the end, just a hat, a very finite number of rows no matter the anticipated agony (which it wasn’t really in real life once I got down to it), but it ended up in my someday/it would be nice/I want to have knitted not to have to knit it column.

She mentioned on one other occasion how perfect its motif would be for him and when nothing happened, she didn’t want to bug me and that was that.

Except that it wasn’t. I actually really wanted to do it. And I quietly did, once, (they never knew) and didn’t realize till I was finished that I had totally goofed the pattern over here and that it would take more time to unwind the strands and undo it than to just start over. So I should just start over.

I was feeling a little burned, though; how about we give that pattern a rest and do something else first. And you know how queues jump off from there.

Fast forward, oh, I dunno, at least half a dozen years…

I saw her daughter Marguerite Tuesday evening at a Relief Society (i.e. church woman’s group) Christmas social, and asked, Do you remember?

It took her a moment, then, Yes, I do!

Your mom always wanted me to make one of those for your husband. I’ve just spent a whole week thinking about your mom, and then I got this really nice long handwritten note in the mail from her today, totally unexpected, where she thanked me again for knitting her that angora shawl years ago.

(I didn’t mention that that had been so long ago that I didn’t even know how to knit lace then! It was just stockinette, but Jean had loved it. It was in angora so that her blind husband could feel the softness. He’s been gone for some time now.)

I continued, that really hit me and got me over whatever was in my way: today I cast it on.

She was surprised and thrilled, and told me, Mom told me she was writing you a note. She told me she’d been thinking about you all week.

Wow.

I said, I’m doing it to honor Jean and all of you. I love your family.

I didn’t tell her that the yarn was from Colourmart and I’d scoured and pre-shrunk one of the colors but only one–the leftover yarn from Andy Mariani’s hat. So I knew what its gauge would be. The other yarn of the same type was surprisingly thin-looking, a third less full before the blooming process, and that made guessing right on the stranding tension…interesting. Every single float across the back had to have enough stretch for the hat to fit comfortably but it couldn’t be loose enough to poke through the stitches and show out the front. Every single one. In a yarn I hadn’t tried fair isle on before. It took a lot of attention (and untangling!) The alternative was to hank, scour, and wait a day while it dried and then rewind it but since that bug had finally bitten me I wanted to grab it before it got away from me. Knit it. NOW.

I started that hat Tuesday and I finished it last night and I scoured it today. You have to. Those mill oils have to go. That wasn’t a yarn store yarn, all nicely washed and prepped after the milling. I haven’t ever done that after the knitting with an extra fine merino before, much less for something that has to fit. I knew the wool would both fluff out and shrink a lot and that’s why I’ve always done it beforehand when working from cones. Silk is my only exception.

Every float is perfect. The fit is perfect. After much obsessive checking along the way, the pattern is perfect.

Because it’s for my 90-year-old Pearl Harbor survivor friend Jean, as well as her beloved son-in-law Russ she is so close to, and nothing else could possibly do.

I had two packages to mail, one heavy, long, and awkward, the other small and easy. As I pulled into the wait-for-a-spot lot at the post office there was this moment of, oh, right. It’s December.

People were pretty crowded together in that long line and I finally said to the guy behind me, not that he had but that I was afraid he would, “If you bump into me I *will* fall down.”

He apologized and backed off a little.

They processed I think two people in the ten minutes after that.

One of my quirks is that if I stand still a long time my low blood pressure starts to drop. Which does not help when you are holding heavy things. And did I mention that just for fun I had a brain MRI immediately before this errand? (Effects from that fall three weeks ago finally got me to let the neurologist run that test.)

Finally I stepped forward apologetically and placed the two packages on the table that the line starts alongside, saying first that I hoped nobody would mind if I put these down?

Note that I still have the black strips of velcro hobbling my rightmost two fingers together, and yesterday I went back in to the doctor to ask if I’d broken my foot, too? Because it’s sure not getting any better. She sent me to the podiatrist, whose take on the x-rays was, Probably. We are waiting on the radiologist. The foot was actually still swollen (I hadn’t noticed or I’d have gone in sooner) and she told me to keep an ace bandage wrapped around it for a week. She decided against the boot only out of fear that with my balance issues it would make me fall again.

So yeah, I was waiting on that line hand and foot, trying to hold that eight pounder and the cane in the other hand and and and. Yeah. That table up ahead looked really good to me.

A man further forward who turned back to say sure, put it down, took one look at me and offered to switch places in line. I was quite surprised, and then I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I was.

It was amazing to see all the stressed faces in that line visibly relaxing on the spot. The place felt different now.

A few minutes later, the man whom I’d asked not to bump me finally got up to the end of that long table, where he went searching for a pen so he could fill out a form without holding everybody up once he could get to the clerk–but the chain ended in nothing. Gone.

I fished through my purse till I found my Lisa Souza Dyeworks one and handed it to him. Paying it backward.

He gave it back when he was done and struck up a conversation. He was genuinely curious about my wavery unsteadiness, and I explained briefly the car accident and the neurologist saying it had severed the connections between the balance and visual centers of the brain, so, more visual stimulation, more trouble standing. (Sitting I’m fine.)

Had it happened locally? Yes, on X street where they’ve since changed the traffic patterns to separate away the school traffic (in part in response to my being sandwiched there.)

By this point we were friends. He looked me in the eye and asked, carefully, Maybe it’s time to consider a walker?

I’ve been resisting that, I admitted, looking back into his.

And in that moment at last I knew. Yes, there are times I do need one. Yes I’m way too young for that sort of thing, but yes, life happens and I do not want to break any more bones. Richard had brought up the subject just yesterday. This man’s question felt like a confirmation.

Not sure I can pull off doing two hands on a walker and one on the Costco cart but that’s where I most need one, but, anyway. You heard it here first. I admitted it here first.

I fished through my purse again and turned back to the guy who’d given me his place in line: a colorful parrot finger puppet, in thanks.

His face lit up: My little girl will love this!

They called me over.

I had not been able to find a box that was long enough and had had the brilliant idea that I could fit two large padded envelopes over the thing, one from this direction one from that and overlapping and taped in the middle and that would do the job nicely.

Why did you do it this way? The clerk asked. Then I have to charge you by the pound! Take it home and put it in a box and then I don’t have to charge you so much! Maybe I could find you a box, do we? No, we don’t have, take…

I motioned towards that long line and said I didn’t want to make people wait as she fussed over the thing. (And I REALLY did not want to again stand a long time holding that package. I wasn’t entirely sure I could.)

She was, in a word, slow.

(Please just charge me whatever it has to be and get me out of everybody’s way.) I was trying not to re-stress.

She took my money at last and at long last I was done.

The man who’d given me his spot was by now the next person up and he stepped forward to take my place with the most beautiful smile on his face towards that clerk that seemed to radiate for the whole world. And he saved me all over again.

Years ago, Richard’s oldest sister made an advent calendar for us for Christmas. The fabric was pre-printed with a cheery scene, a big decorated tree with a teddy bear family below. She lined it, sewed buttons on each day, finished the edges, made a long loop across the top, put a dowel through it and attached a fine rope for hanging the thing.

And then there were the little craft-store teddy bears that she added ribbon loops to for hanging from those buttons, one tiny toy for each of our kids.

One got rescued from behind the dryer one year (I have no idea how it got there) and two walked off and stayed off. They were actively loved. So we have two in the decorations box still, keeping each other company.

We hang her calendar every year in her memory, bringing her back into the celebrations of the season.

Cheryl fought lymphoma long enough to see her middleschooler go off to college and her second son marry a fine woman. I wish she had gotten to hold her grandchildren. But she certainly fought the good fight those eight years. They say they can now often cure the type she had, when at the time, there had been zero cures. None.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee blogged about the advent calendar she just finished for her small niece, knitting a tiny ornament for each of the days. They are SO cute.

We’ll see if hope and intent make it to created reality. I really want to make something like Stephanie’s for my grandchildren. Even if they end up being for next year.

Let’s see, the baby will be seven months by then…

Just inside the door at Trader Joe’s was a display of flowers. I’m in the habit of walking right on by, but maybe the fact that I was in a TJ’s across town and with a different layout from my usual got me to pay more attention.

I checked the price on the bunch of iris buds ready to open: $3.99. Okay, that’s a splurge I can certainly do, as the thought came that, hey, I bet Nina would like those. I hadn’t seen her for a few months; she was always so busy with work but this wouldn’t take but a moment of her time. (I pictured nobody home and having to leave them below the doorbell and her wondering where on earth those had come from.)

A few groceries in the cart, a little hemming and hawing over dinner ideas and I was out of there and on my way.

A knock at the door: Just to say I was thinking of you. How ya doin’.

She brought me inside in delight and we sat and caught up for an hour till I pled groceries that really did need to be put away (while glad it was cold outside).

Some big things had been going on in her life this past little bit, this and this and this, too, and just yesterday she’d gotten something done she’d been avoiding for several years and it felt pretty darn good to get that over with and to know what she needs to do next. It’s clear now at last, and things are looking good.

I’d known none of that and I was so glad I had come when I had come and could share in the moment. I’d just thought, hey, Nina would like those…

Before church started, I was enjoying some of my favorite little kids there running around a woman about my age who turned out (it was an easy guess) to be their grandmother. First I asked the two-year-old, Is that your grandma?

He stopped and looked at her with big eyes and then at me with a puzzled expression that said, Well who else would she be? How could you not know this?

Their dad was giving one of the talks.

Things I never knew, though I’ve known them for years. Before he and his wife had married they’d found out she had a brain tumor. Well then it was something they would face together, and they did, but they were sure that one outcome would be that there would not be a chance to have children.

Sometimes, though… Not everybody gets to have the blessings they fervently wish for, but sometimes…

They have two little boys and now a newborn girl and a blessedly normal life these years later.

And they know how good they have it. The rest of us came away more grateful for all that we have, too.

How else could we be? May we never forget this.

Delete a bajillion junk gmail messages from my Mac and the phone takes pictures again. May all our problems be so easily solved.

My friend Phyllis introduced me to the annual Harvest Festival in San Jose years ago and today was the day. Mel and Kris  are always there and that’s reason enough for me to go, and time with Phyl, too? Hey. Count me in.

So we made a beeline for them and the four of us chatted for a little while. Would they be willing to hold my purchases so we didn’t have to carry the heavy bag everywhere? Of course.

Phyl wanted to make sure I got to see everything and so we did, circling back at last to our friends. A pitcher, a large serving bowl, a soup bowl with a handle (so now I have two, which makes more sense than just one) and a small kid-size mug. Really pretty stuff, all of it.

I was at home pulling each item at a time carefully out of its newspaper wrappings when one of their business cards fell out onto the floor. My hands were full so I didn’t get to it immediately.

A minute or two later, a second one fluttered down. I grinned and picked them both up–and somehow happened to turn one of them over.

I’d been so worried over trying to write my name legibly on the credit card slip with that broken hand that I never even saw what the amount had come to.

They totally got me.

Thanksgiving dinner was at Aunt Mary Lynn’s up in the mountains, with cousins, bouncy little kids, old folks, and us middle types in between.

A widowed elderly neighbor whose daughter had recently died needed the noise and the joy and she relished all the sounds of small children playing, laughing right along with them. She walked carefully in their presence, though, and as far as I know did not hold the heavy, wiggly baby. Jean was a bit stooped and a little frail looking–and she was a treat to get to meet, and when she mentioned something about her persimmon I got her talking about fruit trees.

How many do you have?

Oh, about twenty.

We could really talk fruit trees here! She really knew her stuff.

But she admitted that she doesn’t do so much with them these days. (Yeah, I wouldn’t want her on any ladders either, that’s for sure.)

She did all these years, though, and to every thing its own season. It’s okay. She’s got one of those fruit picker things for reaching stuff, and oh, yes, me, too.

We drove home just in time to have our nephew Ryan and his wife, visiting her folks from New York City, over for an hour or so before they had to head back; they had to leave early in the morning. Ryan lived at our house for one summer while courting her and it’s deeply gratifying to see them so happy together. We had a great time.

And having gotten my cast off yesterday but told to wear it when I might fall or be out and about and need the protection, my balance was a little more wobbly than usual and it stayed on most of the day. I’m with Jean.

But it’s really nice to be able to leave it at simply two fingers velcroed together when I want to. And the velcro ties fit inside the splint, so, no losing those. Yay.

And a blessed, grateful day it was.

I threw the idea out there on a lark, and she said, Sure!

And so for one last time before Michelle’s move Friday to her new job in San Diego, we drove down to Andy’s Orchard together. The last fresh fruit of the year was apples and persimmons, including a Giant Fuyu that truly was and a variety I’d never heard of.

But the best part was seeing the woman I’d given Andy’s hat to last month. She had always seemed like someone who needed a good hug and a listening ear somehow.

Boy, not this time. She was glad to see us and laughed again and again as we chatted.

Then the total, the credit card, and the sudden realization: how am I supposed to sign this?!

No problem, Mom, I can do it.

Wait what?

She told me of some long-forgotten (by me, anyway) time when she’d needed my signature in high school but that hadn’t been possible so I’d told her to just go sign it. Turned out she could do a darn good job of it, and today it was, here, let me show you. Our handwriting style’s a lot the same anyway, Mom.

(Actually I didn’t think it was but never mind.)

And then with my okay, go ahead, she did.

I was gobsmacked. I couldn’t have been able to tell you I hadn’t written that. She was disappointed it didn’t come out better while I was going no, you’ve got my old-age version down pat.

The clerk was bowled over laughing at this point.

You have found your superpower, my child. Use it only for good.

A friend at church saw my cast and chuckled ruefully and told me, “Yeah, I’ve been debating going in. I may have broken my elbow ice-skating yesterday.”

I said something about taking good care of it if he did, but I think what really got him to go in and get it checked was simply acknowledging the thing out loud.

Turns out, yes, it was.

Ah, the slings and errors of outrageous fortune…

…Is spinning out in the washing machine right now after a brief dunk.

I bought the yarn at Stitches a few years ago from a vendor who had driven across the country for the show and who really, really needed the sale more than I needed the yarn. I looked for a color that grabbed me and ended up with something that was nice but not overly thrilling. Practical. It was very soft, an extra-fine merino, so someone would surely love what that skein could become.

I grabbed it the other day when I couldn’t find anything else fast enough for the gauge I wanted to do (read: speed knitting) while in a hurry to get out the door. Then I was stuck with it, given that I like to finish things.

I wanted it done and out of my way. The two skeins from Imagiknit should show up in the mail tomorrow or the next day and then I can get on with that baby afghan I’d rather be working on, but meantime, maybe I could even do another cowl after this one before they come–if I hurried.

I have wondered why on earth I grabbed that dark periwinkle skein over everything else and who it was to be for.

Tonight as I knitted and knitted and knitted very suddenly I totally knew, and felt dumb that it hadn’t hit me earlier: it was so obvious. It couldn’t have been anyone else, and it would have been done sooner had I had any idea.

Let me go check if that machine’s done. Time to lay it out just so. Ah, yes it is.

So very glad I got this knitted up.

From the woman who likes to think that she never, ever starts a project without having enough to finish.

I did that. Inadvertently. Who knew I was going to make all the changes I did after I got going.

(Can you just see baby boy fingers yanking at those white tic-tac-toes on the back? Especially should he ever get a new sibling? As in, *remember this? I might have to make him another baby blanket after this one just to, y’know, make sure he stays toasty warm up north there.)

Knowing they stock Rios, I went to Uncommon Threads yesterday for the first time in years and was well rewarded by running into an old friend who was as thrilled to see me as I was to see her–we were in a knitting group together when our children were babies. Jamie!

So. I am now at the end of my first skein of the blue/green Solis and I don’t have enough to get the afghan as long as I want with it. So I thought I’d make wide stripes: a skein’s worth of Solis, done, one of somethingelse, Solis, somethingelse, ending with Solis. That I could easily do.

I know, I tried this at Cottage Yarns last week and came home with two and then decided they were too gray.

There were just two that could work at all at UT, too, but they were a lighter shade of my Teal Feather border and I was going to need this settled pronto.

Tonight I knit a tiny swatch of it, the best test of color. The light always plays off the surface differently in the stitch than in the skein. I held it against the solid teal border under the light.

Yet again I knew even if I didn’t want to know. But hey, it looked great as a contrast to the Cottage Yarn stuff–they can go and be too gray together.

Distance and parking and time in the sun vs inventory. Imagiknit is the American distributor for all things Malabrigo.

I sent them a note: not too yellow? No gray? No streaks of black? Just happy blues and greens shading in and out? Maybe I could do it all in Solis after all, alternating the dye lots.

—

*Ohmygoodness, there was a comment there from our late friend Don Meyer on that post. Wistful. It was like a wave hello across time.

My friend Diana died yesterday morning. The one I delivered the butter-yellow cowl to Angie for. I’m glad Diana lived long enough to see some of her yarn go to honor her friend who had done a great deal to take care of her in her last illness.

My trust in my fellow Americans’ belief in working for the common good died today. They actually voted for the racist, sexual assaulting, white-supremacist, Nazi-imagery-tweeting, tax-dodging, contractor-defrauding con man who wants to wipe away the health insurance of millions of their fellow Americans. Who exults in his demagoguery.

I am staggered. I feel physically ill. He is a dangerous man unlike anything we have ever put into power before.

How. Could. They.

Don’t tell me about Roe v Wade as a reason (and some have on FB), that ruling stayed intact even when there were Republican Presidents and Congresses in power together. There are medical cases where there is no other choice so there needs to be that choice for those in those circumstances. If that means erring on the side of personal responsibility instead of governmental intrusion into the most painful of circumstances, then it does. Trump himself with all his affairs is probably personally responsible for a few abortions himself.

And now they want to give this angry narcissist, out of all the people in this entire country, the codes and the power to start nuclear wars should someone insult him at 3 am.

I am deeply afraid of what he will do. I am deeply afraid of what others will feel free to do because of him.

At least Diana didn’t have to see this.

Tonight was the annual Scout dinner and dessert auction.

There were a lot of really good home-baked desserts on that table and a lot of people bidding on them; it went on for awhile. I pulled out my knitting so my hands and my eyes would clearly be busy engaged in doing something else and not letting myself angle for Andrea’s chocolate caramel cake–it hit $110 and deserved it but there was no way. My own *two tortes together pulled down $95, less than last year but no small amount.

Someone across the room whom I didn’t know saw me and pulled out her own knitting. And so when it was over and I went and admired her work and introduced myself.

English was a bit of a struggle for her, although it seemed to me that she was better at it than she thought she was, and I explained that I’m hearing impaired–it wasn’t her.

She asked me where I was from.

“Washington, DC.”

“No–where are you from.”

I wasn’t sure what she was getting at.

She clarified. “What country?”

I laughed. “England, about 400 years ago. Oh, and Sweden, for my great great great (great?) grandfather.” (There were random other add-ons after the Mayflower but I wasn’t going to burden her with the whole spreadsheet.)

She laughed, “I’m from Hong Kong.” Then she proudly pointed out her grandsons, who were clearly, like me, a bit of everyone from everywhere.

We had cowls on our needles at about the same point in progress. Hers was a mobius. Mine laid flat.

——-

*And there were two more in the fridge, one not-good-enough-for-company slightly overbaked plain chocolate, one hazelnut chocolate left over from a party I **planned for but had to miss. We really didn’t need any more desserts around here for the moment.

**Because no matter what that map program said, road A did not connect through to road B and there was no telling where it was and after much back-and-forth searching and mileage I gave up and went home (hey, hazelnut torte for us.) Next time.

Did not make it to Cottage Yarns before my appointment, and after, it was just too close to rush hour for that kind of distance.

So I started a new cowl project for the waiting room beforehand even though I’m usually a single-issue knitter.

My gastroenterologist had retired and this was the getting-to-know you with someone new and to get established as her patient before her practice gets full. So far I’ve had pretty good luck on the Crohn’s staying away post-op but you never know.

She spent a lot of time going over my chart with me and asked a lot of questions. She was thorough. (And, in a quick aside, she liked that yarn on my needles.)

Had I ever had a throat endoscopy done? I nodded. Who did it? she asked.

You, I grinned. In the hospital.

Oh wow! Oh so I did!

We totally hit it off. She mentioned that she loves and wears that shawl…and I thanked her but reminded her a friend of mine had knit it to thank her for her part in taking care of me when I’d been so ill in ’09. Ever since, I’d wanted her to have something from me, too–as I pulled a ziploc from my purse such that she could just see the colors inside. Pick one.

She chose the one I so much expected she would and that I had expressly knit for her. The Shibui Maai cowl. (The color is Imperial. Sorry I never took a better photo nor one of it finished.)

I told her that that was the last skein I bought at Purlescence before they closed.

Purlescence closed?

Yes, they did.

She’s a knitter. That flash of regret in her eyes at the news said it all. She stroked her new cowl and exclaimed over its intense softness and told me I didn’t have to do that.

May I, though?

She laughed and gave in and the way she loved that little bit of knitting and felt all that I’d hoped to convey with it was all that a knitter could ever hope for. I’m in good hands in her care–and she in mine.

She didn’t let me leave without a hug.