1. That Black Jack fig tree planted March a year ago has a tiny fig for fall growing at almost every leaf junction and one single big spring fig left that the squirrels didn’t quite get to before I clamshelled it away from them.

I’ve never picked a fig before. I assume I wait till it’s darkened (given the variety) and softened, right? Still hard as a rock.

2. Somebody went to the AT&T baseball park in San Francisco a few days ago and put their drink down in the cupholder attached to their seat.

And–sorry, couldn’t get the link to the photo to work, it’s inside a Yahoo group–a fledgling peregrine falcon landed and perched on the edge of that clear plastic cup, its talons huge and in each other’s way. A small red straw poked out between its big yellow toes, its big eyes taking in where it had suddenly found itself.

Well hello!

3. And most important to me. My friend Carol is a knitter whom I get to catch up with every year at Stitches and, when I’m lucky, by random chance at Purlescence during the year. She worked on the recovery post-earthquake and tsunami of the nuclear power plant in Japan (side note to my local friends: that Carol.)

Ever since I met her years ago I’ve been trying to put my finger on just who she reminds me of. And now I know.

Yesterday I was off to see my much-loved Dr. R, the doctor who saved my life in ’03, to wish him well in his imminent retirement. I left early because there was no way I was going to be late for that one.

Which means I had time.

I stepped off the elevator to a very surprised face as someone did a double take at seeing mine. A lupus event damaged my visual memory years ago: I was stuck on, Carol? Wait. That’s not Carol. So, so close, but no. I know I know…!

As the woman in great excitement started catching up with me almost instantly the question was settled. Heather! I hadn’t seen her in 24 years! She’d been a lifeguard at the therapy pool where I met Don Meyer and his wife Amalie the year my lupus was diagnosed.

“Your face is the same! It hasn’t changed!” Heather exclaimed.

Everybody who had attended that now-closed pool had to have a prescription to get in and everybody knew it: for the most part the people there were the types who looked out for each other. It was a good place.

I told her I’d run into Don a month after Amalie had passed and that because of that, he’d had some support in his last five years. (I didn’t add that his son had moved in at the end to take care of him nor about his setting up a blog with our encouragement here and all the interaction he got from that–sometimes the details are too many and need to wait for later, so I’m putting these in here and hoping Heather sees it.)

Amalie was gone. Don was gone. She took that in, sorry to hear it.

I got to see happy photos of her sweetheart and her son.

And I’m just now realizing I can’t believe I forgot to tell her that Conway? Remember my tall, large, stooped, slow-moving, cheerful friend Conway who used to chat with me every day after his exercises? They’d thought he had ALS. Turns out he’d had bone spurs growing into his neck and spine, which they operated on and he started to regain mobility before he died. From a heart attack at that pool. I was across the country at my 20th high school reunion, but I’m told the lifeguards, joined soon after by the paramedics, did CPR for 16 long minutes trying to save him. She might well have been one of them.

If you read this, Heather, his widow moved to San Diego to be near her grandkids. Then she passed. Then her granddaughter there went off to college–and met my son: and they are the parents of my three sweet little grandkids, ages 1, 3, and 5.

Small world.

I got to see Heather today.

Small world.

Who told me who her favorite doctor was, so much so that she drives in from across the Bay to be seen by her.

I asked Dr. R. whom I should go to should my Crohn’s come back; he demurred a bit and asked which others had I seen–at the hospital, the clinic, whom had I liked best?

It had been seven years since my surgeries but Heather had reminded me of that one that had done my throat endoscopy and I said her name.

He was pleased. He told me she was very good and that I would be quite happy with her.

And between my experiences and Heather’s, I knew he was right.

And I probably would not have thought of her first had I not run into my old friend, been recognized by her, and had the time to talk.

By the time I figured out the needle size was really a bit big for the yarn (much better picture of it here) I was not where I could grab a different circular so I just kept on going.

The yarn saves it. It will definitely do.

Today I had an appointment at 2:30 but I had it in my calendar for 1:30. Going back home and coming back would have taken way too much of that hour, so, hey.

And that is how I very nearly finished this. I could have cast off and handed it over on the spot to the dental assistant who exclaimed over it and told me she’d tried to knit but had gotten discouraged at not being immediately good at it. She said this as she reached to touch the project and exclaimed over its softness and the colors in the yarn, and I thought, You really are a knitter, you just don’t know it yet.

But the other two assistants would have wanted one, too, and I’m not quite there yet. So I let it go back in my bag for a few more rows.

We ate the first three Stella cherries today, even though they’ll be even better in a week. A raccoon had pulled the bottom of
the birdnetting open and we wanted to be absolutely sure we at least got some. I fixed the netting.

Monday: the airline sent out a message saying that due to TSA issues they were currently recommending getting to the airports two hours early.

And then flights were delayed all over the place, my first by an hour when I only had a 43 minute layover–I was sure I’d missed my connection, but no, I got to the gate two minutes before boarding.

This was still flight #whatever going to SFO?

Yes.

(ohthankyouthankyouthankyou!)

Landed, got my baggage, made it outside six hours after I’d left for the first airport (a direct flight is 70 minutes) and called Richard to say I was ready.

He said he was coming but then he didn’t come and he didn’t come. But it was okay, that seemed to be going on with everybody: the crowd by the curb was not thinning. We were all in this together, whatever was going on.

A couple with two young girls of about four or five and six or seven joined me on the long polished wood bench outside the Southwest arrival doors. Like me, they waited.

The younger one started playing a video game on a parent’s phone. It was dark and probably past her bedtime.

I caught the mom’s eye, pulled out–you guessed it, two Peruvian handknit finger puppets–and asked her if it was okay if I offered them to their daughters. She hesitated just an instant and then broke into a smile and said yes, so I gave two to the littlest, who was closest to me, and she handed one right over to her big sister.

She didn’t examine them first to see which was cutest to her eyes for keeping herself, she just instantly passed one along and then started looking to see what she had. I was impressed.

The older girl looked at her white rabbit in pink overalls munching a carrot and exclaimed happily, “It’s a bunny!”

“Happy birthday!” I told them both.

At that their faces just lit up. The dad said to me, gesturing towards the older one and looking very proud and very happy, “It really is her birthday!”

“It is?! How cool! Happy Birthday! Oh that’s just SO cool!” (I was so very very glad I hadn’t run out of puppets.)

San Francisco Airport had moved their park-n-call to somewhere even further away (it was already a get-on-the-freeway maneuver) and more difficult to get in and out of, my husband apologized as he drove up at long last.

Ah, so that’s why….

As we pulled away, to my surprise a certain young family was happily and enthusiastically waving us goodbye, parents and children both, and in that moment the fatigue of the day suddenly utterly vanished.

Since when were there no direct flights? What happened to them? I had to take Salt Lake to Phoenix to home.

I’m very glad now I did.

As I sat in the first airport yesterday a man walked briskly up and asked if I minded if he sat next to me. There was a small gap between the two seats and of course, no problem, and his friend appeared a moment later and sat down on the other side of him. He too appeared to be the outgoing type.

Which is probably how the woman who sat down a few minutes later next to that guy suddenly burst into tears and sobbed out her story, all pretense of control in public dissolving away.

After a few minutes I leaned over to the man nearer to me and told him, “I’m hearing impaired. I can’t hear what she’s saying and I don’t want her to feel isolated.”

He said he couldn’t hear it all either but that there had been an accident in Moab and one of her loved ones was involved. “Bad one,” he added quietly, “I heard about it. One person died.”

We looked at each other, so sorry.

He decided I could be trusted with his story and that it was the place to tell it: his infant son had seemed to be fine…till suddenly at six months old he was in the hospital needing heart surgery. They had had all these wires and things attached to him and the sight of it was just so hard.

His baby boy reached his arms to his daddy, his whole body pleading fervently, Hold me Daddy. I need you.

And he wasn’t allowed to.

They wheeled his son away.

He had had to go down to the hospital’s garage to deal with the car (move it, feed the meter, I wasn’t sure, but the incongruity of the importance of it to those who manage such things was just blowing him away in those moments) and as he stepped into that garage it just washed over him that this was life. It was out of his control. All he could do was live it and do the best he knew how and it was enough.

“It’s in the hands of God,” I answered.

He held me in his eyes, affirming.

“My son’s fine now; you’d never know it. He likes to play basketball.” He laughed a little, the joy at the possibility measured against the memory’s pain.

I told him, “Two years ago, we got the call no parent wants,” and I described a little about my daughter’s being hit on the freeway. Physical therapy is a necessary and ongoing thing, still–but worth it.

“Two years?”

“Two years.”

He took that in.

I started digging around in my purse that at times like these just seems too big. Hmm. Maybe I did give it. But no, it was bugging me, so I looked again–and I found it. It had to be that one. For whatever reason out there it really had to.

I grabbed my cane and walked over to the woman who’d been crying. In my hand was a small very vivid pink knitted octopus with a tiny black hat (I have to wear a hat in the sun, lupus and all that) and that pink was very much the color of the shirt she was wearing. “This is silly, but,” I said in a quiet voice that affirmed that no it was not as I opened my hand and offered it to her.

She reached for my arms and I into hers and we held each other.

This which I have goes with that which you have. I see you.

As I sat back down in my own seat the young man to the other side of me, who up till then had seemed engrossed in his phone, touched my shoulder ever so gently. I turned to see him and he told me, Thank you.

Last call for flight # (whatever) to City (whatever).

We were at gate 14. The two men who’d started the conversations suddenly realized that this whole time they’d been in the wrong place and grabbed their bags and dashed across the aisle to gate 15 in time. Close!

You know they were where they were supposed to be when they were needed right where they were with us.

The airline pre boarded me and I sat on the second row where I wouldn’t slow too many people down.

The woman who’d gone through so much this past weekend went past a few minutes later, saw me, and made sure I saw her telling me, Thank you.

I wanted to thank her. She’d let me.

The young man who’d touched my shoulder, he came down the aisle a little after. I was ready for him. A small alligator, and bless him, his face lit up in gratitude that he would have the perfect memento of all of us strangers wanting to come together for her in those moments as he accepted his small finger puppet.

I had to enlist the help of the young woman sitting in the middle seat to get it to him and explained, “He was very kind.”

“Do you give those to everybody?” she asked, amused, having no idea as far as I know of the context of all that.

I considered a half second. “Pretty much!” and found her one.

She loved it.

I’ve loved these three shades of blue together ever since that surprise box arrived from Melinda at Tess Designer Yarns. Her Merino Lace is exceptionally soft. I had been waiting for them to tell me what they wanted to be, and today suddenly there was no other yarn that would do.

I opened the hanks and put them on the back of the chair one at a time and wound up those long-awaited three balls.

They were single ply and very fine and maybe too fragile for carrying around and pulling the project in and out of my purse with that many strands tangling.

The wheel.

Dark blue with the middle blue. The middle blue with the light blue. Ply those together, all the spinning done loosely so as not to interfere with the hand of that fabulous merino–we would have four strands not three, but also one single sturdier ball to carry around and it would definitely knit up fast. Speed is good right now.

And then I worked at felting the resulting yarn a bit to melt the strands together. Loved loved loved how it came out.

But I wanted to knit it NOW and it was wet.

Well hey…there was enough middle blue left for one bobbin. So. Middle with light till middle runs out, dark with light till the light runs out, then together. Wind into a ball straight from the wheel do not pass go do not collect water–I can do that part later.

Just a bit of the dark blue left–one bobbin’s worth, put with–well, yeah, that would be cool if I…

Just let me finish this project I started out of that second go-round.

I was pruning a peach tree, making sure everything out there had enough water, planting my tomato seedlings at long last, amazed at how such small plants could have such a huge root system already–

–when I came inside a moment and Richard asked me if I still wanted to go?

Go to what?

He’d forgotten to tell me about the invite. I had no idea. Yes of course I wanted to go! Dinner suddenly became whatever could be ready in five minutes and then we were off to our friends’ for a house concert. I would have offered to bake a hazelnut torte or something had I known.

Beautiful vocals, beautiful instrumentals, getting to meet and appreciate the musicians and them getting to see their audience loving what they do, and Shadowlands’ CD tomorrow for Mother’s Day. Definitely the way to spend a Saturday evening.

Dirt still under the nails and all.

And then there was Sherry’s other part cone (thank you!) of Colourmart cashmere in purple.

I had some plum extra fine merino and some red cashmere/merino/sparkle, from same, all of them very fine and soft yarns.

I plied about a yard of all three together but stopped the wheel, thinking, when that becomes six? No. Too thick. Pulled that off and started over. Sherry’s with the red, one bobbin, the plum with the red, second bobbin, then ply those two together.

Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot. And yes, you don’t have to have a wheel, you can just knit from any number of cones straight up–but a single ball of yarn at a time is simply a lot more portable than three cones of delicate snaggableness.

Colourmart was selling 10g mini cones of cobweb cashmere/silk for $5 a year or two ago, ppd as always, enough to put a pop of color in the right place and I always knew they could really turn into something–if I only knew what.

Now I know what the what is.

Sherry’s blue cashmere danced with a matching light blue, and then the second cobweb mini-cone in turquoise that it totally clashed with before I held up their two strands and twisted an inch or two together and thought, wait, I do like that–okay, go!

That makes 484 g, including ties, and 1358 yards of the dark/med/light, in merino-silk/cashmere/cashmere yarn. Writing it down so I can find it later for sure.

It looks like I spun a raccoon. Or a tabby cat.

And then I started in on a new batch: the same medium and light brown cashmeres and adding in a white strand for the third, plying it back on two strands of the light brown, of which I have much.

But that’s not the interesting part. The interesting part is that I went looking in my stash for a particular old cone to do that with but right there behind the door was one in the color I wanted marked Crudo.

Hey. That’s not merino, that’s cashmere, too. This spinning project just went up a notch.

The inside of the cone had the number of yards left scribbled on it to warn myself it wasn’t the full 150 g anymore–and it dawned on me when I had used that cone before.

Size two needles. Gossamer-fine Seafoam lace. It was for my kids’ old pediatrician, knitted after I’d stumbled across her husband’s obituary in the newspaper. It said he loved the beach…

A gasp, “I LOVE cashmere!”

And, best of all, that I had made it for her. She cherished it, which comforted me when I had come to try to comfort her.

That white cone definitely has memories. I need to do right by the rest of it.

The New Yorker guy yesterday laughed when I said, We’re the McDonald’s of churches: you can go anywhere in the world and it’s all the same. You know what to expect. And I described being asked to play piano on the fly years ago for a small Vietnamese congregation near Seattle and it was the same hymns, although there were not as many to choose from. I pictured someone struggling with translating both the words and the musical phrasing and only so many had been done back then.

The bishop and I were chatting briefly today about what a wonderful, memorable experience yesterday was. We found ourselves saying, in enthusiastic unison, We have to do it again!

Which means that knowing him and if it is okay with them it will happen. I am so glad!

So there were these two Boy Scout leaders striking up a conversation recently and getting to know each other at some Scout thing or other. One was Muslim and one was our Mormon bishop. Together they hatched an idea.

And that is why today we bought half a dozen Costco packs of toothbrushes and happened to walk in the door at our church at the same time as a Muslim man was walking in with a stack of toothpaste boxes.

A lot had been donated. People were really throwing their hearts into this.

Long rows of tables were set up with shampoo, deodorant, dental stuff, soap, kleenex, crayons, coloring books, etc: grab a bag, walk the lines and fill’er up. Boxes of diapers over here.

I would have brought finger puppets (some pictures here) had I thought of it and had I had enough.

Housing costs are so breathtakingly high here that we don’t have refugees resettling in the area so we were doing this for a homeless shelter. The big room was full of people, all of us wanting to come together to help our fellow man and to share the experience with others of faith that we’d like to get to know better. A side row of tables was full of snacks and cheerful people making sure there were more.

There is an old Mormon how-many-to-change-a-lightbulb joke. Three: one to change it and two to serve refreshments. I noted with a laugh that all the refreshments looked pretty healthy, lots of fresh fruit there. Actually, though, we do like our baked goods and desserts as much as anyone, just don’t tell.

One man had emigrated here as a child and had grown up in upstate New York and was thrilled when I told him I’d hiked Watkins Glen as a kid and loved the waterfalls. He said his kids didn’t understand this weird concept of shoveling snow and what it was like. At. All.

Yeah, ours neither, we laughed.

It was a chance to ask religious questions of each other, too, in a safe and welcoming place.

Our New Yorker friend wished they had a building such as ours to meet in and several people asked for a tour. Then several more, so Richard took a second group around to see, about the time the first circled back to the main room.

I can’t wait to do something like this again. And Jasmin, the New Yorker guy lived for a few years in your neck of the woods and thought he remembered, almost remembered, almost could place your family’s names. Abrara says hi.

That little stick of a columnar apple that I plunked a branch with a few flowers from another variety in water next to because it needed a pollinator and the other trees were on the far side of the house?

Fifteen baby apples I counted on that thing today, and the last buds at the bottom have only just opened. Clearly it worked. (Thank you bees.) If I thin them to one per cluster is that enough? There just isn’t much to the little yearling yet–but it definitely wants to be what it was planted for.

I discovered and ordered some of this today: sheep belly wool and back tags, the trash of a shearing, compressed into gardening wonderfulness: it aerates, it absorbs water and it releases it slowly while at the same time fertilizing. “Repeals snails and slugs” I assume meant repels them. Typed the woman who found a snail INSIDE A CLAMSHELL! ogling the peach at the upper end today. The peach lived, the snail died on the spot. How did it get IN there?! How do I not let that happen again?

So, sold. Price included shipping, though they didn’t say it would.

Meantime, our friend and second cousin Jim called to ask the great favor of my mending a favorite sweater of his, something I’ve done before.

What color? I asked, so that I could start digging for various navy yarns before he got here.

He admitted to being within a minute of the house.

Sure, c’mon by!

As he started to approach the door I cautioned him to walk slowly: there were birds nesting in the azaleas, and sure enough, as he came four Bewick’s wrens dashed out to the tree overhanging the fence.

Usually it’s California Towhees in there in the spring. This year it’s my favorite wrens. Two pairs.

I didn’t want procrastination nor my lack of mobility to get in the way so we struck a deal: he was on his way by to run an errand? Cool, run the errand. Stop by here on your way back. Looking at the size of the hole, I added a warning, It’s going to show. He said that was fine, he just didn’t want the stitches to run.

I found just the right navy quickly after he left but the new stitches did show some. One could pretend the manufacturer goofed when it sewed the label on given where the hole had been.

He came back, thanked me, and I smiled, saying, glad to do it and glad I had just the yarn and hey, anytime.

Jim walked (carefully) back down the walkway–and suddenly I found myself calling after him, with a sudden catch in my throat I hadn’t expected nor wanted: Jim? Thank you. (I explained the sentence to couch rest and the concussion.) It felt wonderful to be able to do something for someone–I’d needed that. Thank you.

Last year, after all this went on, you could count every individual beleaguered leaf from afar. (Speaking of which, that’s just a bit of cinnamon to get rid of some ants. No yellowing.)

In a few weeks this tree has grown from having plenty of space under its tent to being right at the bird netting on all sides and at this rate I’ll have to buy a bigger tent to protect the growing cherries.

Some problems are cause for celebration.

Oh and? I got an email from someone saying his twin daughters (they’re nine or ten) had knitted all through Conference and by chance might I have any leftover yarn? Because they were out.

I asked the dad what their favorite colors were. He got right back to me.

You know that if you want knitting to be the lifelong love it could well become for them you’ve got to give them the good stuff. Some soft acrylic, yes (take it all!) but also some cashmere blend and an angora/merino blend (an out-of-stock bright light lime green, a color they’d hoped for), washed and hanked from cones. I told the dad how to wash the natural-fiber stuff and warned the girls gently that a lot of people are allergic to angora and it’s okay if you find out you are, but I think you’ll love it (and boy did they). The fur combed from a shedding rabbit. It is nice stuff.

(It also happens to give one of my kids hives.)

They were so excited. They so much said thank you. And I couldn’t possibly have enjoyed those yarns better any other way. Can you just picture all the people those two are going to make happy over the years to come?

At the base of the little trunk, those are crushed brown eggshells to add calcium to the soil over time and because the slugs and snails can’t climb over them to strip the blossoms. Which they absolutely would do.

I finally thought to bend down to see if my newest apple’s flowers had any scent to them.

Like a gardenia. Ohmygoodness. How did I miss out on this before. Dainty and demure and needing to be sought out but when you did, what a reward, sweeter even than those on the Fuji.

My neighbor whom I’d planted it for happened to arrive home just then and I called over to her and exclaimed over the flowers with her.

She’d almost missed noticing them. She was as thrilled as I was. Have I mentioned I really like having her next door?

In the back yard: the irises nearly died of the drought but seem to be trying to make up for it now. They came with the house and have ebbed and flowed with the weather patterns over the years.

I haven’t seen them blooming like this in a long time, with more to come.

Writing this, I suddenly realize I didn’t bend down to see if they, too, have any scent–but then they’re not the novelty the columnar apple is so if there were, you’d think I would know by now.

And me, I went looking–again–through the stash for yarn for a hat that a preemie in the NICU could wear. Came up empty again…almost. Maybe…but I would think that adding color, rather than adding to the endless white there would be the thing. And it absolutely has to be washable. I wistfully held a ball of pulverized pearl/bamboo blend the color of those irises, so soft, so (and she needs this) warm, discontinued (because it was too expensive to produce) and thus a rare gem for the perfect little girl I wanted to knit it for.

But so needing delicate hand washing, which just wasn’t going to happen in the hospital.

I’ll keep looking.

Thirty-one weeks, thirty-two weeks, hang in there, baby…

She made it to thirty-three weeks. When my nephew’s wife first went into labor the doctors told the parents that every day in utero was a week the baby wouldn’t have to spend in the NICU, so getting that far was a huge blessing.

I packed a not-tiny-enough outfit with an adorable pair of baby socks knitted by my friend Susan into a box last Friday (I wish I’d thought to take a picture of them) and sent it off to my sister-in-law; the new parents were supposed to be moving near her about the time labor had first unexpectedly started and I didn’t want it to get lost between the mailman and the new place.

Their daughter/her granddaughter arrived Tuesday. There is an adorable picture that is not mine to share of her looking up at her mother with wide open, soft eyes. She is a beautiful baby.

Our niece was discharged today with the surprise of a newly-arrived box to open.

The baby is doing very well, all things considered. Breathing on her own. Might be able to eat on her own soon, too.

The handknit socks. That’s what got exclaimed over. Susan had made these beautiful socks for their baby, and on the day they had to go home without her yet it helped.