In the last ten days I got to see so many family members I so rarely get to see. I saw old and very dear friends and at good times for those get-togethers to happen in terms of their own lives. I gained a son-in-law and a niece-in-law. My husband got to see his dad. I got some Purlescence time with old friends the day after I got home and finished my airplane project and I love how it looks and I wonder who it’s for. We celebrated a Californian friend’s birthday yesterday, grateful for all that has been and will be.

So I’ve been sitting here looking at this computer screen for awhile trying to figure out how to create a blog post out of all that overwhelming emotion, of feeling so blessed, so loved, so glad for the chance to love back and in person.

And then, (airfare and his time off work being a tad pricey and trying to tamp down the urge to book the next flight immediately), having been denied it by the flu last February, Stitches West is coming right up. There will be people there that I only ever get to see there and man, it’s been too long. I can’t wait.

I got a phone call after lunch from the nursery: the Baby Crawford peach tree I’d pre-ordered in September had arrived. And it was a very nice specimen, too, turns out.

Andy Mariani calls that variety the best-tasting peach in our particular climate and I’ve eaten some of his, which is why I wanted to plant my own–they were fabulous. They also fill a gap when our other peaches won’t be ripe.

I dug out the hole (I’d actually already dug it out a year ago and then didn’t put anything there for the drought, so it was no big deal to do it again), went and got the tree, planted it, and came inside to the news: Sam and Devin had eloped today.

We knew they were going to, just not when. I finally get to call him my son-in-law and you could not ask for a better one–within five minutes of meeting him I’d thought, I don’t know you but I HOPE you marry my daughter!

He makes her deeply happy and she makes him happy too. I cannot begin to say how grateful I am that he’s a member of our family now.

I had no idea I was going to be planting a tree, the best tree, in their honor and on their day. But I like it.

So here’s the story.

The kids and grandkids all came home for Christmas. The day after they left we were to go to my nephew’s wedding. Two weeks later, Richard was going to be spending a week taking care of his dad, and when I booked that airfare awhile ago, Michelle told me I ought to go off gallivanting happily somewhere while he was gone. I told her no way–we were blowing it all on air, hotel, and car for the festivities.

Which were held in southern California, where the bride was from.

Then the stomach flu happened and that was that.

But I found myself thinking of what my daughter had said and y’know? There was to be a second wedding reception two weeks later in Atlanta, where my nephew is from. We hadn’t had to pay for the hotel or car, the original airfare was transferable to a new trip (thank you Southwest!) and there you go. Matter of fact, it was almost as cheap to fly to Baltimore from Atlanta and home for a three-jog trip than to fly straight back from Georgia.

And that is how I got to see my brother’s new house, he having recently moved to Atlanta too, and he picked me up from the airport and I stayed a night with him and his wife. The next night was the reception, then that night at my sister’s, along with fourteen other people: nieces, nephews, their families, all people I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. (It’s 90 minutes between their houses–one does not go back and forth too easily.)

From there to Baltimore and I stayed at my childhood friend Karen’s. Having it be a holiday weekend made it all the better because everybody had the next day off. Given all the changes in our lives that have happened the past few years–including that one friend’s husband had died last March and her brother of a heart attack last month–it was the right time to be there, to be physically and truly emotionally present. Karen, Kathleen, Bev, Scott, Jeb (not that Jeb!), and even their mom came down by train in time to spend a few hours with us. What a joyful, wonderful time it all was. Those you love in your life are forever a part of you, and to get to BE there…

Bev and Karen and I tried to walk a bit of the canal the next day, something we’d all done a lot of growing up and that none of us had for several years now.

It was twelve humid degrees with a biting wind, though, and no twenty-something Californian temps in December had been anything like it: the slower parts of the Potomac River just above Great Falls were actually frozen, with the wilder parts of the currents still going. (It’s a lot wider than it looks in this picture but my fingers just could not push any more buttons to try to get better shots.) Canada geese were on the flowing parts of the river (never seen them there before), mallard ducks were on the still-liquid parts of the canal.

Karen motioned down the hill and grinned that if I wanted to go splash in the Potomac like I always like to do when I’m home, right here was a good spot for it.

No. No way. I know, I do, but not this time, and boy that’s sure not something I wanted to fall into, either. Brrr–I had wool knee socks, a thick wool skirt, three layers of gloves on (two fingerless), a baby alpaca cowl plus a scarf plus a hat–two, but one kept blowing off the other, its wide brim caught in those gusts, so I used it to wrap around my fingers. Over my coat and boiled wool jacket and cashmere sweater and thick silk cowl shirt and silk t-shirt I had on Karen’s old big warm parka and still the wind blew through all those layers. It was COLD. (Thermals? Who owns thermals in California? I am so going to knit me some wool leg warmers…)

I got to be there, too.

I have never been so grateful for stomach flu in my life.

I’ve been trying to remember all week to get that bowl back to Nina. This evening I saw it, knew if I didn’t do something right now I’d forget again, grabbed it and jumped in the car and knocked on her door.

She wondered why I hadn’t called first?

I usually do. Can’t begin to say why I didn’t, other than that I was afraid of stopping long enough to let the other distractions pulling at me get the better of me yet again.

Turns out her car had been in the shop, it was ready for her to pick up, her mechanic was about to head out for San Francisco, and could I take her to pick it up? Like, right now?

Absolutely! Of course!

Wow, that really worked out. Gotta love those impulse perchances.

I picked Richard up a little early as the traffic time estimate climbed. Somehow, for all the craziness that is rush hour between San Francisco and south of there, we got to Afton and Neil’s hotel within a minute or so of what we’d planned on–how, I don’t know. I’d left home over an hour and a half earlier.

Our friends who scuba dive in Bali love this one Indonesian restaurant in the City and that sounded good to them. (And it was!)

I’ve known Afton via online knitting groups for at least 15 years, probably more like 20, but the only time I’d gotten to see her in person before was when I went to Stitches East ’08. I’d never met her husband nor she mine.

Stories were swapped and good food shared and a great time was had by all–and then Afton swiped the check rather than letting us pay our share. The little stinker. I got back at her, though: I reached into my purse and pulled out the edges of two cowls and of a ball of green yarn that was becoming a third one, without even saying what they are because color is everything: Choose one!

Ohmygoodness I didn’t bring anything for you!

You gave us dinner!

Well, okay, then. She debated, loved the green (and it matched her handknit sweater) but went for the navy Epiphany.

There’s no more of that yarn to be found, I told her–Cascade discontinued it after its second mill run. Royal baby alpaca, cashmere, silk. By way of saying, this really is a one-of-a-kind.

Looking on their website, they do seem to still have some inventory in an earthy–gold? How would you describe that one? (The dress is white and gold! No, blue! Never did get that argument–the dang thing was purple, or at least the cropped version I saw back then.)

Anyway. And then I handed her a skein of undyed light brown cashmere, the first yarn plied on my new electric spinning wheel. Just because I could. So there.

We had only just gotten started when we dropped them back off at their hotel. So glad for the time. So wishing there were more.

Negative on the giardia, just a regular stomach bug and it’s almost over.

But still, we were going to fly to my nephew’s wedding tomorrow but there is no way we’re risking spreading that germ.

Southwest has the most customer-friendly policies out there, and the end result is that the day started off in profound disappointment and gradually, email by email, morphed into one of oh I can’t wait! And I’ll not only get to meet the bride after all, but see people dear to me that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Good times coming, definitely.

Happy New Year!

No matter how ready you think you are, when house guests are coming you keep seeing one more thing that needs to be done. Oh yeah and that too. And that. And endlessly that.

In the middle of the madness we decided to do what we had decided not to, yesterday–going near Costco? Were we crazy?

Yeah a little bit.

Then when we were just getting back to the car to load it up I suddenly knew exactly why we had needed to come, and not last night but now: she was just arriving and had parked a car or two further down from ours on the same side, same aisle. The choreography of G_d, right there.

It was my kids’ old high school French teacher. (Flipping through old posts…) I guess I didn’t write about it…

About a year and a half ago? After three years of abnormal blood tests, I got sent to the hematologist and that means in the cancer department. Saw him twice, didn’t have to have a bone marrow biopsy after all to rule cancer out (phew!) and I got off lucky.

But as I was coming out from what would be my last appointment with him, there she was in the waiting room. We both did double takes–my hair was gray and a little longer now, and she was the last person I would have expected or wanted to see in that particular space–and then she had me sit down (gladly!) next to her and we caught up until they called her name. And when they did, I said to the nurse, “She was my kids’ favorite teacher!” Which is true. They adored her. Two of my kids scored seventh and eighth in French proficiency in all of northern California and she is the reason why. She totally rocks.

She had already gotten her results when I saw her.

Her tests hadn’t come out as well as mine. I was so glad I got a chance to bring some joy to her day in that place at that time by bearing witness to who she is.

She has quietly been in my prayers every single day since.

She saw me first today, waved hi as I blinked in surprise and ohmygoodness! and we threw our arms around each other. She was still here!!! She looked great!!! And shopping! At Costco! The day before Christmas Eve! Brave woman. It takes a certain level of health, too. Having some experience at being a patient myself those were not the things that actually came out of my mouth, just, How ARE you?!

Our kids and hers are all coming home for Christmas and she was so happy for us that we got to have that joy too!

The parking lot was crazy with a line of cars waiting for me to get in mine and get the heck out of their way and we kept it far too short. Bone marrow transplant in January, she said…

And it wasn’t till after we left that I realized that with my hearing and the freeway running close by I wasn’t totally sure whether she meant last January or the coming one. But I can tell you this: she’s clearly ready for anything now.

It took picking up my fifth cookie (good thing we rolled them thin, good thing they’re not too big, good thing breakfast was a good excuse) for me to see it. Richard wasn’t raised a musician but I sure was.

Do you see it?

Blink.

I sent a note off to Tatiana, the woman who had made my rolling pin, with no intent but that she should know, and she had the same surprised reaction–and wrote back quickly that she had caught that effect on other designs and had changed them as needed but had somehow missed it on that one. She would be sending me a new pin straightaway.

I wasn’t expecting that at all! But I’m in happy anticipation all over again, made all the sweeter by gratitude, that I’m going to get a new, really cool rolling pin that this time I can say I know we can and will use a lot.

I found myself flashing back to Mr. Kitto’s fifth grade classroom when he stood at the front making arm motions that we were supposed to copy for reasons I have no memory of, just the fact that his right side corresponded visually to my left side and I kept wanting to turn around in my seat to face the same way he was facing so that I could be completely sure I was echoing him correctly. I was in fifth grade, fer cryin’ out loud, I was supposed to get this by now! But looking at each other, we were opposites to each other and part of my brain knew and part of it refused to. So close.

It’s still a really cool cookie. I wonder how many people would notice? Would they guffaw? Would they be afraid they might cause disappointment if they called attention to it? Would I lay such burdens on my friends?

If the cookies tasted good? (If it’s for Jim and his family? Don’t miss that story if you haven’t seen it yet. Can you believe that kid is a senior now?!) Heck yeah! (Gleefully conspiring.) We could have fun with this before we retire the oops version.

What I really wanted was beautiful musical cookies to offer the piano tuner, who came today, but the whole thing was just too new and uncertain. I needed a little more proof of concept first.

But I did show off the rolling pin itself and he thought it was as cool as I did.

So after that bit of procrastination, here’s how it went this evening.

The cold dough was very hard, so Richard rolled it out for me between two sheets of parchment paper. A shout-out here to Joanne, whose wax-paper-layers tip was exactly the memory of my mother’s pie baking I’d been trying to think of. Parchment works even better.

We quickly found we needed just the slightest sifting of flour onto the pin, not any more than that, and so I got out the small citrus-seed strainer (or at least that’s what that thing has always been to me.) Shake a little on, shake the excess off, roll the flattened dough with the embossed pin. Lift the cut cookies out with a very flat spatula, re-roll out the rest while those are baking, repeat. And here you have your before baking and after.

I had a toothbrush still new in the package and it was perfect for getting any small bits out afterwards. There were surprisingly few to have to worry about, but still, it was a highly useful tool. Richard’s first try was a flat-edged toothpick and it was too bulky in the tight spots.

The star cookie cutter cut off too much of the musical patterns. You know what this means. I ended up searching Williams-Sonoma, Amazon, Wilton, Ateco (new to me) and Sur La Table looking for cookie cutters in the shapes of the ones the rolling pin vendor used, hoping I can find who makes some and who sells them in easy driving distance.

What, order? And have to wait to make more?

It was a very good day filled with friends and family and food and love (thank you for that dinner, Michelle!) and I suddenly realized with a start that it’s nearly 11:00 and we’re done here.

Leftover creme brûlée, macaroons, and homemade cranberry coffee cake brought to the door still warm from the oven (thank you, Phyllis!) for breakfasts to come.

I had never had a fresh persimmon in my life before I moved here, much less known that there are two types and that if you want the Hachiya kind, you pretty much have to live near a tree. Shipping is not the strong point of a fruit that is ripe when the texture becomes a soft jelly inside.

Last year my neighbor with the persimmon tree let me help her pick and give away several hundred pounds’ worth this time of year and even so I only got to about half; the rest were too high for my telescoping fruit picker.

She sent me a note looking forward to my coming again this year and I considered for about a nanosecond, picturing that quite heavy, awkward pole and prongs swinging well above my head and the way I occasionally managed to crash it down last time, hopefully but not always entirely controlled… No, I argued with myself, just no way, this is not my year for it, concussion-wise, I couldn’t dare. Too much risk.

I offered to find replacement pickers if she needed the help and she had someone else who wanted to, no problem, thanks. And that was that.

I thought. Wistfully.

There was a bag at our door. She wanted to wish me good health and she hadn’t wanted me to miss out–she knew how much I liked them.

Suddenly it’s a harvest year to remember in a good way. I was not expecting that. Verklempt.

Note the distinct lack of ornaments at the-baby’s-standing-up-now height.

A friend of Michelle’s works at Balsam Hill, a maker of highly realistic, exceedingly easy to set up fake Christmas trees, which is how we heard about them. If you ever see a Christmas tree in the background on a TV show, it’s probably one of theirs. They have a warehouse about a half hour north of us that’s open to the public a few times a year and today was one of those days.

Allergies forced a fake tree on us years ago and after fifteen Christmases it was sad, broken-limbed, a total bear to wrestle the heavy, prickly pieces together and it offered very little reward for bothering to do so. The kids finally rebelled and told us flat-out they’d rather we didn’t set up any tree than that we put that thing up again. It looked that bad.

Balsam Hill’s? The hardest part was opening the boxes. Stack, stack, stack, stack, put on the top piece, connect the lights (doing the stacking so their ends are all on the same side), done. Floof out a little if you want. They have some that just you roll out after being stored upside down, flip over with a foot pedal, voila, but we wanted a Scotch pine that didn’t have that feature. Bought it on sale in October (there’s another sale through Monday) and for the first time in my life couldn’t wait to start setting up the Christmas decorations as early as possible because I knew how good this one was going to look and how very long we had waited to be able to say that.

And then, allergies and all, we bought a cheap real wreath at Costco (it stays outside, right?) because the Balsam Hill ones, even at half price, having shot our wad and glad we don’t have to spend that again for a few decades–but I knew which one I wished I had.

Michelle wanted me to see their bird ornaments. I was curious simply to see what this place was like in real life.

I had no intention of spending a dime.

Hah.

Let’s just say floor samples are a wonderful thing. We got the wreath I had so admired for half off the half off and she found a little tree. Four feet tall, came in a pot as if it were growing out of it. Turns out it was a proof-of-concept that didn’t quite make it into production, or rather, clearly, it did, but the production came to include gold grape clusters and gold long leaves and gold holly leaves and gold long needles mixed in with the pine cones and green needles that are a mixture of short and long-and-brushy. Hers has some new-growth-type tips the production model doesn’t. Hers was a floor model that didn’t even work as a floor model and with the branches squished up and not-yet-floofed, nobody else had beaten her to it. But it was absolutely beautiful. Their photos don’t do justice.

Neither her tree nor our wreath came with the box or handling gloves or 3-year warranties that they mail such things with.

But hey. The production version of her tree is listed at $219. Despite some effort they just could not get the lights to work; they shrugged and went eh, and gave it to her for all of $15.

Holy cow.

And then they loved how thrilled she and we were.

She was happy, we were happy, and re the wreath, now, um, we didn’t need the Costco one.

We got home and I called a friend: Do you have, do you want…?

Off to the hardware store. Cheap plastic that tried too hard or a nice-looking, simple, sturdy metal over-the-door wreath hanger, $4, either one. Not a hard decision.

All of which is why I am so very tired (oh and did I mention we stopped by our favorite bakery while we were in Burlingame? And ran a couple of other errands, too?) Such a long day.

And everybody came away happy. It was worth every minute.

A friend of ours stopped by after a trip to Trader Joe’s. He couldn’t fix the concussion–but chocolate, that he could do, so he showed up at our door with a bar of 85% Valrhona for Richard and their 71% for me, pretty sure he remembered our favorites.That he did. And of course it’s his presence and his caring that made our day.

I was glad that he looked out for Richard, too, offering the unspoken understanding that it’s hard to be the one doing the looking after.

Writing and reading are okay, but somehow reading out loud, the words come out stumbley, still. So strange.

Chocolate makes a fine antidote as far as I’m concerned.

I will forever be grateful to the doctor who told me as I was starting to recover from a major Crohn’s flare, “Progress is nonlinear,” and not to let it worry me. Today was a day for remembering and being comforted by that.

I was supposed to pick friends from church up from the airport tomorrow while Richard goes into work. With his having had vacation days last week, my brain…cleared enough to put fact A with fact B and realize that, oh wait, that doesn’t work, he won’t be here. Sending out an email to the ward chat, I had five different people instantly offer to run get them for me. Good people. Good friends. So lucky.

I really knew I needed to be seen when I was surprised to see the ileostomy bag. Forgot about that.

Richard drove.

The doctor: Nauseous?

Yes.

Did you eat anything today? What?

A slice of Kringle, a little leftover chicken (I know, the day after Thanksgiving!) and…and… (struggling) …a persimmon.

I was definitely loopy. She had more questions.

Okay, touch my finger, then your nose, then my (moved) finger.

(Wait, my nose is over where?) Right side passed, left side, out to lunch.

Okay, said the doctor, let me see if there are enough people on today down in CT, otherwise you’ll have to go to the ER. Then come right back up here.

A thank you thank you thank you to the people who worked in that department today. They were able to get me in in five minutes. No bleeding but definitely a concussion. My balance is worse than usual and I was told to let my brain rest and heal before doing anything that might risk a second concussion in a short time, especially given my history. Listen to my body: if it doesn’t want to do it don’t do it or it will take far longer to heal.

I had to miss seeing Mel and Kris at a show and that was really hard, but there was just no way. Phyllis had to go off without me.

Feet up. Rest. Knit. Something simple for now.