Tonight I set the treadmill faster and went longer than usual, thinking a thank you towards all of you who prayed or Thought Good Thoughts my way after yesterday’s post.

Yesterday I’d set it to super-slow and still stopped it at two minutes when my blood pressure kept relentlessly dropping rather than picking up along with the pace. Air was feeling like a rare thing. Not comforting. I knew the drill from my tilt table test: down NOW and feet up. Breathe deep.

To explain: a dozen years ago, my lupus was attacking my autonomic nervous system the first and worst time with that test confirming it in the hospital, an alarm sounding, people running. My blood pressure was at 63/21, heart rate 44. They stopped it and pulled my feet in the air.

Today was so very much better. And I got to be super-grateful all over again.

And.

My friend Karen at church had her sons and their wives in town for a family reunion and the cousins were all toddlers having a great time being cute together.

At one point at the end I saw a woman I didn’t know minding two little ones that I instantly pegged as Karen’s, clearly; the younger one in her lap wasn’t having a meltdown but he was definitely edging towards it: traveling, strange places, strange people, three hours of church, waiting for Daddy to stop talking to his old friends over there. Enough for one day! He threw his paper airplane down with all the energy he could crash-land it with.

The mom looked ready for a good dinner, too; I think it was more for her sake that I pulled out a finger puppet and asked her if he might like to have it.

It changed everything. Suddenly she had a friend to talk to. Someone who thought her kids were adorable. Seeing her. With no expectations nor requirements on her.

It was like the balloon had been increasingly under pressure and suddenly it popped and she could breathe. Her delight at that little bit of handknitting and the appreciation in her face made my day and we chatted like old friends catching up while her little boy explored that puppet with her.

And if she’d put her feet up on that couch right there in that hallway I would have cheered her on.

One of the most important talks I have ever heard in my life. I didn’t quite know what to expect going in but came away going, wow. I want to live up to what I just felt in that room.

I’m not sure I can do it justice, but let me try.

She was born in Jerusalem but is not allowed to live there now. She is Palestinian.  She is Arab. She is Christian–and she is a Mormon. I had badly wanted to hear what she had to say, whatever it might be; how often do we get to hear firsthand the in-person experiences from that part of the world?

It was not a political talk, it was a human talk. She described a little of what it’s like to live where she does–and what it’s like to try to simply go to church. Church was too important to her not to go: church was where she held onto the Spirit of God, to help her follow the promptings of that Love beyond all human understanding. Her circumstances made it so very clear how badly that was needed in the world. “Both sides think the other is” she shook her head, “horrible. But we are *all* children of God.”

She’s the Primary president there, ie the one running the program for the little ones on up to age twelve.

There are four small congregations in Israel, and if you are Palestinian, she said there are people who live 15 minutes from one but they have to travel for two and a half, three hours to go to a much farther one, because to go to the one nearby requires going through a checkpoint and if you don’t have the paperwork that would allow it you simply can’t get there. And you might not be let through anyway. And that checkpoint would take two to three hours, always, as it is.

She told us this: “Picture someone most dear to you. Your spouse, your parent, your child. Someone you love more than anything.”

She let us consider that for a moment. And then she asked us to think of someone who had done something terrible to us, just egregious, someone we found hard to forgive. Then she asked us to picture those two people side by side and asked us, “Can you love them both equally?”

As that sank in, “God does.” And she put up a slide asking, Have you been

Sexually abused.

Seen someone killed in front of you.

Been shot at.

Had a relative tortured.

She told us, gesturing at those words, “I have.”

She told us what it’s like to be a Palestinian at a checkpoint subject to the whim of whoever was on duty at the time. She showed a picture of men lined up, heads down, hands against the wall, with an Israeli soldier armed and dangerous standing over them. They had simply been trying to go to work.

She was at that checkpoint to try to go to church. And it hit her that she could not live her religion and be angry at those soldiers; they were children of God just as much as everybody else on this planet. Love the sinners, all of them, we are all sinners, and she said it was not easy and it most certainly wasn’t instantaneous. It took a lot of prayer, constant prayer, over a long time, sometimes fasting to gain the strength she so much wanted to have.

And then the day simply, quietly, unexpectedly came. She had to go through that resented checkpoint as at so many other times. And yet. That day, she saw an Israeli soldier and found herself completely, utterly loving him as a son of our Heavenly Father, capable of such great goodness, the scene at hand utterly apart from what he truly meant to God. She saw the best in him and felt a love from God for his sake that transformed her.

And that is how she always wants to feel. It is so hard but it is so necessary not to lose sight of that.

She described the prayer of a four-year-old in that Primary: not asking for food, though Sahar knew their family did not have enough to eat, but for Him to watch over her mother.

We make peace one person and one interaction at a time. And that is no small thing.

Had a must-take-it-easy day so I did. A random mention: my friend RobinM said something about cherry clafouti and I didn’t remember quite what that was and went on a hunt for a recipe and can now attest that this one is really good. (Um, and I changed it to half cream. Because someone had to use it up. And I used a lot less lemon zest because it was after the mega-dyeing thing and I was tired.)

But meantime, we loaned our Aquarium guest passes to our friends Phyl and Lee and they came back tonight with almond croissants from that Parker Lusseau bakery we’d tried to go to down there but that had been closed for the Fourth of July. So we finally got to try their famous pastries–they were worth the wait.

They got the last three almond ones so they added a plain, knowing I’d hoped for a bunch of extras for the freezer.

But the best part was having them over and listening to them talking about and showing photos not only of the Aquarium and Tahoe before that (Oh, we always see a bear *shrug* Wait, you *what?* Oh we always seem to camp next to someone who doesn’t follow the rules even with the thousand-dollar fine) but also of the hyperbaric chamber that as divers they had also wanted to go see, given that there was a tour today. Also in Monterey.

It’s for divers with the bends and for those with carbon monoxide poisoning–so you bet we were interested in what that thing looked like. I would have been airlifted to the one at Johns Hopkins years ago but for the fact that the chamber would have killed the baby I was pregnant with.

Phyl’s eyes got big when I mentioned that that’s when we found out there was no ambulance service back then in the town we lived in in New Hampshire, just a volunteer with a Suburu and hope. Gotta keep those taxes down.  At the hospital, they tested our blood levels and then turned to Richard and exclaimed, You DROVE here?!

(Carbon monoxide alarms are a good idea, folks. And the law in California now.)

I said that chamber looked like a tube-shaped ambulance interior: a bed to each side, ready to go. They described how the thing actually works. They could put up to four in there.

Let’s not. Dive safely, guys.

They do.

Phyllis really liked the deep-sea Outer Banks exhibit and I wondered how often she’d seen a view quite like that from the inside.

And a good time was had by all.

Get your name listed privately with the auctioneer, now you can buy your very own.

The guy inherited a fortune.

The guy liked tanks.

And so the guy collected…tanks.

And the guy built a house that had clearly been designed to mimic a very spacious one.

And he built a room (to use the word expansively) off that house with a huge pipe organ in it and seating for a crowd. He invited our friend Jim to play it–the former-world-traveling-concert-organist music professor who helped a Catholic priest brush up on his skills because he was going to go play for the Pope. That sort of thing. (Jim also taught our son Richard, who would go on to minor in organ performance in college.)

Jacques Littlefield invited the Boy Scouts to come tour his tanks and listen to Jim play.

I remember staring at Jim’s email and thinking, he wants to show us his…tanks? Like, real, TANKS? And he has them HERE?!

But so we did, and we got a tour with the enthusiastic owner himself. Each tank had a history to it that Littlefield knew well. They were still functional, too, all or most I don’t remember, although the town required him to have them disarmed before they could come.

There at the end of one driveway was the propeller from the Lusitania.

Turns out the man found out he had cancer not long after that day that we met him.

Reading about the breaking up of Littlefield’s collection after his passing, that building, we’ve been there. There were certain tanks that all those young boys were allowed to climb into to check them out as the guy grinned.

He told the tale that Hollywood had come calling, wanting to have such a perfect period-specific prop in their movies. They set a bond in case anything should happen–and then they blew the dang thing up and happily paid up, having planned to do just that all along.

It still stung and he never allowed it again. Let them find their own $@# tanks if they couldn’t respect his.

There will be a museum now in Massachusetts. And some will be sold.

Y’know? My collection of wool and silk and baby alpaca yarn and fiber? I mean, to each their own and that’s fine, but I think I get to feel supremely reasonable about it all.

And it would be a darn sight easier to give away.

Oh wait. Post-assembly, I already do. Knit on, then.

And poof, just like that it was gone.

Merlone Geier informed Steve Rasmussen today that their shared parking agreement that would allow Milk Pail to stay in business is, sorry dude, so last week: Phase II didn’t get city approval and it was contingent on that and oh well, tough to be the guy who’s not the multibillion-dollar company with major clout, huh.

It was all just a ploy to pressure the City after the Planning Commission had come down unanimously against them–vote for this while we don’t even tell you how we’re going to make this surprise change to the plans happen. Moving the parking structure? You don’t get to know, just do what we say.

Except that.

I keep thinking of that moment in the city council chambers a week ago where their rep called Steve up to make his bombshell announcement that after two and a half years, at long last, “Milk Pail will be able to stay as it is where it is and into the foreseeable future.”

And every face on that council was stunned speechless–and each was one thrilled. Deeply, deeply gratified. Now, it may be that for some it wasn’t for Milk Pail’s sake but rather for the relief of no longer having angry, vocal voters coming after them from now till Fall.

But I think it was about much more than just elections: in that moment, they every single one of them knew if they didn’t before that this mattered to them personally and that they wanted Steve’s business and all that it represented to the community to survive. That they wanted Steve to succeed after all these times of seeing him being the kindest man in the room no matter what, living up to his ideals when it could not have been easy, never showing the least degree of anger, always assuming the best of those utterly set to take him down after all he’d given to the community for so long.

It may well be that their reaction was a surprise to a couple of them. But I saw it and it was real and I saw the relief even in the face of the younger rep from that developer to be finally doing right by that good man.

But now Merlone Geier is back to playing the bully. They know that role so well.

Five local and city newspapers that I’ve found so far from San Francisco to San Jose had trumpeted the saving of this beloved small business and written up how glad the community was.

Merlone Geier has lost. They just don’t know it yet.

A member of the Mountain View City Council finally found out an hour before the meeting last night that no, he did legally have to recuse himself no matter how much he wanted to approve the project. He lived too close to it. That may well be why our agenda item scheduled for 6:30 was finally taken up at 9:00 pm.

Right there is a reason for people who don’t yet know how to knit to learn: portable, useful, gratifying, calming, and you don’t miss a thing while listening to people drone on when they’re in power and you can only hope that they hear what the community has to say.

Stitch. Stay.

They then spent three and a half hours on the Merlone Geier project that threatened Milk Pail. Geier was hoping to get final approval at long last and hoping that that guy would be the swing vote. Didn’t happen.

I wasn’t sure my 66g of Malabrigo Rios would last and it actually wouldn’t have but that my hands gave out by midnight.

When I arrived at City Hall, there was a small rally going on in front. If this passed they had a week to gather signatures to demand it be put on the ballot to try to stop it.

I said to the man addressing the group, when he said he was new at this, that I lived in the next town over and we did exactly that and we did defeat a poorly thought out development. Not only did people gather signatures but they put a copy of the petition online so that you could print it out, sign and mail it, and we won.

One of the women had made a whole bunch of signs and when she asked me if I wanted one that said I (heart) Milk Pail, I exclaimed eagerly, Yes please!

It turns out that opposition to the project had grown to include those dismayed at adding a million square feet of work space with no housing to balance it, further skewing the jobs vs housing ratio that has driven even the most modest studio apartments to $2500 rents here.  They wanted one of the proposed offices to be homes instead to at least ease some of that pressure.

And so we went in and waited.  The chambers were beyond standing room only–there was just no place left to put any more bodies in that room without the fire marshal hustling people out. The mayor asked people to be careful not to let their signs block their neighbors’ view. We were good.

The Council went over their slides and their stats endlessly. A few drawings had changed, the ten-then-eight stories were now to be six, etc.

Finally they announced that Merlone Geier’s representative would speak, followed by Steve Rasmussen, owner of Milk Pail.

The young guy with the slicked-back hair, shiny shoes and expensive suit, his face familiar by now, got up to give Geier’s spiel, trying as always to impress. Up pops a slide: a long list of all the meetings they’ve attended with the city over this.

(Well yeah dude that’s part of your job and part of their jobs. You wouldn’t still be doing this after two and a half years if you didn’t expect to make millions off it.)

But then–at the end he turned and gestured expansively towards Steve and darn if the guy didn’t smile, I mean, really smiled Steve’s way. I realized suddenly I’d never seen him looking anything but majorly stressed before.

Steve got up. He said that Merlone Geier had been helpful (while I thought, Steve, you are the salt of the earth and the nicest guy ever but that’s not a description I thought I would ever hear, not even from a saint like you) and he went on to announce that he and they had come to an agreement on the parking.

Yes it would cover the required number of spaces for his business.

Yes it would be for a long time to come. (Having his daughters inherit his business and being able to continue there for another generation had been a huge issue to the community.)

The Council sat there as stunned as the rest of us. We all clapped. The mayor reminded us we were not allowed to clap during a hearing. Okay, let’s see how loud our faces can smile, then–but the councilmen were grinning bigtime, too.

But Steve offered no details and he sat down and they had to go on debating the project while not knowing just what changes the developer was thinking of doing to make it so what Steve had just said would be feasible. Were they talking about relocating the proposed parking structure? Just rededicating some of the spots still a good hike away? Nobody seemed to ask, or if they did I sure missed it.

The planning commission days earlier had unanimously voted the project down, a complete turnaround on their part, pending the completion of the Concise Plan for the overall area. Etc.  I’m thinking surely all the public pressure in support of Milk Pail played into that.

Two hours later…

One Councilman finally asked the crowd, which at midnight was down by half and everybody could actually sit down in the seats now, how many people wanted this continued rather than put to an immediate vote. Nearly every hand went up.  And he asked Steve what everyone had been dying to know: what were the specifics of this new agreement?

Steve clearly didn’t want to endanger this shaky new truce but he tried his best. It was contingent on this Phase II being approved.

In the end, the vote: item delayed till this date.

So maybe Steve has an agreement and maybe he doesn’t now.

We poured out of the chambers at long last.

In the second picture is Jac Siegel, the one Councilman who after all this I’d vote for if I lived there. Really knows his city and a decent human being.

The senior Merlone Geier representative shook Steve’s hand, and then as he continued on by I said to the guy, with a warm smile in gratitude at their change of heart (however it happened, I’ll take it), “Take good care of him,” (motioning at Steve, now talking to another supporter.) “He means a lot to us.”

The guy went from approaching me, looking at me, to abruptly turning away and avoiding all eye contact as if I suddenly didn’t exist.

It hit me that maybe he was wondering if anyone in *his* business world would say words of support like that about him in such personal terms–maybe that’s not fair of me, but his sudden stricken change of demeanor was memorable. My heart went out to him, not that he would know that.

Steve loved my sign. I told him I really couldn’t take credit for it. The woman who had given it to me had gone home, though, so when I knew he wanted it, absolutely, I’d be honored.

He sent me a short note today thanking me for coming and saying that sign was in his kitchen now.

I took great comfort in that.

He was 13 months old and in a strange place with his grandparents at a church he’d never been to before, while for whatever reason his parents were elsewhere in the building just then.

Muh Muh Muh? Spoken softly. He toddled the back row in Sunday School, looking for Mommy.

Actually, the grandmother could easily have passed for an older mother so I wasn’t quite sure there till we introduced ourselves to each other afterwards and her son and daughter-in-law joined in the conversation.

Meantime, he was not crying but he was clearly tired and not quite sure of this place and all these strange faces.

We were silently cheering him on. We’ve all been the new kid on the block. Everyone at the back of the room was smiling at him and loving it when he caught an eye here or there.

One mom had silver sparkly shoes with a pattern that wove in and out and he stopped, got down, and explored how the top of one of them felt while she chuckled. Tangible light! Look at that! And you could cover it over with your hand, too, and then make it come right back. What a cool world!

At one point he went to his grandparents for a hug and we wondered if at last he would start crying; I reached into my purse and found a finger puppet and got it over to them. A turtle.

Grandpa caught on pretty quickly that this little handknit didn’t have to be a lump sitting on the palm and I saw Grandma showing the little guy how it went on her finger–and now it could go on his.

Would he throw it down and throw that tantrum at last? There was this moment of indecision in the air.

He liked it! Hey Mikey!

A minute or two later, toddling over to me, for the first time in there (be still my heart) he looked up into my eyes–and he smiled.

What a difference! He had a huge smile! It took up his entire face and it totally changed how he looked, totally rocking that toothy Mad Magazine mascot thing, ready for cheerful mischief. (Remembering how my grandsons’ daddy liked to stuff silverware down the heating vents starting at that age.)

Standing with all of them and with Richard in the swirl of people after the meetings were over, the parents had three ages four and under? So did we when we moved here. Turning to the side, these are the first grandkids? We told the grandparents we were at the same stage now.

It’s hard to uproot and move away and even harder when life revolves around the needs and schedules of small children. We wanted them all to feel this was home now.

The giggles of a totally-won-over-now tiny human being playing peekaboo around his grandma’s shoulders at me as we grownups got acquainted went a long way towards conveying that sense of belonging.

I read about a year too late that if you’re going to have a small fruit tree in a container you want a plastic one with sides going straight down rather than cone shaped for the sake of avoiding root rot.

Oh. I’d just simply bought what Costco had last year.

Well hey, they were now selling a larger, non-conical one and I could always use the first to put tomatoes into, and at some point I mentioned to a friend that I wondered if I should ask for help to transplant that tree to where the roots would have more room but but really I shouldn’t, so, never mind, forget I said anything. I nearly deleted the email, and said that, too.

She laughed off my hesitation after checking first with her husband and strapping boys and so, today they came over and wrestled that thing. Turns out the roots were growing out the drainage holes and into the ground–extra dwarf or no, that tree wanted room and extracting it was a handful.

They made it sound afterwards like it had been completely easy and between the three of them, with the three-year-old baby brother happily running a Tonka tractor around their feet, they did it. They even insisted on moving the new container afterwards to where the old one had been, where the sun was a little better.

They got sent home with a chocolate torte with my profuse thanks. I’ve been praying hard since then that their backs are okay, amazed and in awe that they would volunteer like that just because.

I was only able to spend a little time out there in the bright sun, mostly watching through the window, so I had to ask Richard afterwards: what happened to all that gravel I’d had at the bottom of the pot? I’d had it in there for drainage and stability and I didn’t see any later.

What gravel?

And I had more in the new pot, with a layer of dirt on top to get it all ready for them.

We didn’t see but a tiny bit of gravel.

Uh. Ohhh. That rootball must have been really heavy, then, I mean, I had a lot… Yow.

Wow.

I had some below the layer of soil at the waiting bottom of the new pot, too, and when they were done with the transplanting they scooted the thing over to where it had been previously. That tree looked beautiful when they were done.

What can I say–our friends totally rock!

One more thing about Rita yesterday.

I was sitting next to her at that table and I told her the story of my grandmother at 95 with a big glass bowl full of individually wrapped candies: she was offering my kids some. They were–here, let me try to remember–maybe 5, 7, 9, and 11 at the time? My mom was in town too visiting her mother while we were there.

Mom and I silently gave the kids the hairy eyeball–just one, kids.

Gram’s eyes twinkled: “Have some more!”

(Us: Just. One.)

They each in varying degrees of age and awareness took another piece in a combination of eagerness and hesitation and trying to figure out just what the power dynamic going on here was.

She egged them on yet again, and again, one piecetaking at a time: “Have some more!”

Till eventually they had filled their mouths, all their pockets, their socks by golly, everything they could think of, and at the last they totally emptied that bowl. And it was not a small bowl. If the number of pieces didn’t come out evenly between them, I don’t remember, but they had the good sense not to complain nor I think did we have to prompt them to say thank you.

Gram was having the time of her life.

I told Rita, “She knew she was making it so they would never forget her–and they didn’t.”

Lovely Rita looked at me with her good eye and this suddenly profound moment passed between us as she in her own great old age affirmed, “Yes. Exactly. “

(Tomato flowers playing chainstitch.)

My lupus group meets in the nearby community hospital.

Except in the summers, when our conference room is always scheduled for something else and they have no room for us. So we go on hiatus.

Only, this year we really didn’t want to, feeling more strongly about it than in the past. So we decided to have a get-together over lunch, picking a place in Los Gatos so it would be easy for Rita to come. I for one hadn’t seen her in years.

She was one of the original members of the group and from the sound of it I might still have been in high school at that point and back then all the information they could find called the disease universally fatal. End of story.

She’s in her 90’s now and chipper as ever–I will definitely take that kind of fatal.

The woman who’d made the reservations, mindful of several hearing impairments in the group, had asked for a quiet room, and Viva gave us the quietest one of any in memory. Near the end I said by way of thanks that yes the new hearing aids are great, but, this was the first time I had heard nearly everything in a restaurant in a group this size (we were seven) since…I thought a moment…probably my 20’s.

Normalcy is such an amazing gift to get to sample.

We all got big helpings.

One woman made it there whom we weren’t sure would be able to; for all her health problems, she’s a primary caregiver herself and for several minutes there she spilled all her grief of what she and her husband were going through.

How they were doing mattered to us. We asked how they’d met, and telling her multi-continent what-were-the-chances story got her laughing and her old self, freed to simply be.

We reminisced too over the people we had loved in that group over the years.

Do you remember the woman whose wake was held at her home , I asked. I found out after years of knowing her that we’d grown up in neighboring towns–who knew. What was her name?

Yes! In Sunnyvale, right?

Yes! And here’s the funny part, I told them. There was a man there at that wake whom I knew I knew, and he knew he knew me, but we both looked at each other and went, You are wayyy out of context. Where do I know you from?

Turns out he was my kids’ math teacher. He lived across the street there. Our late friend (I want to say Carol?) had taken care of his wife when she was dying, and then when Carol died, Rick opened his door the next morning to find–Carol’s cat.

She looked up at him. She stepped over the doorway. She lived here now.

And so he had indeed taken in that sweet cat that had watched these two households taking care of each other and she knew where to find the love.

I had missed enough meetings over the years that I didn’t recognize a few names the others were remembering, people who had moved away, people who had gone on, people who had simply stopped coming. This afternoon, we all found the love all over again all the more intensely and I never wanted to miss a thing again.

Rita, tiny, mostly blind, not quite frail yet if she can help it, was getting into another friend’s car for her ride home. Did we wear you out? I asked her.

Yes! she laughed, and pronounced, And it was worth EVERY. MINUTE.

I’ve been going to the same drycleaner for lo these many years. I’ve never known the name of the woman who is the face of the establishment, a tiny woman, probably Korean since a lot of them around here of that age are, and she struggles to remember mine given that I’m such an infrequent flier: “Hyatt?” I only come a few times a year. But it’s been a lot of years.

But she remembers my husband’s handknit sweater, the Aran with the 86″ wingspan (the one he wore to a job interview and I teased him that I got him that job), and we bonded over that way back in the days when I was still afraid to handwash such things. Special instructions: Do Not Block. I didn’t want all those hard-won cables flattened out.

I don’t think she’s ever seen my 6’8″ husband but she’s known the size of his suits and they just amaze her.

I had a pair of his wool pants to drop off that I should have done awhile ago.  I’d been wondering at my own procrastination mixed with forgetfulness. But today everything fell easily into place: I remembered it and I did it–on a Monday, even, 5:00ish though, so that if they said it wouldn’t be done till Friday I’d still have an extra day to remember to retrieve them before he would need them Sunday. I wouldn’t have to pay extra for an overnighter.

There was a tall man just ahead of me when I arrived and it became quickly clear that, at least right then, he was the overbearing type who does not see people who serve. Granted, we all have our moments we regret–but still. Not fun. As he gave this gentle woman a hard time over nothing at all I felt for her. He was well dressed in clothing only. I almost said out loud, c’mon, dude, lighten up.

Except that I didn’t want her nor her business to bear the brunt of any reaction to me.

He turned to leave at long last and she immediately stepped sideways my way and made a point of focusing solely on me.

One pair of pants? (And then came the struggle for the name.) I chuckled, adding, “Alison.”

L? She started to write L Hyatt-cross out–Hyde and I had her cross out the L too and put in A, just to be on the safe side. We both chuckled. As if there would ever be any confusion whose those were, no. But no matter our language barrier, I made a point of being the friend who understood what she’d just been put through and that I wanted to make up for it. One can say a lot with just face and eyes and a smile in the voice. He was gone now and she was in the safety of a friend.

Oh wait–I remembered to ask. “When will they be done?”

She hesitated a millisecond. “Wednesday.”

I was quite taken by surprise. “Wednesday?!” (I suddenly got that if she overnighted it without charging extra her husband might give her grief.)

“Wednesday,” she affirmed with the happiest face ever.

He was an adorable bald little baby when he first started playing peekaboo with me at church from his mother’s arms.

At eighteen  months he was old enough to go into the nursery and give her a break so I saw a lot less of him. He had thick blond hair now, a little boy of cheerful disposition with the distinctive waddle-walk of that age and as he reached way up to hold his daddy’s hand and walked in there one particular Sunday I marveled at so much change so fast. So very normal. They don’t stay babies, do they.

And he was still always ready to turn and wave hi my way with his whole being lighting up at the sight of me. I really hadn’t done much to earn that, he simply offered the gift of loving for love’s sake.

There are a lot of young families that cycle through this area, landing a good job out of grad school, getting some experience, and then moving on when a job offer somewhere else offers the chance of being able to buy a house with a reasonable cost of living.  (We marveled when we moved here at the old people who could never afford to buy their houses now and now we are those older people. Wait, wait, not *that* old, but still.)

And so his family did just that two years ago.

They were in town, visiting, and so there they were at church today.

He’s past napping stage but I guess all that vacationing took it out of him–he fell asleep during the main meeting with his mommy holding him. At four, he’s a lot bigger now and she admitted her arms were getting tired.

Several of us converged on our old friends at once and he stirred a bit. The first thing he saw was me. And he was in a happy place and snuggled back down with a smile.

After the last meeting, she was catching up some more with some of us who have so missed them and again holding him and I suddenly realized he was playing peekaboo through the back of the chair, eyes on me, waiting for me to notice: bobbing up then down in happy anticipation. Of course I would see, he knew it. That’s what honorary Grandmas do.

I was amazed he remembered me. I mean, he’d been a babe in arms! I was grateful to have meant so much to such a new person that it carried forward, glad that it helped what was a homecoming to his mom and dad feel like one to him too rather than being one more strange new place to get through on their trip away from home.

Every smile matters. Both ways.

Just saw a note.

My foster-parenting friend told me last week that Andy‘s need for a safe, secure, and loving environment was never being considered by the court–only whether the remaining bio parent would take him on.

Which apparently didn’t happen at even the most basic level of commitment. The foster parents knew that’s how it was; the social workers knew; the system repeatedly did not care.

Until now.  In a complete turnaround that surprised them, the court just opened the way for the adoption process to begin after all. It’s not a done deal yet but it’s far more likely now. I cannot begin to express how grateful I am.

I know there are a whole lot more of you reading this blog than that ever comment, and I just wanted to tell each one of you whoever you may be my thanks for your prayers, for your concern for one  innocent little toddler out there in the world, for Thinking Good Thoughts his way–the latter, I should add, I believe with all my heart that the God of love counts just as seriously as any prayer, since the purpose of our being here is to learn better how to love.

And now Andy will have a much better chance in his life at exactly that.

Another thing that happened at Lee’s birthday celebration: I have long wanted to know whom to ask, someone who really knew, and wow, there he was.

Years ago the local paper did an article on a type of mango so fiberless and fragile and so perfect that it could not be shipped to grocery stores, and expats from India would sign up at an Indian grocer in the area for so many cases and would wait to meet a planeload’s worth coming in: picked and picked up all in a very short time frame, at astronomical prices.

I remembered the story but not the variety.

I’ve talked for two years now about buying a mango tree and about what it would take to have it survive any freezing temps here. One grower’s suggestion led to the classic protest from Richard about how he was not going to be the neighbor with Christmas lights up in March. Which is funny. But he had a point.

There are other ways. Some fairly difficult.

Lee’s friend Dani was from India and he’s done those signups. He grew up with an Alphonso tree in his yard producing one to two hundred a year, and he said it was THE mango, the only mango, the most coveted one in all of India. The perfume! He mimed waving it towards his face in blissful memory. So intense! The flavor! There was nothing like it, nothing.

Mallika was the variety I had thought I wanted. He had not heard of it. He’s been here awhile and it’s a new variety, maybe?

We emailed back and forth a bit afterwards and so he lit a fire under me to find out more.

Mallika: “Among the best.” Alphonso: “The best, the most sought after.” Ah. I had not compared them side by side before because I hadn’t known to.

But here’s the thing: at Lee’s that night, when I told Dani I’d more or less given up on the idea anyway, not quite sure I wanted another container tree (on a platform so that we could wheel it close to the house in winter–good luck with that chore) and not sure I wanted to plant it in the ground either, not sure it would survive without a lot of work–we do get some freezes, even if not many–he, having already found a 3 gallon size available (I want it a 7) via his phone by that point in the conversation, passionately urged me to go ahead and get that tree, emphasizing with each word: “If you don’t try you will never know.”

This just might happen after all and it will be because of him.

I’m now on the waiting list for notification for when the 7-gallon size comes in. Lee’s friend admitted he hopes I give him a few Alphonsos someday when it produces, and I assured him I owed him that thanks, yes. Absolutely.

I think that’s one of the reasons I put the tomato pots where I did last month: to prove there’s enough sun in that spot near the south side of the house for production. Done.

Dinner at Michelle’s, Facetime with Parker and his daddy, old friends showing up at church who’ve moved across the country and across the world and by sheer happenstance getting to see each other as well as us. The world shrank and got all the sweeter.

And I got nearly half a cowl done on just one speakerphone phone call.