My lupus group meets once a month and I’ve already missed two months this year. But somehow, today felt different and for the past few days I’ve felt like I must not brush this one off–I must go.

Actually, I was going to take a friend to the airport this morning, hoping it wouldn’t make me late (and that, once late, I wouldn’t go oh forget it); but another friend stepped forward to offer to do the ferrying without even knowing it was being a problem for me and suddenly my path to that meeting was wide open.

There is no such thing as a small act of kindness.

Due to all kinds of unusual circumstances all playing out on one day, after the first of the two hours we were scheduled for there were only three of us there. I shut the door to the loud voices in the hospital hallway that were drowning ours out, which gave us our privacy.

And one woman in that room had needed to be heard. One does not open up one’s inner soul in a noisy crowd, but two friends, she decided she would.

The rest of that story would be hers to tell alone and not mine.  It was one of those moments where one could look back years later at how the pieces fell into place for her sake and how it all began at last to come out okay.

I fervently pray.

I gave her a hug and she was grateful. I was, too.

“You’re doing it backwards.”

This was yesterday evening. I caught my breath a moment, mindful of the zero-UV to too-dark-to-work sliver of time I had to work in and told the guy, “I’m doing the best I can.”

There was a very dead large bush at the corner of my older neighbor’s yard right by the edge of my front walkway, ugly and a fire hazard; she had asked her gardener to take it out and he apparently had looked at that thing and thought, you have got to be kidding.

Or whatever, but, he didn’t touch it, so when I happened to ask her if I could try to tackle it she said oh please do thank you.

It was amazing how big that stack of branches was getting as I clippered away: near as long as me and getting pretty darn tall too and I was, well, bushed. I’d gotten all the smaller ones and the majority of the middling ones. Some of those, though…

And that is when the guy across the street walked over.

“You should start with the bottom!” he added to his first statement.

I was trying to read his face–he couldn’t be serious.

He was, though, just not in the way I thought. He walked back to his own driveway and chatted with his teenage son a moment. When I heard the plan, I said, Wait, she told me she wanted it out but let me just make sure she knows what we’re doing, (yeah, kinda late there, hon, but I knew this was way more than she was expecting) and I ran and knocked on her door.

The kid had one question for me: it really was dead, right?

Oh yeah, had been for some time.

Good.

Don’t do anything that will damage your truck, it’s not worth it!

He laughed. Not a problem.

Back in my own driveway stepping well and clear as he and his friend put a thick yellow strap around the lower part of the multiply-trunked-above-ground deadwood. Made quite the little tree. They were going to back the truck up onto the grass–nah, got another length of that strapping, don’t have to, here you go–and they linked the two and then the end of the second to the hitch on the truck. Fire’er up!

REVVV *thud*!

And that was that and it was done. We all left it all there where it lay.

I knew today was the day her gardener came and I quietly offered to pay him to haul my pile and that short log away; he laughed and waved me away, the hard work already taken care of, and when he was done you couldn’t even find the hole in the ground to see where it had come from.

It looks amazingly better to have that big dead bristly thing gone. But the surprise of the teamwork was the best part.

I came home from a trip to the post office this afternoon to find a raven standing in the spot the stump had been dragged to. Staring at where that bush had been. Transfixed. Not able to replace its missing landmark by the power of its mind. Poe thing.

And so there was a birthday party, three days early because weekends rock.

Grampa Richard read the Pirate book, the current big favorite in the household as it turns out. I turned to another parent and marveled, “The Pied Piper,” as he got swarmed by small children all trying to climb in to get a better look at the pages.

There is nothing in this world as funny as a twelve-month-old with that early-walker stagger growling, “YAWRRRRR!” I’d been told about it but I got to actually hear it in person. Twice.

Richard and Kim both exclaimed in delight at the sight of Hudson’s new sweater to go with his big brother’s, totally making my day, and they loved the hat, too, far more than I did. Next thing you know there was a proud Parker parading with great glee towards us down the hallway in his digger sweater, Hudson was then dressed in his (I was very pleased with how it fit–a thank you to the Bev’s Country Cottage site for the measurements), and cameras were being whipped out all around for some play outside on the grass where the light was good. (Pardon the sleep-deprived thumb.)

I did at one point put the hat on Hudson and he looked up at me with this suddenly sad little face as if to ask, Gramma? Why are you doing this to me? I laughed and hugged and took it off him and promised him I was all done now.

There was a bounce house set up during the party. I had never actually been inside a bounce house before, but after the party was over and the neighborhood little kids and the cousins had gone home, Parker and I ran races inside it, going along the blue outer-perimeter lines.

Parker stayed within those lines. I could not and keep up and keep my balance at the same time; seems that being somewhat bigger means you sink somewhat more and kind of evens out the little one’s chances of beating you. We did the “we all fall DOWN” ring around the rosie part, too, and the sudden oooof was a surprise–I am not three anymore and that was not as soft as I expected. I bounced down twice more with him just the same but am quietly fine with not doing that again soon. I’m still glad I did it.

I don’t usually have multiple projects going, and yet the night before the trip I was just not satisfied with what I had going somehow and I grabbed the  Stitches West, Jimmy Beans-bought Technicolor Dreamcoat MadTosh yarn and some needles and cast on a random stitch number and threw it in my purse. The tag said it was worsted, I’d call it more chunky–it was a cowl and it went fast.

I started knitting at the airport, on the plane, to keep my calm when Richard almost missed the flight (more on that tomorrow), during random quiet moments (Hudson napping, Parker playing in the sunshine when I couldn’t go, company gone home and Kim out for a moment’s errand.)  Kim exclaimed over how pretty it was. I asked her her favorite colors, and she said browns and navy blues and brights, like that.

I said to her just before we left for home, right after casting off, that knitting serves to me as a kind of mental marker of various events in life, as in, I was making this when that happened. And so, I said, this was for remembering Hudson’s first birthday, and I surprised her with it and would have been surprised myself the night before–but not very. The chance impulse had become the perfect one.

Parker drove with us to the airport, his favorite digger toy in his hand the whole way. He teased us and pretended at first not to say goodbye because maybe that way we wouldn’t really go.

And my brain woke me up at 5:00 this morning so I wouldn’t miss the alarm and the flight and I thought nice try, and went back to sleep.

Wintertime cold (47 in the afternoon? Really?), wintertime rain, spring flowers at the door. Our utility bill that just came was surprisingly low so having already been a good girl and put on a second sweater I cranked up that heat completely guilt-free, quite glad for the new furnace. I ran the misdelivered mail next door and seriously wished for my coat as I chatted with the neighbor a moment.

I ripped out my buffalo yarn project completely and started over and am much happier with it.

And–a friend dropped by this evening. I’d told him my clamshell plan last year and he’d tried it on his Comice pears and actually gotten fruit off his tree at long last, just like me. He was thrilled. And even more so when we told him that we had a Comice too, now, that that was all I’d wanted for Valentine’s Day and that Richard had helped me plant it.

I did? asked Richard. Oh, that’s right, I did.

The guy was quite interested to hear me say that the squirrels had raided my Fujis in years past at fingernail size. Huh. Maybe his Fuji apple had set fruit after all. That early? He was going to go to Smart N Final and buy more clamshells and watch his now-blossoming apple tree like a hawk.

You can buy them? Smart N Final?

I was really glad he’d stopped by. So was he.

Fatigue with a twinge of lupus so you’re getting the easy post tonight: a bit of spring.

Got the peach tree photo by holding the camera high over my head and snapping a lot. Bigger and redder by the day. The neighbors are hoping we encourage the tree to, y’know, kinda lean thataway and over the fence and if we got this much growth in just one year it seems like it would take no time at all to. They were seriously considering planting their own as well, maybe a later variety.

Some friends were collecting clamshells, unbeknownst to us, and asked me at church today: did I want them this year too?

Ohyesplease?!

Michelle has already put in her request for peach pie.

All in good time, hon.

A circle of trees estimated to be 400 years old, growing from a shared original base close to the ground: a fairy ring that the little ones squeezed into and climbed around and through in wonder. Redwoods close behind, a trampoline hanging by chains from far, far overhead in the bay laurel (here’s a picture of one), made into a swing in the shade big enough to lie down on and look up at the branches.

Flowers for butterflies. Monarchs in summer. A little wooden bridge over a now-dry creekbed.

A friend our parents’ age was widowed not long ago and, knowing that we too are from the East Coast, invited us over tonight to see her southern dogwood tree while it is in full bloom. I wish I had thought to take its picture. I did take hers but sent it only to her.

We had dogwoods growing wild in the yard where I grew up, small slow-growing shade-loving trees under taller canopies, and I miss them. There are vanishingly few of them to be found here.

Her tree was the most magnificent specimen I think I’ve ever seen. It has grown in her yard a long time.

She planted it.

She is a weaver.

A young family had been invited too, a chance for her to get to know some new people, and their little children loved exploring her woodsy back yard with her as their guide.

When the three year old got too close to the rails on that little bridge I put my cane out straight to hem him in a bit, and his four year old brother just in front of him grabbed it gladly as his guide forward and for steadying comfort in the deepening dusk. Sticks and little boys just naturally go together anyway. I walked very carefully to make sure it didn’t fail them in any way.

It was the family I’d brought the blueberry cake to and the baby, having figured out I was okay, played peekaboo with me with great glee.

She shared cookies and lemonade with those blossoms just outside the window as the sun called it a day. When the little ones finished theirs, she showed them the path around the kitchen, the living room, and back again to the dining room so that they could run in giggling circles as we talked.  We picked up the baby a few times when his feet didn’t quite go as fast as his eyes did while trying to keep up; he stayed happy. He has just started to babble. We were charmed. We had such a lovely, lovely evening of it.

Sometimes all we need to do is simply get together.

Something nibbled on a one-inch peach, found it terrible, and went for a second. Time for the clamshells.

——–

I met her boss briefly a year ago. We had just flown back from my mother-in-law’s funeral and my daughter was on a two-day bereavement leave, but there was something she needed at her office and I drove down there with her–it was a time of needing to simply be together as a family as much as possible before ordinary life took over again. Such a strange thing that would feel like.

He came downstairs along with another co-worker and, as I quickly put my knitting aside and rose to my feet, they introduced themselves to me and warmly offered their condolences. I came away glad she worked for them.

Today  found me driving her back to that office: the boss was transferring to another country (home, for him) and there was to be a surprise going-away party for him and she didn’t quite feel up to that drive and back.

I said I would sit in the car and quietly knit for however long, no hurries. I cracked a back window–it’s the warmest day we’ve had in awhile–and she looked askance at that and said we can’t have you exposed to the sun like that. (Re the lupus.) Come on in the lobby. He won’t see you and he wouldn’t recognize you if he did.

Oh, ask I, intrigued, does he have face blindness? (Too? Like me?) But how many women does he know with gray hair and a cane and, this is the big one, *knitting*? There? I didn’t want to give away the surprise.

She wasn’t about to diagnose the guy but she assured me it would be fine and said he would never recognize nor even see me and so I cranked the window back up and found myself inside on a nice leather seat near the door where you could see people coming down the stairs or in the front door or out from the hallway off to the left–same chair as last time.

But I was prepared. I didn’t just have my knitting. I had my Time magazine. So I could go, y’know, incognito like that. Only, as I pulled it out of my purse, apparently I had just recycled this week’s (the truck came today, it’s gone) and kept last week’s because I have a great visual memory like that. Checking the cover? Oh. Darn. I flipped through a few pages, thought oh well, put it back and pulled out my knitting. A skein of Jacques Cousteau from Madeline Tosh, the one I bought at the MadTosh shop in Ft. Worth when we went to visit with my mother-in-law for the last time, actually; it was my souvenir skein from that trip.

Wait. I think that’s? But no, he didn’t look my way at all. Huh. The idea that I would recognize someone a year later after only seeing their face once was very highly unlikely anyway, so, okay, not.

Michelle showed up awhile later having clearly had a great time. And laughing, because….

…Hi, Michelle, I saw your mom downstairs!

He’d gone out the front doors for just a moment, forgotten his badge, had had to go to the security guy a few feet away from me and ask permission to go back in to work–the guy had chuckled and waved him on in, he was hardly a stranger–and there I was, right in my spot, I think with even the same color yarn as last time, knitting away.

Totally busted.

What I really hope to do is pick and deliver to her in thanks but we’ve got a few months to go on that.

I got a note two weeks ago from a friend asking if I were collecting produce clamshells for my fruit trees again this year?

Yes please?!

She collected them from her neighbors as well as saving her own over that time and gave them to me at the end of church today: not one or a few but twenty-eight identical ones, cleaned, dried, and stacked. Wow.

I went straight home and turned on the oven before I’d even found all the ingredients. I couldn’t use my own blueberries yet but I certainly had some in the freezer (right?) Yes I did.

And so a few hours later, hopefully after dinner was over, a phone call: “Will you be home the next few minutes?”

I got quite a kick out of her little girl jumping as high as she could to try to get the full view of that warm blueberry cake in her mom’s hands as she stood in the doorway of their apartment and her little boy who climbed up on a chair in hopes of being high enough up to see it, too. Cake! The baby recognized me and grinned and toddled a tad uncertainly towards us–he’s walking! Look at him go!

I told her, “I think they taste better the next day”–and added, “but it doesn’t have to wait that long.” She looked at her excited little kids and laughed, shaking her head, “Probably not.”

I got a glimpse of their happy household that reminded me so much of our own family back when I was a young mom like that.

Y’know? I should bake more often.

From Books Inc last Thursday to literally, knitterally, books inc: they increased.

There is a monthly Friends of the Library sale and the Monday after there is often a books giveaway to clear out the leftovers. Notice is posted on freecycle.org.

I hadn’t seen those notices in awhile. Were they waiting for the time change and more daylight? I have no idea.

I forwarded it to our ward’s chat list, and lo and behold: the daddy and daughter who were just inside the door last night receiving chocolate torte were just inside door #2 tonight at the former high school as I came in through it. They were quite happy to have heard about this. They were just on their way out and glad to get a chance to say thank you on the spot.

Bring boxes and bags, the notice had said.

No need, thought I, I’m only going to get one or two books, max, I can certainly handle that in my knitting bag.

Right.

One twist in that plan was the staff person who was disappointed that a handful was all I was taking: the thing was about to end and please, she pleaded, couldn’t I take more? There are some good ones here if you’d like cooking. Knitting? Crafts, right here.

They don’t say it, but from what I understand the majority of never-claimed books end up in the landfill. One can understand a bibliophile’s plea that they be rescued.

The books vs cane was–well, I didn’t hit anyone all those times I dropped them–and I put the first batch in my car and dove back in. Hardcover James Herriott! Wallace Stegner–still here! And I got there after people were loading up full pickup loads on my way in. A photographic expedition of a river in West Virginia that Debbie would surely love to have (it’s yours, Debbie). Another by someone who boated down the Merrimack River, which runs behind our old neighborhood, and the writing seems to be good enough to spend more time on.

The second trip to the car made it seventeen books and at six minutes to closing, arms aching, I decided I’d better give it a rest.

There will be more Cooking With Fruit happening around here shortly, no doubt.

They moved here just a couple of years ago. I know that along with missing old friends it can take awhile to feel truly rooted in a new town, both at work and within the community; having school-age kids does help, and a church community, definitely. I’m glad they’re part of ours.

Good friends of theirs where they’d come here from made the news in the last week or so when they didn’t show up where they were supposed to and concerned family called 911: one of the gas appliances had leaked carbon monoxide into the house and they had been overcome too quickly to get out.

Their old friends were abruptly gone from this earth. It was one of those things that just was and was just unfathomable all at the same time. It hit home for me because that was so nearly us too this past November.

Neither of us said anything about that to the husband as he stood in the doorway tonight quite surprised at the chocolate torte he had certainly not been expecting to find in his hands of a random evening. It simply was their turn to have a grownup version of a doorbell ditching. You should have seen the delighted anticipation in his face as he looked at all that beautiful chocolate he was about to share with his kids and his wife when she got home.

It was what we could quietly do.

I found Chris S’s link: it’s here. The penguin sweaters story has gone viral again, and no, they don’t need penguin sweaters–but a wildlife rescue center north of San Francisco could make good use of knitted baby bird nests.

I spent today laughing over a good book, mentally thanking Stephanie for every word and marveling over and over at the feeling like I had a double out there in the world.

We moved to California in March of ’87, coming from intense cold and old grayed snow everywhere (and 269 miles southeast of Montreal) to blooming and spring and as green as it gets here.  Paradise. I’ve told the story before of juicing up the oranges from the tree in our new backyard and everybody taking a swig together–

–not knowing what  a Meyer lemon was nor that as they get ripe, they round out and smell orangey. They’re less tart and have more complexity than the usual grocery-store Eureka lemon, but they are definitely lemons.

I figured it would be great to squeeze some in her tea back in her hotel room. While not wanting to impact her luggage overly.

So I picked just the one: a little roundish, a little bit of orange, a few leaves still attached. I told her I wanted her to have the full March-in-California experience in her brief fly-in-fly-out here. (I didn’t add, I so remember what March in New Hampshire was like.)

Stephanie was delighted.  She took a deep whiff and asked if it was an orange or a lemon?

(Boy did I know that question…) A meyer lemon from my tree, I said.  (I also gave her some dark chocolate-covered edemame for vegetarian munching on the run, but anyone anywhere could do that.)

I wanted to get a picture of the two of us but forgot to hand anyone my Iphone for it. Ah well. Next time. Keep writing, Stephanie, keep writing!

And thank you Joe and the girls for lending her to us. She is treasured.

It was 3:30 when I headed out the door to get my husband so I could get to my carpool so we could get to hear Stephanie on time. So we all grabbed a bite before heading home after the 7:00 talk in San Francisco.

But before I crash, I had to share a picture. Baby Jack (whose mother drove Mary and me) is not quite three months old and is just starting to nail this idea of smiling back at people–and his smile lights up the entire room.

Stephanie’s does, too. It was so very good to get to see her finally–been too long. The bookseller was putting names on post-it notes in book copies as the line inched forward and Stephanie grinned at me for the woman’s sake, “Oh, I know how to spell HER name!”

Made my day, I tell you.

Midnight. Saw DebbieR. Saw the neighbor a block away sitting behind me, who did not know that I knit (and vice versa, obviously).

More later.

Two miles from home, so its territory was close enough that it could have been one of our fledglings of several years ago recognizing me: I was stopped at a light and an adult Cooper’s hawk zoomed out of the trees lining the street and straight towards me. Wow. About six feet over the center of my car while I sat there not blinking, really grateful for that red light–and wondering if the other drivers had even seen or had had any idea what they were seeing. I wondered if it was the baby I’d seen hopping around my amaryllis pots back in the day, close to the window with me on the other side like his papa likes to do.

I was across the street from the high school, and I wished I could tell all those teens that when I was in high school the bigger birds had all vanished from the skies. And look!

I saw five more raptors just on the way up 280, and on the way back a first-year redtailed hawk was standing in the grass just off the side of the freeway, presumably having just taken down lunch. It was near the reservoir where bald eagles recently built a nest for the first time in a hundred years. But no, not a juvie eagle. Someday…

Where it was, it looked like it had stopped to smell the daffodils someone had decorated the little hill with. Random acts of gardenership.

And against all the odds after having bought the original skein in December, I was able to match my dyelot with the help of Kathryn at Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco. Yay!

The shawl must go on.

California’s idea of winter snow… Those are strawberry fields, the white a plastic mulch lining the rows of plants.

Richard’s cousins were blessing their baby in church this morning and so we set the alarm and drove from cities to countryside, on past Monterey to Salinas, flatness giving way to steeply winding road then to towering eucalyptus forest swallowing all but the road immediately ahead then eventually to strawberry field after strawberry field in the clouds, the occasional, blessed rain opening up on us three times and three times we left it behind as we continued on, discovering places we had not gone before.

One cauliflower field was playing ball and looking ready to harvest, then quick! Back to the strawberries, for the most part. (My table pleads guilty to agreeing with that.)

It was Sunday and the fields were still, the machinery unmanned, not a farmhand in sight. A day of rest. And of thanking for and asking for more rain.

I got about 2/3 of a cowl knitted during the long drives. I had a shawl project going at home, but I have learned to stick to larger needles in a car so that the tips are less likely to get bounced out of an ongoing stitch.

The baby was beautiful (all that hair!), his two big sisters were happily distracted by young cousins to play with in the enclosed back yard, and it was a reunion of the families of his mother and father: like a wedding, only more relaxed and with time to really get to know each other better over lunch. People brought great food.

And–earlier at the church I saw–couldn’t be. Had to be. I called David? after him as he started to disappear down a hallway without having seen us, then I thought, no, of course, wrong brother. Roger!

He turned and was suddenly startled and we did a mutual What are YOU doing here?!

He lives there. He grew up in our neighborhood (ed. to clarify, here in California, after fielding emails Monday from my siblings of I don’t remember them…) We know his mom well, attended his dad’s funeral, he’s seen us during many a visit home over the years for his kids to see Grandma. We bought his classmate’s old house over on….

Small world.

Not too far at all. We can definitely do that again.

One last note on the Birkenstocks: they were my half of a Christmas gift certificate to the two of us, and the more I try them on the more I love them. I love being able to say I got that much out of my relative’s generosity, and mine was only the half of it!

Nina and Rod, meantime, came by to pick up their Mel and Kris mugs–an excuse to hang out. And this was after a pot-luck get-together to see our mutual friend Johnna visiting from Vermont.

It is amazing how the few minutes we spend together in person can have such an outsize effect forever after.

I said to one friend of Johnna’s I met tonight that when we moved here, my best friend in New Hampshire had been Nina’s old college friend, and so when we moved here Nina and Rod had invited us over for dinner on moving-in day, not knowing us from Adam but just because we were Virginia’s friends and because they knew what it was like to deal with movers and the upheaval of being in a strange place.

When I added, And that dinner was Nina’s first attempt at putting on a Seder, the woman I was talking to looked at me with big eyes and exclaimed, Wow.

She knew what that meant–and from that moment Nina was someone she knew would be a friend to her in an instant, too, whom she felt like one to in return already.

That invitation and that incredible dinner twenty-seven years ago continue to keep on being a blessing. I could run into this new friend again ten years from now and what she will remember about me is that I have an incredibly good person in my life and that she wanted on the spot to be like that too.

Me too.