I was unloading the car from Andy’s Orchard as the mail truck pulled up nearby.

After weeks in the 70s, 88F was hot, with a slight fire shadow to the air even though we’re hours away from the worst of those.

Going and putting down the heavy lug of peaches and wrestling the top open was not something I could do quickly enough as he was passing by and those could use a day to reach perfection anyway so I offered him a Green Gage. It had rolled out of the bag onto the seat of the car and had gone from there to my pocket. Easy to get to.

He held the little yellow/green two-bite snack in his hands wondering out loud, What is it?

It’s a plum. I just got back from the farmer’s in Morgan Hill.

Did you pick it?

No, I bought it, but it was picked today or yesterday.

Sounded good to him!

Just then my next-door neighbor came running up holding out a bottle of cold water. She had seen him walking past with his shirt unbuttoned in the heat, which I’ve never seen him do in all the years he’s been on this route, and she had to make sure he was okay.

So he got something to wash his miniature plum down with and if he threw the seed in my front yard I say good for him. Maybe it’ll sprout. Green Gage plums are rarely grown on a commercial scale because the trees are difficult and production is iffy–but when they do, they are so good.

But what was really really good was seeing my neighbor seeing that need (I was sorry I had not) and immediately doing something about it. She’s a peach.

(Fusses with photos, wonders why they’re not posting.) You’re just going to have to take my word for it that those two cherry tomato plants are going all out and it’s a good thing that one of my friends is looking forward to being shared with because even the zucchini plants can’t keep up with their output. (Edited in the morning: Okay, there it is!)

Giving or receiving warm ripe homegrown tomatoes–that is one of the best parts of summer.

Sometimes you just need to change the focus, so I drove to Andy’s today, bought two big lugs of peaches, got home, and texted a friend with whom I had a multi-year agreement but hadn’t done anything this summer because the peach supply per customer had been limited. Till this week.

Did she want a half lug of each of the two types I’d bought or should I freeze half my haul? The great Loring of my youth and Silver Logan. I was fine either way.

YES she wanted peaches from Andy’s!

(I threw in some of his early-variety Gage plums just because I could.)

Her husband is a beekeeper, and she sent me home with not one not two but three jars of his honey from different hives. Some friends you can never get ahead of, you know?

And then I had put it off long enough. I tried to look up how to contact the new surgeon online, but you can’t–you have to call (just like I’d been warned by the other surgeon.)

They had been expecting me.

Summer vacation time means it’ll be three weeks. About four miles away. There was one earlier slot: first thing in the morning four cities away where rush hour traffic would add a minimum extra 90 minutes, two hours to be sure. Honey, I don’t even get up for cheap flights that early.

So. Let’s see how much knitting I can get done before I get sliced and diced.

Amazing how restorative a chance conversation with a neighbor can feel on a day when you need it. With a cute puppy thrown in! We are so lucky to have such good ones.

And then the mail came, and a farther-away friend had chosen to be the best neighbor ever, too, and I tell you. I want to live up to all this. Thank you. To life!

When you weave, the weft thread finds its pattern between the raised and lowered warp threads and then half-circles back for its next row, adding continuity and the strength and smoothness of a selvedge at the sides of the piece being created.

I signed into the big blue website to read Sean of the South’s essay of the day and to wish anybody a happy birthday that might need it before trying to escape the clutches of its algorithms…

And saw the friend suggestion with mutual friends listed.

I stared at the screen, speechless. How. On. Earth.

So I went up to this good woman today who’d moved in about a year and a half ago and asked, How do you know Jordan and Jennifer in Texas?

Stopped her right there mid-motion. Her jaw. Dropped.

JEF?! How do *you* know Jef?!

(Okay, now I really knew she knew her!)

Said in the most faux-nonchalant trying-not-to-laugh tone, I answered, I’ve been married to her brother for 45 years.

It was fun to watch her being as staggered as I’d been last night.

And then I realized I’d seen her on one of our visits to the in-laws.

Turns out my brother-in-law had helped her husband land his first post-medical-training job. She was the one who, after my father-in-law was widowed, gave my sister-in-law a break by visiting him every week with her little boy, bringing a loaf of homemade bread and getting to know this character of an old guy who loved to make you laugh.

They’d moved since then, and then again to here.

All these months we had all had not a single clue.

She asked after DadH and I said, Six years I think? Richard called him to wish him a Merry Christmas and all the sudden mid-conversation was exclaiming, Dad?? …DAD!?!!!! He called his brother, who was there and rushed him to the hospital, and then he was quietly gone.

I forgot to mention DadH’s then-98-year-old friend in their ward who’d played in a band with some of his buddies at assisted living places to help keep the old folks company. I know she knew him. How could you miss him. Next week.

I goofed: last night I reminded Richard of my appointment today.

He reminded me that I had okayed his having been asked to meet up with someone today.

We only have the one car. He couldn’t miss his. I couldn’t miss mine, I mean, I could reschedule, but…!

And so it was that the woman who knew all of my cousins back in Boston, being a peach, drove me to the clinic. She offered to come again to take me home afterwards and I assured her I was fine with my knitting till he could come across town when he was done.

Which meant we had a little more time to get to know each other one on one on the way there and I had a rah rah go team go! cheering me on at the moment I most needed it. I felt much readier for this. She’s the best.

I told the doctor about my grandmother having had–they said it was ovarian cysts–and being treated with what was then the very latest thing: massive doses of x-rays.

Her jaw was hanging and her eyes went huge.

Which turned into a laugh when I added, And then she lived to be 96.

Well all right then but we don’t do radiation like that anymore!

Well no!

I didn’t realize till after I came out just how much I had talked myself into believing we would just continue doing what we’d been doing, ultrasounds, attempts at biopsies, keeping tabs on it.

Not so much.

Not that having a period every day till I’m the one who passes at 96 was so much the problem, it’s that it had been slowly steadily increasing. That’s not sustainable.

(I told Richard afterwards, I didn’t want our two granddaughters to think I was willing to risk major pain and surgery and possibly losing my hearing just to not have to bleed anymore when they’re going to start on all of that soon. I didn’t want them to think that that itself was the bad thing I wanted to get away from. He said, I would never have thought of that! and I said, Because you’re not a woman. I wouldn’t expect you to.)

So. The only way to get a firm diagnosis and to rule out cancer once and for all is a hysterectomy, and there was no point in leaving in the possibility of ovarian cancer–out they go, too.

She gave me two surgeons’ names, assured me they were both top-notch, and said the Da Vinci robot would do the actual surgery. It would be laparoscopic and minimally invasive and given the age and stage of those parts, it would be a lot less of a recovery than if I were younger.

Oh, said I brightly, so they can do it without needing painkillers?

She said decisively, Oh. you. will. need. painkillers.

With Tylenol being the only one that doesn’t deafen me?

And that is why “But I don’t want to!” kept ear worming in on my thoughts for the rest of the day. We have to do it. I don’t want to do it. She’s right. We have to do it.

—

Edited to add, I suddenly just remembered our friend Lance’s story long ago of being in the middle of doing surgery when the 7.1 Loma Prieta quake struck, with his unconscious patient suddenly projectile-missiling as he and the nurses grabbed him and held him and themselves to the table for dear life.

Tell you what. Let’s skip that part.

A potluck picnic in the park.

A family that had recently moved here from Boston.

I asked the wife if by chance she knew Grant…?

YES she knew Grant!!

He’s my cousin.

Then she asked me if I knew Tina?

Yes, she’s my cousin!

We bought her house!

And then, having moved here, they’d sold that house, with the closing being today in fact. I told her that Tina and her husband had moved to take care of her dad. He quietly passed away at home at 101 last year with family by his side.

Then she asked me if I knew Julie? She adored Julie, too, and Julie’s husband had gotten his PhD at Stanford, so maybe we’d met them?

Yes, she’s my *oldest cousin’s daughter!

No way!

(*My sister corrects me: Julie’s dad is the second oldest cousin, his big sister beat him to it.)

A bare spot in the yard over here, a small stray struggling plant seeded by the birds in a corner over there in the way of the peach tree I wanted to plant: would I like him to move this over there? (Motioning across the yard.)

Sure!

And now every summer I look forward to watching the hummingbirds darting in and out among the tall mound of flowers, grateful for eyes that could see what could be that I could not.

To the folk tune of, Did you ever see a lassie go this way and that?

The following is what you get when someone starts doing puzzles for the first time in her life at 66 after yonder friend Holly says you’ve got to try these.

This one, though, was from apparently a print-on-demand outfit. There is no artsy-fartsiness in the cut, none of the whimsy in, say, her recommended Nautilus puzzles that had me starting out with the best and I didn’t even know it.

Two shapes. With the only modification being the solid line at the edge pieces. It’s a pain to put together, it’s a pain to get them apart. “High-quality wood”? Yes, that’s what cardboard is made of, c’mon.

And it would be great for kids because if you don’t care if the picture you end up with looks like a wild game of 52-pick up, then, hey! If it fits it sits, right?

All that said. He finished it off yesterday (to my relief) while I watered the garden.

It’s pretty. It reminds me of my late cousin John, the only stained-glass artist I ever knew. I like it. I miss him.

And now, typing that out, I understand why I couldn’t make myself take it back apart till tonight.

Our first week in California in the late 80’s, someone at church invited me to come to a baby shower she was throwing for another member because, as she told me later, she figured that was a good way for me to get to meet people faster.

Hah! I was prepared: the Toys R Us in New Hampshire had had a clearance baby outfit for all of twenty-five cents, just get it out of our store. Nobody had wanted to buy light cotton baby clothes during a New Hampshire winter. I even knew where the moving box was.

I asked Karen, the expectant mom, if this was her first?

The room erupted in laughter and kidding. And no she did not finally get her girl but a baby boy to go with his six older brothers and my outfit was light blue. Perfect.

Her oldest was in high school. A really nice kid.

Soon I was asked to be the Compassionate Service leader. Sure. I’d never done that before and wasn’t sure what all was expected but the woman who’d asked me…didn’t quite know what to do with me either and so she did nothing. No phone calls, no guidance. No meetings. No inclusion nor decision-making. It may even be that she’d entirely forgotten she’d asked me; I didn’t know how at that age to ask a much older woman a question that could put her on the spot. We’re all volunteers here anyway.

Well then, I’ll just make it up on the fly all by myself, I eventually decided.

Our house came with multiple rose bushes.

I delivered a number of roses to a number of women who’d looked like they could use it but there were more flowers and a feeling like I wasn’t done yet.

Hmm.

I figured, every teenager needs to know that an adult who doesn’t have to cares about them just because they are, and ended up calling Karen and her oldest and explaining what I was hoping to do.

He was all for it and his mom thought it was a great idea.

So I went and picked Robert up and then he guided me to the homes of the teenagers in the ward that he thought could use a rose and a hello to cheer them up. I would drive and he would run a flower to the door and say the ward wanted you to have a nice day. Anybody who’s struggling with their classes, or life, I told him, or anything. You know them; I don’t yet. So you tell me where.

Mostly, I noticed, we ended up at the homes of the girls, and he had me as an excuse in overcoming any teenage shyness.

One particular girl… I never mentioned to him that sitting in my car as she opened that door I saw just how much it meant to him to be able to do this unexpected nice thing for her.

Her older brother flew into town this weekend. He is the only person I knew when I was diagnosed with Crohn’s who had Crohn’s. From childhood. A survivor who showed the way, and kept in touch with me via FB, and there he was! Seeking the two of us out and making sure we didn’t miss seeing each other.

Because his old buddy he’d grown up with had finally done what his mom had long thought was just never going to happen at this point.

Robert and his bride look gloriously happy in all the pictures and their loved ones in church today all were, too.

She was worth the wait, and so was he.

Our friend Dani stopped by two days ago with some Alphonso mangoes–a real sacrifice on his part. One whiff and a long exhale and the thought, Now THAT is what a mango is supposed to be. Thank you, Dani!

Then I took the sad little wannabes from Costco that had been picked too early, chopped them up with a bunch of green onions and threw them in with some peanut satay sauce: playing vegetables was the best they could attain to.

Dani’s were the real thing. Peeled and devoured.

So my thought was I’d sprout the seeds from his. I know he doesn’t have space nor sun but maybe he’d love gifting a baby tree to someone who does. And maybe I just want to see what they do.

Mangoes come mono- or polyembryonic. You want the multiple embryos if you want one just like the parent whose fruit you ate, while monoembryonic is a genetic potluck–so of course the Alphonso is a mono type.

Googling ensued. Videos were watched. One person said let the pit dry for two days and then cut the seed covering here with scissors and pull the seed out.

I tried that. It was every internet hahahaaayouactuallybelievedthat?!! result.

The next video, the guy got a gouge going in that woody thing and then took needlenose pliers to try to slowly, forcefully, hopefully, with great effort, manhandle that thing open and off.

The camera cut away and they did not show you all of what he had to go through, but there it was. Voila. Seed.

My scissors had gone, What are you trying to DO to me! Back into the kitchen gadgets drawer.

My pruning shears went, I’m not going to try it, you try it! Okay, you tried it. I won’t do it. So there.

Huh. Well I do have those long-handle tree pruners where you pull down the string that pulls on the lever that moves the blade that cuts the limb a dozen feet over your head and hope you have a good helmet on; maybe I could manipulate that blade up close while pulling on the string way over thataway out of reach without, y’know, cutting my finger off or my skirt in half in the process. Dunno how well that would work for a precision cut on such a small piece. Where is that thing, anyway?

Remember the old Life cereal commercial, Let’s get Mikey to try it! He hates everything!

Yeah, well. Around here, Mikey seems to have gone into hiding. And that’s probably a good thing.

One of this year’s fledglings parallaxing at sunrise today. Raptors bob their heads before taking off to gauge the distance and trajectory of what they’re aiming for–but this one made me laugh.

And it made me remember.

I wrote about it at the time it happened 15 years ago and I’m sure I’ve mentioned it here at least once since. It was such a powerful experience.

Today fellow knitter Clara Parkes asked on her Substack, If there were one thing in nature that you could become one with, what would it be?

There were fun answers, beautiful answers, and here was mine. Since it’s behind a paywall, I thought I’d share it here, too, where members of the falcon community can read it:

I was on the camera crew for a season monitoring the peregrine falcon nest high up on San Jose City Hall. I would love to be able to spread my wings and coast on the wind like one of those magnificent birds.

As I sit here remembering: one of the chicks at first grew big enough to explore the concrete HVAC ledge outside the nest box, its feathers for flight beginning to grow in, no longer a ball of white fluff.

And then it moved more slowly and after a day or two, quietly passed in a back corner of the nest.

The parents fed their other chicks and soon they were teaching them how to not just fly but transfer food mid-air, how to hunt, how to dive at over 200 mph, all the peregriney things.

And then the father came back to the wooden box the UCSC biologist had installed. It had a layer of gravel to mimic the rocky cliffs of nature. He stood there facing the remains of the one that had perished for some minutes while I at my computer, hand hovering over the mouse, waited to see what he might do next.

And what that was was something that had not been observed before in that species, from what I’ve been told: he bent way over towards his son’s body and then with the top of his head, the most tender, vulnerable part of his own, pushed it down, down, to give a burial to his boy where it would be left undisturbed.

It was astonishing and profoundly moving. Love. Love is the entirety of the universe. I want to forever be part of that love.

We went to a potluck tonight and time and food with friends was a welcome respite from the worst of the news of the day.

To dear friends of ours in Minnesota: we are so sorry.

I debated to the very end throwing responsible disease management to the wind and joining the local No Kings protest. I badly wanted to be able to tell my grandkids I had, to set an example of standing up for democracy, of the right to peaceably assemble to petition one’s government.

But once again in the end, having done blindness, kidney failure, and cerebral vasculitis in autoimmune reactions to summer suns, I just couldn’t make my husband worry like that. And I wanted to see those grandkids grow up.

But color-wise I was dressed the part because that at least I could do.

Someone else there had on white stripes against red, her pants blue, and I knew without asking. The refugees in that family were only two generations ago.

We caught each other’s eye but didn’t say anything: not in someone else’s home while two older people were there who already know where we stand and who break our hearts.

The kicker being that one of them emigrated here, many years ago, after falling in love with an American.

Good friends

Great birthday party

Good night

A discussion in Sunday School and a question was asked: have you ever done something with the best of intentions that turned out badly?

One young woman raised her hand and came close to tears as she described how, while living overseas, she had encouraged a friend to come to church that week. The friend was a Mormon, her husband was not, though he came with her when she did come. But she had a serious chronic illness that made it difficult and she hadn’t in some time. She missed everybody and she was missed.

H. talked her into it. She was so looking forward to it that she made herself do it and she did, where she was surrounded by exclamations of joy at the sight of her.

But. The woman’s husband took H. aside and reamed her, telling her, You don’t understand: it took all of my wife’s energy for this whole day and probably this whole week to make it here. You don’t get it! You don’t get what it does to her physically!

H. had regretted the whole thing intensely ever since. How had she not seen. How could she have done that to her friend. And her husband, too, for that matter, poor guy.

I immediately raised my hand. I have been that very ill person with chronic disease, I told her. I know how face time with friends your illness has deprived you of, when you get to finally have it, can power you through for a long long time afterwards and you never forget how much it meant to get to see them. You did the right thing.

She looked across the room at me with what I can only describe as a sudden fierce disbelieving hope, wanting that to be true.

I said it again. You did the right thing.

As I thought of the time in ’03 when my doctor showed up to my hospital room every morning and every evening on his own time to be present with me while I was going through this and I could not let him blame himself when it wasn’t in any way his fault. I couldn’t let him down. I couldn’t do that to him, I had to live.

Yes we tried an experimental med and yes it saved my life–but that came after he already had by who he was.

And there was the friend and her daughters who came over to wash my hair over the kitchen sink when my PCC line for IV feeding still being in meant that if any water got into that incision it would channel an infection straight to my heart.

Yes finally finally finally having clean hair again after two weeks was wonderful, but their being present was everything.

Days after I got out of the hospital, so weak that I knew in my bones that if I caught a cold it would kill me and well before masks were a findable thing in the wild, one of my sons was giving a talk in church and the other was playing the organ and I was not going to miss that. I am their mom. I cheer on my kids. I insisted on being wheeled into church.

I managed to sit upright through the opening prayer and I think song but that and the shower beforehand to get ready and I simply laid down on the pew and snoozed through the rest of the whole thing whether I wanted to or not.

But I was there. To the very best of my ability, I got to be there for my kids and I got some in person time with dear friends.

And every one of those moments with other people, when there was nothing left but who we are and how we feel, helped get me through that long recovery process.

First H. went to her friend’s house to be with her.

Then she gave her the courage to try and to find in herself the willingness to take that risk of exhaustion for the love it would bring into the light.

Yes H. did the right thing, so much yes.

And had it proved the wrong time that week then her friend would have had a goal to focus on for her future, knowing that she mattered to her friends.