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.

Got home at almost bedtime, so, quickly, here goes: my dairy-allergic daughter went to a vegan food fair at Santa Clara Convention Center and stopped by our house with fabulous chocolate she’d found there: the 70% dark chocolate from Earth Circle Organics and everything from Mama Ganache. Not to mention Equal Exchange, with their Panama bar already being a longtime favorite of mine for melting in my daily hot cocoa.

But oh, that Mama Ganache stuff. “Here, Mom–try this, too.”

I had time. I dropped everything and ran out the door and totally lucked out with a parking space eighteen steps from the door and met up with those vendors myself. (Mama Ganache needed a bigger sign–I passed him twice before I found the guy, I thought he was part of the booth next to him.)

Talked to the guy a moment and found out he’s from Maryland, and suddenly, wow, a mutual sense of, someone from home!

I grinned at his raspberry chocolates and told him my husband’s grandfather had had a quarter acre raspberry patch in DC and had turned down a huge sum at the time for it and by whom.

*IN* DC? the guy asked, knowing that area as well as I did.

Yup. Our wedding was an all the raspberries you can eat day.

And with that I bought some of those bars, along with his patties that remind me of some childhood ones like nothing else I have ever found before, and he threw in an extra of the raspberry ones in a hail-fellow-well-met. Really nice guy.

It is our friend Lee’s birthday today and we were going out to the movies, dinner, and then dessert at his and Phyllis’s house afterwards so I had to get going fast.

And a grand time was had by all there, too.

It is a true measure of our devotion to that couple, longtime friends that they are, that I did it: I actually did it.

I gave Lee one of those raspberry chocolate bars.

(And I actually sat through a loud Tom Cruise action movie for his sake, too. I tell you. True friendship. Totally.)

Okay, off to bed with me. Chocolate in the morning.  Happy Father’s Day!

Thing the first.

I was delayed getting out the door to knit night: I think this is one of the babies I saw earlier that were still a little iffy at this landing thing.

The little finch had just hit the window and oh goodness I almost stepped on her coming in from watering my tomatoes, not expecting a bird on the mat.  She didn’t move, even when my foot came within a tailfeather.

I didn’t want her to be eaten by squirrels looking for an easy snack so I decided to give her some time and if she was still immobile in ten or fifteen minutes, I would lift her up to the warm wooden bird feeder (not the metal one) for the night; I did that once before for a finch that did finally fly off in the morning. I took her picture, no flash, and the near eye that had been shut tight squinted open just a bit in response.  She’s still with us! Oh I’m so glad.

I waited, I gave her yet a little more time, but she held the same pose.  Well then. I walked around the house to scoop her up from behind as gently as humanly possible and with the least fright, but as I stepped onto the patio she saw me this time and with eyes wide open now stood up at attention. She fluttered just slightly, brushing against that window one last time but in a way that could not cause harm, then veered around the danger that I represented to her and flew off to the safety of the trees. For all that she’d gone through in the last half hour she’d come out okay.

Thing the second.

Someone was at Purlescence tonight whom I haven’t seen in a goodly while. I had no idea she was coming; we threw our arms around each other for joy.

She’s been fostering a toddler since his infancy about a year and a half ago.

His circumstances would hurt anybody’s heart but for the lucky break he got when he was placed in that home. One bio parent will never be in the picture again and the other has spent most of the baby’s lifetime in jail and has changed nothing from what landed them there.

She gave no details other than that there’s been delay after delay while Bio parent has not been conforming to the social workers’ requests and that their supervisors think that’s just peachy. My friend thinks it’s pretty clear that that sweet little boy, so innocent of how his life began, will be given back to that parent, ending his relationship with his big sister and the only parents he’s ever known, who love him and dearly want the best for him, and it is such a wrenching thing that however it turns out they’re giving up fostering after this.

I so hope they succeed at adopting him.

The eye towards the window had squinted but in good time the fledgling saw clearly what she needed to see and she made it to safety.

Somehow, and I can’t quite explain it other than that it’s what I’ve got to go on, that small persevering bird gives me a sense of hope for my friend’s adorable little boy.

But meantime, I’m praying hard.

Trying not to be too glued to the election returns. The utterly incompetent judge is behind but not by enough. Etc. The few people I really badly wanted to win, it looks like they probably will, and I’ll just have to wait like everybody else to find out the rest.

And in the middle of that came an email from a church member: a seven-year-old child, vanished, this is what she was wearing, and they said what busy public area she’d disappeared suddenly out of with a fervent plea for searchers and prayers.

Every parent knows that heart-stopping brief moment and this was so much more.

It was a quick walk from our house much less via the car (turn the corner and there you are) and who would know the area better?

Seven ten pm. UV would be about 2 out of 16. My safety vs a child’s, no contest. My sweetie had an intense migraine just then and could only offer the best of intentions and prayers but I could go.

But I had promised an errand with Michelle and I stopped a moment to try to reach her and somehow, as she didn’t respond right away, it became a long five minutes later.

Enough, go!, and I stopped to check the computer for any last updates as I headed out the door–

–just as they hit send on the message that she’d been found. Safe and sound.

Our community knows how lucky we are. And that she is.

A wistful, I didn’t get to show him my grandsons.

So many old memories today after getting the note from my mom that Alan Moorehead, my old Sunday School teacher, had died this past week. All I could think in the first stunned moment was, but I didn’t get to say goodbye!

And then the memories started flooding in.

The group of teenage boys my age who had been so defiantly obnoxious that two teachers (and we’re all volunteers in the Mormon Church) had quit in three weeks–they didn’t have to put up with this.

Alan said, surely with a grin, Lemme at’em.

He totally turned that group around.

He told us his first memory was of being taken to a house of strangers and watching, glued to the window and sobbing inconsolably, as his mother drove away: he was three years old and in his world suddenly bereft and alone and stunned while she hoped she could get back on her feet for him. Foster care.

He had a rough teenagerhood.

He joined the Mormon Church as an adult.

He married Kathleen and raised a family with love and appreciation for his fine blessings and taught us all just exactly how important that was. He still marveled at her for choosing him and putting up with him. He said, frequently, “If the Lord didn’t want His children spoiled He wouldn’t have given me any.” They had five little ones. I used to swing toddler and then preschooler Katie around and around till “We all fall DOWN!” I don’t know if she remembers, but I do; their kids weren’t spoiled, they were a joy and it’s hard to put yourself down when a small child squeals with delight on seeing you.

And he understood why some young men would swagger and treat themselves and others cynically and he helped them see their future selves beyond that false front. He was his own Exhibit A.

I remember a particular Sunday, standing in the doorway talking to him after class was over, the others dispersed and I almost was, when he thought I needed a moment (and I desperately did, close to tears for reasons I do not remember.) What I thought were my failings he told me, No, those are your strengths: “Yes, you’re emotional. You wear your heart on your sleeve” (that was  the first time I’d heard that phrase, and with the literal thinking of the young I mentally imaged a little pink cartoon of a heart dancing to the beat at the end of my wrist and tried to parse just what he meant so I wouldn’t miss a thing.) But he told me it was a power for good that I was capable of blessing others with and he made it sound like not everybody else was so lucky to be that way. God would be able to use me well because of it, he encouraged me.

That unshakeable belief in each of us–in me personally–from someone who wasn’t my parent and didn’t have to spend the time of day worrying nor caring but simply chose to because that’s who he was–made all the difference.

We were supposed to get a new teacher with the new year after that, but he asked permission, got it, and stayed with us. And the next year too, till we graduated from high school. They asked him to do other callings and he said, Only if I can keep my kids. Meaning us.

He told us how important it was to keep a journal, and as a history buff and particularly a Civil War history buff he said it was the journals that brought people to life and gave perspective to their times when we in our own day are in utterly different surroundings. Our grandkids (and yes there would be grandkids, believe it, think ahead) would want to know who we are now at each stage as they themselves went through them, too. We all do. It’s just the circumstances around us that change from generation to generation. Write.

And he challenged us to bring him blank paper for him to make into journals for us to do that writing in. He asked us several Sundays in a row, with a deadline. How much? He wouldn’t give us a number, it was up to us.

Three of us did. (I remember asking my folks quick at the last minute for some printing paper–for the mimeograph?–out of the basement, almost forgot, phew.) Quite a few didn’t.

It wasn’t till some time later that I found out what he’d done: he’d handed the pages we’d given him to his kids to doodle on and he and Kathleen had packed everybody in the car and had driven to Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia–we’re talking two and a half hours each way with small children!– where they bought acid-free, archival-quality paper and paid for the bookbinding process on their antique press and made the three of us beautiful journals at a time when you could not buy one of such materials. He wanted to teach us how important it was that these things last–and he took the three of us out to dinner to thank us for living up to what he’d hoped we would do.

He accepted no payment on any of that.

Writing this, I realize that by going to such great effort without telling us just how great a gift he was going to create he was also teaching the others in the most benign way that if they passed up a chance to do something good because they didn’t see the need for it or didn’t get around to it the moment would be gone forever. And it could never be quite the same.

I filled that journal. I looked for acid-free paper when I went to start the next one. And eventually…mindful of all that he taught me, I started writing here.

Just about every day. So that my grandchildren and theirs would know who I was. Brother Moorehead taught me this.

Till we meet again, dear friend. I owe you so much. Thank you.

I mentioned last month my cousin admitting to secretly fervently wishing for a purple hat and scarf from me and I’ve been keeping an eye out ever since for just the right yarn.

And not finding it. Nope, not in my stash. Not that variegated. Purlescence had one that was tempting but was split into two dye lots, no–but I had these other projects that had to get done first anyway and that silk still has easily another week on it, so, no hurry.

But having finished a hat for someone else I no longer had a carry-around project. Just the silk. I was driving friends to San Francisco Airport this afternoon, and just before we got there I finally mused out loud to them that Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco was a whole lot closer right now than it would ever be from home and they carry the Malabrigo that would likely include exactly what I wanted that purple to be: the shade, the superwash, the softness; the wow factor, basically.

(Making that link it just finally dawned on me after all these years that the background is pale orange because they’re on Orange Avenue. My, I’m quick.)

Would the owner recognize you? Lee wondered out loud. (I guess because of the distance from home.)

Phyllis and I guffawed at her husband and I told him, Even Kathryn’s husband knows me!

And so. The Borraja. When I said no, that Rios Purpuras was just a little too gray, Kathryn pulled out exactly the right purple in the Arroyo–and thank you, Malabrigo, too, it’s perfect.

At the wheel again, I tossed various pattern thoughts around as to what I would do next with my time.

One stooped, elderly man stood alone with his memories at the foot of the Army-built Golden Gate Cemetery, a world away from the seven lanes of cars streaming past on the other side of the fence. The light turned and he didn’t see me stopped alongside him, wishing suddenly I could get out of my car so that he wouldn’t have to stay alone. I turned onto a quieter street and up the hill running alongside the place as I continued towards the freeway.  A small American flag had been planted at each grave marker, with large flags flapping vigorously in the Bay breeze around the small steep hill overlooking them all. Families were getting out of their cars near the entryway for the the Memorial Day weekend, and I silently wished the old man way down the hill company and camaraderie, too.

And I wanted to ask them, too, to tell me their stories. To see their loved ones come back to life in their eyes.

But I did not interrupt what was so intensely personal but continued on to my own place, knowing I would never forget the sight.

I picked up my project wrong somehow at knit night last night and dropped about twenty stitches of fine slithery silk off the end and didn’t know it and didn’t see it till I’d made it worse.

I suddenly rued not having filled my new glasses prescription yet. I tried. I stopped things from running any further (it was a fairly complicated lace pattern) and then stuffed the mess back in its ziploc in my knitting bag and hoped that the friend who was showing off her new scarf over there wouldn’t see the angst in my face. Hat project, good thing I’d brought that too, okay, it’s definitely going to be a long slouch hat now (glancing at the clock). Just. Knit. (Deep breath.)

She came over and showed me the pattern she was working from and we laughed together in surprised recognition that the stitch pattern I was making that hat in was the same as for the main part of her shawl. Harmonic convergence. (She helped me right back in that moment and she had no idea.)

It took me till this afternoon to face it. There was no way I was going to tink for two or three hours and the liveliness of the silk was just unfroggable.

I hashed it out. Smoothed out all those snagged separated strands complicating finding where the yarn was supposed to go, worked out what went where, picked up, reknit, nope, re-dropped, tried again… And looked up, done, surprised to see that it had only taken me about twenty minutes. See? All those previous times, they came in handy.

This was a project I had worked so hard to have perfect for publication. Anything less than, I would have had to start all over.

Knitting the next row never felt so good as the pattern continued to settle nicely into place. I knew it was back to being just right but there’s nothing quite like proving it so to myself.

Phew.

(Let’s see if I can sneak another row in before bedtime.)

Suddenly realizing I don’t have a picture of it. Which is fine, I certainly have the pattern.

She admired that scarf the couple of times I wore it to knit night–a lot. Really liked it. As in, told me to finish that book, willya, because she wanted to make that one, and ooh, that colorway!

I knew her dad was sick and with a mental nod in her direction, I put on a dark-coral sweater tonight because she passionately loves orange and that was the closest I had to it to wear in solidarity. (Stephanie, I thought of your post, too, and thought how much the two of you could swap orange stories if you ever met.)

That scarf went okay with it so on impulse I put that on too just before I walked out the door.

She admired it again, a welcome diversion to the news that her dad had just been found to have not only cancer but he’s Stage Four. All the family had been asked to come and she will be flying overseas in the morning to be by his side.

And as she was telling me the news, she turned her head to catch something someone behind her said, giving me a moment when she wasn’t looking.

Wait, what?! She was stunned to feel that scarf going around her.

Honey. Even if I didn’t know it at the time, what else on earth did I make it for?

Church was different today.

Jim’s friend Craig Jessop was in town, and Jim (my son’s old organ teacher) introduced him to the congregation.

Brother Jessop is the former conductor of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and I wrote about him once here, a great story, don’t miss it if you haven’t seen it yet. (And I’m sorry to add that this time Richard was the one who was home sick with a fever and had to miss out on the experience.)

He sang a solo with just the most glorious voice and then he had us all sing a few hymns.

Just the first verse of Now Let Us Rejoice–and suddenly I had tears streaming freely. One friend had no idea why but she reached an arm around me. It’s okay, it’s cool.

Brother Jessop talked some more about the power of music in connecting us with God, and then said, I’m going to ask you: if you have a favorite hymn, if one has a particular meaning to you, would you come up here, maybe 30 seconds (and then he smiled and kind of laughed and said, okay, a minute) and tell us why it’s important to you.

Collette talked about the schizophrenia that had betrayed her grandson, (the answer to the last line on that post? It was true. None of our children has been lost since that day) and at his funeral we had sung Lead Kindly Light. It had brought her so much comfort.

We sang Lead Kindly Light for her, for Brian, for God.

Others spoke too and we learned things about each other we had never known. Music is an intimate art.

I had a sister-in-law who was diagnosed with cancer when her youngest was in middle school. Her husband…acted out his pain in ways unfathomable to those who loved them. Their marriage ended and still he wrought destruction. He threw away so much that he could have been.

Eight years after her diagnosis, our phone rang very early one morning when we knew what that would mean.

It was a Sunday morning. There was certainly no going back to sleep and I walked quietly towards the kitchen to start the day with a moment to myself to take it in before the kids would wake up and be told.

And as I walked down that hallway I had this growing sense of music being sung, as if a whole crowd of happy people were giving praise to God in every note shared together.

Now let us rejoice in the day of salvation.  Just the first two phrases. I was in the kitchen by this point; the last note seemed to shine with light in the still air.

And with that, at long last after such a struggle she’d endured, peace was given to me.

My favorite little boys again…

After last month’s lupus meeting there was no way I was going to miss today’s. I wanted to see her, to be there for her. I came with a hat I’d knit in bright navy and royal blues done in two strands of merino and cashmere/mink, with a second hat still on the needles in purples and pinks in a machine washable merino/silk for her to choose from. (I’m dangling those descriptions out there in case she wants me to email her photos or if she’d rather have how they look be a surprise.) I hoped things had gotten easier in her life, but in the meantime, being a knitter, I did for her what I knew how to offer love and support.

Okay, granted, it was 97F today and nobody would even want to think about wearing a warm hat, but the ocean breezes and cool evenings will be back by the end of the week.

Turns out she’d injured her foot and stayed home.

The parking at that hospital is always terrible and our group meets at 12:30–a difficult time to take a long walk across the brightness for the very sun sensitive.

And yet the parking lot is where the hospital chose to throw their staff appreciation barbecue today.  I don’t think someone thought through that they have this nice inner courtyard with doors right there to the blessed air conditioning for people to escape from the record-breaking heat wave, and one can only imagine what it was like for the people manning those grills I saw smoking away.

Oh wait now I get it they didn’t want the walls of the hospital to spontaneously combust. A little distance, a little asphalt. Gotcha.

I circled through the handicapped area. As if. I circled a wider area. Finally, I lucked out as someone pulled out and I put the placard up (so they wouldn’t ticket me if the meeting went over the two-hour limit) and pulled in.

There was an electric cart with a driver watching me as I turned my car off and I mentally apologized to him for getting it before he could as I grabbed my cane and opened my door.

But no:  he was an old retiree volunteering and cruising the parking lot for people who might be stranded by that party and need a lift to the front doors. Really?! He had spotted my placard and stopped. He offered me a ride and suddenly I had a roof between me and the worst of the UV and less time outside than if I’d gotten the very best spot. Sweet.

During the usual how-you-doing part of the meeting, where we’re expected to actually answer that question, I admitted that summer UV is hard: it kicks up my brainstem inflammation and makes it hard to breathe at night. Y’know, the autonomic nervous system thing–not so autonomic. Not, I hastened to add, anything at all like a dozen years ago when it first hit where I didn’t know from night to night whether I would get to wake up in the morning. Only enough to make it a struggle to breathe deep enough to fall asleep, a far better problem to have.

And it didn’t even occur to me till writing that just now that I could have handed that finished blue hat to one of them for safekeeping, just in case. Because I simply took it utterly for granted that there was no need.

Which is so much better of a place to be in. And, but for that question, I’d almost missed seeing it.

Life is good.

Yesterday being Mother’s Day, I did what I always do, with only the item in hand being the thing that changes: I clipped an amaryllis stalk that had opened that very morning, right on cue, put it in a vase and headed over to Edie’s house.

I rang the doorbell, waited, knocked, no answer, and thought my timing was off this year and she must be at dinner with her kids.

Turns out her kids and grandkids were there, actually, and in the “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord” department, nobody heard me. I put the vase there on the step, knowing it would be expected and found and of course it was.

Which is why I got asked if I could come back over tonight. Before I headed out, I watered the tomatoes and saw that in today’s high heat we had half a dozen or so blueberries ripe now that weren’t before; I reached through the netting and they fell into my hands. Definitely ready. Wished there were more, but there will be in time to come as the yearling plants grow.

I put my small sun-warm offering into as small a jar as I could find.

They were cute and she loved them. Blueberries and apricots are her two most favorite fruits, she told me as she offered me roses and a couple-sized box of chocolate-dipped strawberries (all of which Richard and I ate within a half hour of my getting home–they were good.)

We pulled up chairs and caught up on each other’s lives. Praised good surgeons that cared and had saved our lives, hers, last year and recently. We rejoiced in each other’s presence.

And she said, And we have come together and become such good friends all because of Adrian.

Ohhhh, Edie… My heart broke. Again. And it was true. Her teenage son. Fourteen years ago.

She comforted me, then. She told me he is the first thing she thinks of when she wakes up every morning and the last thing she thinks of when she goes to sleep. The pain never goes away. You never get over losing a child. And yet, you find out how to cope, and life does go on, she said.

I having nearly lost a child this past December to that accident, and when people ask me how many children I have part of me still wants to say five: three girls and two boys–a miscarriage is nothing, nothing at all like what you’ve gone through, I told her. And yet–that other daughter is part of me. I struggled to say, losing her is part of what shaped me.

But Edie understood, better than I could ever ask for. There was no judgmentalism, there was no comparing in this, it simply was and we took it in together and we are enough in the face of these things. These are our lives.

And we have children that are growing and thriving and grandchildren to bounce on our knees and sing to and we know how lucky we are.

I exclaimed over the yellow roses and we came away blessed and loved and the world a better place.

(And now I want to plant an apricot tree.)

Happy Mother’s Day to all!

An old friend. A message today out of the blue with a request for a copy of my book  for a friend of hers. A new address–wait. Katie! You’ve moved back to the area?!

Turns out an old friend of hers who lives across the country had inherited a house here and Katie is house-sitting for her while managing the fixing up of the place.

She showed me the sweater her friend had once made her and was pleased I wanted to show it off to you all: she knew I would understand why that friend needed to have my book in thanks.

Katie’s husband died some time ago and I planned to quietly tear up her widow’s mite of a check, but darn it, she insisted on paying me and she insisted on handing me cash and she allowed me to give her no discounts.  I tried.

The quick visit turned into several hours as she offered us homemade ginger molasses cookies and her little dog decided we were harmless and took a nap in front of the hearth. It was so good to see her.

And we got to see that magnificent old house. Eighty years ago, it was a spacious barn for drying a farmer’s apricots in: an open loft towered in view above most of the lower level, hemmed in at the edge only by sheets of added-on lucite maybe 18″ high. Not a place for a child and certainly not up to code. Yet. Add a barrier to falling there and at the stairs and call it good. Maybe divide that massive first-floor wall of a window across at waist level like we had to do years ago, but the contractor will let her know. We talked about how to do what needed doing without disrupting its sense of history.

The hanging lights were ornately crafted, from a very different era. Ironwork?

There were ancient willow trees out the windows, streams of small leaves dancing gracefully in the breeze. The furnishings, including a grand piano, spoke to Katie’s descriptions of the now-gone owners’ love of a good party dressed in one’s finery. In a valley full of the tear-down and the so-modern and the crowded, this was space and slow pace, a glorious home.

And it brought our Katie back near us for now.