Went to my lupus group today and it was a small one–just four of us.

In a long conference room at El Camino Hospital that utterly swallows sound, with that few people, it was easy to ask them to repeat and speak up when I needed them to; I wasn’t depriving any new patients of desperately needed information or of their chance to vent by taking up too much of our allotted time, I didn’t have to worry about impatience, it was just old friends coming together again. One woman in particular I have never seen so relaxed, laughing. We reminisced. We caught up on each other and marveled at how some things had turned out okay after all (Joe and the furnace spewing carbon monoxide, I’m looking at you–thank you all over again.)

And I looked around and thought, we’re survivors. And this is why we come: to show the young patients they will get through it. We did. We do. So will they.

But today we could just simply be, and be together.

It was just what I needed.

The after picture, then the before one again–just amazing.

The guy pushed the button, that home page popped up for him, then he turned it around to where I could see it to show me the work his hands had done today. He clearly had been looking forward to seeing the look on my face and it is safe to say he was not disappointed.

My knitting, meantime, had been stumbling for a few days over a puzzlement in a pattern I’d been creating.

After dropping the Ipad off for repairs, I went to deliver a project a half hour north I’d done in superfine Malabrigo Finito. I’d been waiting for Kathryn‘s vacation to be over; I knew there had been two funerals in her family since Thanksgiving, and making her something as soft as possible from yarn from her shop had felt absolutely compelling. And now after all that happened in our own family in the past month, finally I could get it to her!

She was disbelieving. Thrilled. She’d even put on an outfit this morning that totally matched it, and I went home and dove right into the next project. That’s all it took. After a good start on that I put it down, eyed the problematic piece, finally knew what it needed and got on with it. Kathryn did me a great favor that she had no way to know about.

The new project will be the carry-around mindless one that I knew I was going to be needing tomorrow and had been trying to push myself to begin. And now I have–with more Finito she gifted me right back with. It makes me happy to look at.

I waited for the call.

It took two and a half hours and the going rate of $129.95 plus tax for the parts. My sweetie was ecstatic to see how perfect his Ipad looked again so fast.

And we are good to go.

I’ve only ever seen her a few times. Her mother is a member of our church and so today she wheeled her in.

I was surprised to see a touch of gray in the daughter’s hair. It happens, though, doesn’t it.

We threw our arms around each other, the daughter and I. Neither of us asked the other anything like, now what is your name again? I held the mother’s hand a moment; she was lucid, which has not always been so, radiant, even.

It isn’t easy to be responsible for a parent, and from a young age at that, no matter how sweet the personality of both (and they are.)

And I found myself deeply glad I had done that knitting years ago: to do my small part in caring, too, to try to let the daughter know forever that she was not alone.

—————

On a separate note: Bashie just passed away at 98, it was announced today. The woman whose father was a rider for the Pony Express after Abraham Lincoln asked Brigham Young for riders and the last, as far as we know, surviving child of a Civil War soldier.

Dinner at Nina, Rod, and Gwynie’s. Good friends, good food, good times,  (looking at the clock) g’night, and can’t wait till the grandsons tomorrow (got one sleeve cast on, at least.) Merry Christmas!

Christmas eve breakfast arrived with a knock at the door: Krys had gone all out.

Christmas eve dinner was spent with more friends. They are taking good care of us.

I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning and we knew there would be more news–or not, really–later, we don’t know which yet. Starting this past Monday (yup, that week) it’s been that waiting time so familiar to many and they wanted more info. The machinery, it goes slowly.

Meantime, the back of Parker’s sweater, it is done, and on the front, his very most favorite type of truck.

With thanks to Robin, who snailmailed me her intarsia pattern after I couldn’t get the one I thought I wanted to print. I thought this one was too big–but my husband says the fact that it’s big and bold makes it all the more appealing to a boy.  That made me think a minute: I’ve never been one, so that was good to know, and you know what? Clearly, especially given the reaction of that kid yesterday, he’s right.

Wishing a happy and merry Christmas day for all and the peace of the season with your loved ones near and far.

Folks, we have a winner.

I’ve been knitting most of the past ten hours trying to make the sweater I’ve both envisioned and avoided this past month finally come to be.  It would help if there were a set pattern for the whole thing, rather than me flipping between pages trying to kluge one together, but I do at least have a chart for the design. Which was big, which had to be worked around.

As I told Sandi, I just have to start and then it will all be easy.

Which was true.

When I admitted to Richard that I just didn’t feel that acrylic holds up well to extensive intarsia knitting, that I didn’t like the floppiness of it in that context and how it didn’t hold together but that I just didn’t have the good machine washable wool in that many colors in that weight on hand–he told me to go to Purlescence and just go buy them: Parker had to have a sweater like that. It would be just too perfect.

And hopefully Hudson, too, but, I’m out of practice on sweaters and I’ve never done much baby knitting, much less toddler sizes, and so the amount of yarn needed was a pure guess.

And I guessed wrong and the shop is closed till after Christmas and Richard-the-younger’s family is coming the day after. Which is why the background of the front is in cream but the back is starting at the teal trim at the bottom continuing on up in that color on that side. You work with what you’ve got.

At one point I saw out the window a young dad playing with his three kids where the street dead-ends and I thought about it and then grabbed my project and ran out the door.

Are you Judy’s son? (Instantly thinking, no, make that grandson.)

No, I’m the son-in-law at…

Oh cool! And then I explained my quest: I had no idea whether this would fit my three-year-old grandson, would he mind if I held it up to his little ones to guesstimate? (I did not say that I’d seen pattern sizing that varied crazily, and I do mean crazily, 12″ width’s difference for a size 4 and it did not leave me confident.)

Sure! Let’s see, she’s (pointing at his shy, petite daughter) two and a half.

She however saw this stranger coming near her with this strange thing with weird dangly strands and understandably wanted nothing to do with me. I chuckled, understanding, and stepped back and tried to make her feel better about it while not imposing on her again. She watched me shyly while I did what I should have done first, which was to sound the all-clear by going to her five year old brother. Let him decide whether I was okay.

He was eyeing that sweater front from the get-go with great appreciation: now that, that is something that could get a little boy excited about a piece of clothing. He liked it. Most definitely. Hey Mikey.

And it was a tad small for him, as it needed to be, but whatever, the proportions are right so it’ll fit Parker later if not now. But that little kid did me the huge favor of letting me know this thing would pass muster at an older age if it doesn’t fit till later. I like to think Parker will never want to take it off no matter what size it is.

I know the grandmother to those little ones. She’s a knitter.  I’ll ask her quietly if she’d like to use the intarsia pattern when I’m done.

HE’S HOME!!!!!! They were going to keep him till the middle of the grandsons’ visit, a whole ‘nother five days, and yesterday when he said, So I’m going home tomorrow, right? the nurses were sympathetic but the doctors gave that idea a yeah right look.

So I was not at all expecting the call at 12:15 this afternoon saying they were sending him home and he was getting ready. Then immediately came the message from Phyllis and Lee saying they wanted to go visit him.

–Well actually….

I had been wishing hard that I didn’t have to make that long walk in the sun at the highest-UV part of the day, solstice or no solstice, and there they immediately were on the phone with no idea I needed them, offering well then, let us help you out with that. And so they drove me to the curb and waited. Circled when they had to and came back and waited patiently some more.

It’s always a long wait. After awhile I went to the nurses’ station and asked with a grin if I could bum a wheelchair and wheel him out myself? (One is never allowed to walk out on one’s own, an employee must wheel you out.) They laughed and called down again and ten minutes later there you go. Took an hour and a half for me once, so ten minutes is practically the speed of light.

And then just to top it off, when we got home Phyl and Lee asked a few questions and then went into our garage (brave people) and wrestled the fake tree out of there and the wires to the darn thing and set it all up for us, upright and lights on and there you go.

I was expecting to have a grand total in the decorating department of a Christmas quilt on the floor with post office boxes on top. By myself. Whoopdedoo. And then head over to visit him at Stanford.

He looks great. A friend was throwing a get-together tonight and he wanted to go and so after a few hours’ lying down here to rest up for it he had a great time, and Nina and Rod were there and offered Christmas dinner if we would throw in the oven time since theirs wasn’t working. Hey! Twist our arms! It will be a great day well spent.

And, bless the poor old guy, now I don’t have to be in the same room for hours every day with a patient on the other side of the curtain with pneumonia and a 102.5 degree fever–in my autoimmunity, that was really really really not a good place to be, but since it was my husband on our side of the curtain there was no question but that I was to be there. I confess I would have been there more hours had it not been for that.

The new hospital whose foundations they are now working on will all be private rooms to stop germs from spreading between patients so easily.  They can’t build it fast enough.

My Richard is home. I wore a Christmas sweater a dear friend gave me years ago, and the good Jewish wife who’d been there day after day too with who knows how much more to go whose elderly husband lay in that other bed and whom I fervently wished could be taking him home too wished me a heartfelt Merry Christmas as we went out that door free.

I finally took an hour out to drive down to go buy birdseed: I was one scoop away from out.

But that was just part of it. I got there and didn’t see Freddie but I did see John, her husband–they own the shop. The place was of course quite full. I interrupted him a moment anyway and handed him a small ziploc, asking if he would give it to her?

Sure! And he went straight to the back room with it, a great big grin on his face.

Freddie came dancing out of there with that green cowl badly clashing with her blueish-red shirt, patting it, exclaiming over it, showing it off to everybody, thrilled. Laughing off my silliness of worrying over the ensemble. She took it off a moment to put on the counter to get a closer look and I showed how I’d made it to look like smaller feathers here and more like wing ones here. (It was a riff on the Constance pattern from my book.)

I told her if the green was too yellow I could overdye it with more blue.

Oh, did you dye it too?!

No, I had to admit, while making it clear that color was a malleable thing here–the point was for her to like it. She loved it.

I’d wanted to do that for a long time. Good folks. She couldn’t wait to show it to another customer whom she knew was an avid knitter too.

Hudson practicing for Talk Like A Pirate Day.

I called my mom and wished her a happy birthday.

A little later, my doorbell rang. It was such a joy to see those happy, expectant faces: I was expecting two, I got four. Nicholas and his dad, who had worked together and made persimmon puree and persimmon chutney from their tree; Nicholas was selling them to make Christmas money (and to earn that Lego robotics toy he really really wanted) and I had asked if I could buy some.

And his little sisters: the twins whom I’d given yarn to to learn how to knit with. They asked if I’d gotten the fingerknitted-chained necklaces they’d made me? (I’d thanked them a week ago but being right there in person, the excitement needed to be shared all over again and the delivery of the gift made real.)  Yes!

And so I reached a few steps backwards and grabbed the things and wrapped them around my neck to their delight and I thanked them all over again.

Turns out they had a burning question about it, and one pointed at the brick red piece: “What is that?”

I got it– “Silk.”

Their eyes got big.

So were mine when I saw what they’d all brought me. I doublechecked to make sure I wasn’t depriving anybody else by buying the eight jars of puree–I love the stuff. Not only was it wonderful food from their tree and their hands and their stove but it was wrapped up beautifully, one even covered in a square of–wait for it–silk. A drapery sample (as labeled on the back) that added that perfect decorator’s touch that people like me can only wonder in awe at. How did they think of that?! Not in my skill set, that’s for sure.

And then later we got to Skype with Parker and wish him a happy third birthday. He proudly showed us a new toy, while Hudson found watching his big brother far more interesting than grownups waving on a screen.

Next week we get to see the boys and their parents in person and run and play and sing and hug. I cannot wait.

Michelle looked the best she has since the accident. Still, yes, and all that, but, I can’t tell you how hopeful and helpful it felt to see her today.

And then I was off to Stanford.

You know you knit a lot when you see someone in scrubs with a stethoscope and name tag and for a millisecond your brain assumes those are just covering up the first two letters before the r and the n. And then you guffaw silently at yourself and think yeah right, tell me another yarn.

I eventually got told I needed my Purlescence time so, twist my arm, off I dutifully went. Got there quite late and there was a good crowd for the evening: Juanita threw her arms around me as I walked in and I quite squealed in delight at seeing her, afraid she’d already moved away but no, there she was, saying, I told you I’d see you again! Kevin had his portable piano, songbooks had been passed around,  people were singing carols, smiles around the room at the happy greetings.

And then there were secular songs. Then silly songs, with a few more sacred ones thrown in near the end. Juanita sang a solo and it was amazing to hear. The city of Paris recently did and they want her back, so, back she’s going for awhile.

Good friends giving their best to all. And to all a good night. Made all the difference, and I am so grateful.

A friend’s son is suddenly on life support after an unexpected medical emergency and will not survive, I found out today. We will never again see that sweet redheaded Down’s adult winking in pride at his mom for a job well done after he’s helped out. I wanted to shout NO! No more of this, everybody just stop dying for a little while, okay? Enough!

And that my friend Jennifer is moving away.

Sometimes it’s all a bit too much.

There was an unexpected knock at our door tonight: Jennifer herself, sharing some homemade soup that she’d frozen extras of and would not have time here to finish off, offering up food, friendship, and what I think I needed most of all, an evening’s presence. We talked, she asked after Michelle, we laughed, we all swapped stories till late, we treasured every moment. She told us of one dear to her who had been in such an accident–but he had died. We examined the impacts of grief together in a safe place.

We laughed over the antics of babies–one at church today who’d toddled over to her, descriptions of her brother’s twins at the just-walking stage. New life. To life!

And I came away feeling somehow whole again in a way that had been missing these last few days.

If you remember this post, the chance meet-up at Copenhagen Bakery in Burlingame, confirming that sense of belonging for her as an adult now–I’m so glad that happened. It needed to happen.

Today I was throwing my arms around Helen. It’s so hard, and yet, especially given the last few days (and the confirmed death of the speeder in Michelle’s accident Thursday), dying because this is 2013 and you were born in 1922 and have lived a full life as a loving, giving person…

It was a lovely service at the church celebrating a good woman who is missed keenly.

I don’t think I ever told you, and I don’t know if you remember, I told Helen afterwards. (I’d wondered why I hadn’t mentioned it before. Maybe because today was going to be the day she would most need to hear it? I can only guess. It had looked like she was going to be adopted out of state to a couple that had never even seen her before and her great-grandmother was fighting for custody, fighting the idea that she was too old to raise the child.)

You were I think four, I continued. Marnie and I went to the courthouse that day to testify for your grandmother. They wouldn’t let us in the courtroom because we weren’t family so we stayed in the waiting room praying hard. And I’ve been praying all the years since for both of you.

We wept together.

Yes, her great-grandmother had been old. But she had wanted to see her little girl grow up and belong to the survivors among her own who knew her and loved her and to get the education Mary had never been able to have, and Helen was now in college.

Mary was 91. She slipped peacefully away, knowing her Helen was well loved and supported and on her way.

And she had succeeded. Helen is the soft-spoken, kind, caring, very image of her beloved great grandmother. Everything one could hope for one’s child to grow up to be.

And we are all there for her as she continues forward.

When I told Michelle last night I was canceling today’s haircutting appointment so that we wouldn’t have that in the way of taking care of her, she told me, No, you need your haircut! You need your Gwynnie time!

And so I looked my best when friends later showed up with homemade birthday cranberry cake; it was delicious. Phyllis cut me a piece and I pretended to blow a candle out as she and Lee laughed. We talked about everything under the sun but yes the accident too and the latest Star Wars and the craziness of city councils and the good parts about volunteering and and and, and they gave us the simple, blessed gift of presence.

As did all of you who wrote or called.  (And grandbaby Skyping time!) It means a great deal to us. Thank you so much.

Summer ten years ago, dear friends of ours were moving to another state and I didn’t get to do nor attend any proper goodbyes because I was in the hospital.

Their daughter Brynne, in middle school at the time, folded this beautiful little orange paper crane by way of a get-well card in the midst of their own upheaval of packing and change, preparing to leave her own friends behind as well as her parents’. Letting me know I was not forgotten at a time when that made all the difference.

I was very touched. I still have it–there it is.

One of those blink moments where you go, wait, how long, wow, it has been: a letter in the mail. It was Brynne and her fiance’s wedding announcement, set within a beautiful little paper doily folded just so.

Only, this time I can do something creative in return.

I got to talk to Don on the phone and he sounded much stronger. It was very heartening.

Tonight we went to the creche exhibit I mentioned yesterday, and found that the concert of the evening was Bill Liberatore leading the high school choir with perhaps even more enthusiasm than his usual, if possible; loving the kids, loving the music, the audience, the beautiful setting, just absolutely glowing.

And since we had four kids go through the music program at that school, we went up to say hi to him afterwards for old times’ sake, to his delight.

He mentioned that this year, his daughter was up there singing in that choir too.

I had been listening to the pieces and thinking, wait, his little girl is probably–could she be that old by now? Nahhh… Couldn’t be…

Bill, meantime, turned a bit to admire the small toddler in a former student’s arms (someone we’d known since she’d been a small child herself), and he wondered out loud how time could have passed like that.

But it had for his own, too, of course, and now I understood that extra thrill of pride I’d been seeing in his face during the performance. You could tell.  It was there in the love,  resounding and bright and clear.