Someone on my high school’s page wrote about it last week. A few days ago, Deseret News did. I have no idea how the subject appeared in both places one after the other all these years later, but it was one of the funny parts of my growing up.

The Washington, DC Mormon Temple was built on a hill above a place where the DC Beltway takes a sharp curve: so that as you’re driving down the freeway at night, the hillside covered in woods remains dark, emphasizing this white, illuminated building with towering gold spires that seems to float in the air above you. The outer loop of the road bends away to the left just as it looks like you’re about to tunnel right under.

The place promptly got dubbed “Oz” among the locals.

So what came next was a total delight to everybody I know, at church, at school, you name it.

“Surrender Dorothy!” (Done in a carefully proper manner, with newspapers stuck in the chain link fence on the overpass, nothing harmed.)

That promptly got taken down by the authorities, of course, but then came another, although one that required too high a level of risk.

“Surrender Dorothy!”

(Hey, Karen, am I right in remembering a version on the sound wall too?)

And on a personal note, the landscape architect for the Temple needed a temporary home while the place was being built; my parents volunteered, and so a sweet old guy came to live with us for awhile. And (though it’s true I remember him from a young teenager’s perspective) I do mean old: come to find out he had known my father’s grandfather, and he was able to tell Dad about the grandpa he never knew.

Building a yellow brick road for us linking us to our ancestor as those daffodils went in.

Yesterday I was not feeling well, dragging, just not up to a run to the store and neither were the others.

Last night I looked in my kitchen and wondered how… And every one of those avocados so far that I’d cut open was bad, which is highly unusual here. BLTs totally wouldn’t do, and and and. What to plan.

Today (feeling a lot better) I couldn’t wait to tell my husband thank you when he got home.

My friend Holly arrived on my doorstep in the early afternoon and we chatted and knitted and caught up and were so glad for some time together–very rare given that a) she lives in Germany and b) she just did a deployment to Afghanistan.

But she’s safely out of there now, she and her husband were in the area for a few days, and she carved out some time for me–and earlier for Ruth, too. She gifted me with German Zauberball long-repeat sock yarn, German orange milk chocolate, a travel kit, all very good stuff. But best of all, her time. (Thank you, Holly!)

A few days ago, my Richard and I were at Costco and he went looking for and found that they still had an artisanal cheese I’d had some of a few weeks earlier: exquisitely good stuff.

But I didn’t need to splurge on it, I told him. And it would be mostly me eating it, Michelle can’t and he shouldn’t and really, that’s just too much for one person.

Rather over my objections he put some in our cart anyway and firmly insisted that since I liked it so much, I should have it for protein in my lunches. It wasn’t for him; it was for me.

Twist my delighted arm. We did have some crackers it went well with…

Fast forward to  me telling Holly, who is vegetarian, that if she’d like, I had peaches and I had a goat cheese with blueberries and cinnamon to serve up with crackers–adding quickly that yes, that sounds weird but it’s really good. (Side note to Holly: I just looked it up and turns out it’s not quite so locally made after all, it’s from Canada. Not so much on the Napa Valley thing.  Oops.)

She had the same reaction to it we had had. Wow! I offered to take her to Costco and buy her some; she said customs would be the problem, getting it back to Germany, but oh, my.

I have this wonderful husband who likes to make me happy. It was a little thing…but it turned out to be so much bigger a thing and better than he imagined at the time he went looking for that cheese for me. He rescued my day, in sickness and then in health. I wanted to spoil my friend like he’d wanted to spoil me, and it was just the thing.

Silicon Valley Women was presenting a talk tonight: it was to be given by my friend Nina of the shawl named after her. No way was I going to miss it.

Phyllis (of that story too) did the driving.

I was sure I was going to be the odd person out in the audience, though, out of a group like that; between my kids and then the limitations of illness, I never did step into the full-time other career I once thought I’d be well into by this point. I tucked a copy of my book (ie, a reach for a visible sign of success) in my knitting bag along with–hold on, I needed a mindless project to work on, what to grab, what to grab, okay, that one. Hand-dyed silk.

We arrived, Phyl and I took our seats, I cast on.

Nina spoke awhile and then went around the room, asking each person to talk a little about themselves, what they were doing, what they were hoping towards, coaching them on how to get there.

I knitted away.

I hoped the others didn’t mind the distraction. I thought again how I once thought I would never stay home with my children–till I had children. I once thought I’d be well into the next role of the working wife by now, certainly, till lupus etc got in the way. As the old joke goes, the way to make God laugh is to tell Him your plans.

In my case, He handed me yarn for the punch line.

I was not expecting to hear my younger self: a few younger women talked about how hard it was to put their old work world aside to stay home with their kids now while their little ones needed them so much. I knew that my choices and experiences of years ago offered validation for their current ones. This is not to argue working/nonworking, rather simply to affirm yet again that we are all in this life thing together.

Now it was my turn. Nina bragged on me. Bragged on my book, told them how it had come to do so well, what I had done right, and how cool it felt that her shawl was in it. She held me up as an example of doing what you love and the good will follow.

That praise in that place coming from someone who has lived the successful Silicon Valley executive life, who did the working-mom thing, who went back for a new degree mid-career like I never stayed well long enough to do–someone whose path has been so different from mine, but who is also my friend–that meant more to me than I expected.

Thank you, Nina.

I said that every mother of small children needs something that Stays Done. Another middle-aged woman in the room thought a moment and then laughed that yes, that’s true!

And at the end everybody wanted to see the book, one woman was going oh cool at learning that lace could be knitted as well as crocheted and another pointed out that the pattern (and to a lesser degree the colors) I’d been working on that whole time…

…matched the shawl on the cover of the book.

I did a doubletake.

I had not noticed at all.

A certain child of mine was swapping eye-contacts stories with a friend today, and the friend mentioned going camping in the Himalayas and, they said, you have one count’em one chance to get that thing properly in your eye because if you drop it in the snow…

And then they added the kicker: the yak.

Waiiiit, hold on, (says my kid) any time you say the word “yak” you have trumped any story of mine.

The friend said that they and their significant other had been awakened by the horns that had come through their tent at 6 am, tearing this way and that rip–rip–rip, destroying the thing while they wondered what on earth they were supposed to do now. In the end, being in a group, they huddled really tight into the others’ tents till they could get out of those high mountains.

(Whether they found their contacts again or they were stomped on or what, I don’t know, that part somehow got lost in the rest of the story, the visual image of a feral yak attack blurring such details.)

I know, I know, what a thing to go through, but still–you know I will never be able to knit yak yarn again without giggling over a potential sudden Zorro mark in the fabric. You know what color I’d have to choose: Hi, ho, Silver! Away!

Warning: this is a rant. It’s not G’s fault in any way, shape, or form. They did her wrong.

It is not easy to be a musician by nature and upbringing and to have lost so much of my hearing. But it’s life and you deal.

Sometimes, though, others, making assumptions that everybody is like everybody else, make it suddenly exquisitely painful all over again. Thank you Kaiser Permanente, where you made my deafness a potential threat to someone’s very life.

Here’s what they did. My friend G had to have follow-up tests done there today and they had her booked for 7:15 am-3 pm. Not an easy time for her, and they told her to have someone drive her there and pick her up.

I am not a morning person, and if I am a person up at that hour I’m getting ready to drive my daughter to the train station–so I offered to do the afternoon pick up. That was fine; someone else offered to take care of the early part so we had her covered.

Turns out, Richard took Michelle this morning and let me sleep in.

The phone rang after he left. I did not hear it. The phone rang again and again. I was in the shower, apparently, when there were hang-up calls. I heard a call, but it was the too-usual telemarketer; no, he’s not home.

I checked my email. Oh good, there was one sent from G early this morning giving details on just where to find her when I came; I’ve never been to Kaiser Santa Clara, that was very good to know.

Being so bad on the lupus sun sensitivity, I don’t go outside on a summer afternoon if I can avoid it, even to park and run in, but when someone needs you to go you just go.

There was no 700 number on the side of the building as I drove in via the main entrance; I had to go in the next building over, look for the map, come back outside, and go back in the right one. A little extra outside time. Down a corridor connecting to yet another building, and finally the right room.

No sign of her. I’d left early to give myself extra time and with my knitting in hand, I was ready to wait as long as she might need. I asked, and eventually got sent upstairs–another map, another corridor, another stop and ask.

The new room was in a department that had nothing to do with the tests that she was going in for as far as I knew, nor did I imagine she did either coming in. I worried about her.

They checked: Oh, she recovered in here but she’s not here, she went home.

She what?!

Someone checked in downstairs and they got her.

No, wait, *I* checked in downstairs. I did not get her yet–I’m here to pick her up.

The receptionist checked again and insisted, She’s gone home, someone came and took her in a wheelchair to their car and took her home. The woman didn’t quite add, “Honest!” but implied and implored it.

I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I didn’t want to leave my friend stranded. It had taken a half hour to get there through the traffic that was rapidly increasing out there–there could be no quick turnaround if it turned out I did. I checked my cellphone and was horrified to realize how few numbers I had in there of my friends from church: this was because I use my cellphone as my address book and I don’t use it for an actual phone. Texting, yes. But I email or call locals from home as needed, I don’t text with them, my address book is full of far-away folks for the most part: the voice quality is wretched, I can’t hear on the darn thing.

It was not a fun drive home. I had no way to know till I got to my amplified landline I could actually hear on, no idea if she’d be awake, thinking that likely I’d be disturbing her recovery. But I was responsible for her well-being, I had to know.

Well, she was up after I called her from my kitchen. And here’s the kicker:

It turns out that when she’d arrived at Kaiser, after a far too long wait to get that appointment she so much needed, they told her that they personally had to ascertain that the person whom she said was coming at 3:00 was for real. Or they would turn her away.

Now, I can understand wanting to make sure someone’s going to pick the patient up, and that’s par for the course, advising an about-to-be patient in advance that they are not to drive themselves home. Making sure they know that if all else fails, they’ll have to call a cab.

But calling at an hour when I was not yet awake, and threatening her with the potential loss of maybe even her life by the further delay if I don’t hear, which I could not, and answer my phone unless she can get someone else right now right on the spot (which fortunately she did), is just unconscionable.

———

“Listen to your answering machine,” G told me.

I’d had no reason to check my answering machine. Everything had been arranged and agreed upon and I’d been home all morning and hadn’t heard but the one call.

So there it was: with the tape proclaiming the early hour, an impenetrable, muffled strange voice that I could make not one word out of. Beep!

And one “Hello?” that was apparently G. Beep!

And several hang-up calls. Beep! Beep!

And, at the last, a call from the other friend: the one who’d dropped her off this morning, who turned around later and went back and got her just ahead of me, letting me know she was taking care of it…

Missed that one too.

(Yeah, I’m worried about my friend, can you tell?)

Speaking of visitors… I got a heads-up last night from my friend Kathy: were we still on for tomorrow?

Oh honey you bet!

And so at noon she swooped me up and took me out to lunch. I treated her to Kara’s Kupcakes afterwards, hardly a fair trade except that we promised to do it again and take turns. Then we headed for my house, where we sat and visited and swapped stories and just plain spent the time that a good friendship deserves. She is such a treasure.

As she sat she was facing my birdfeeders and I was tickled that they caught her eye like they do mine. “You could never be bored with this out here.”

Amen.

She exclaimed over the variety of birds, and then over the pretty stained-glass feeder my daughter-in-law had given me; I told her the squirrels have managed to get on it just once, maybe twice, but immediately learned there was nothing for them to scramble up to that they could hold onto and actually eat. And since it’s not where they can leap downwards to it, they can’t chew up the wooden base and so it’s safe from them.  It is left alone.

Kathy went off to pick up her son, I soon after went to pick up my daughter and life returned to normal. I did want to show her the Lisa Souza Alpaca Silk I was sure would arrive today, and it did–at 5:15. Mailman was late. She’d just missed it.  I told her I was holding off on starting another project till it got here because I didn’t want anything else in the way when it came.

Evening settled in, dinner was over; I was about to head outside to water the amaryllises when I heard the smack. A finch. I looked up to see not the expected hawk ready to retrieve its fair meal but the neighbor’s cat who has no need of such things. It saw me and scrammed over the fence and away.

Poor little bird. I opened the slider and checked on it. It pulled its wing back to its body and in such very slow motion over the next half hour, seemed to recover somewhat: she pulled her head back into a normal position. Her eyes were watching. She shifted position a bit.

It was getting dark, so I started watering the plants at last, free now from the dangers of the sun but wanting to be able to see what I was doing. The little finch followed my movements just ever so slightly.

At last I bent over her. I thought about it, and then as gently as my huge human hands could manage, I stroked the back of her head gently. Her eyes closed. I stopped. Her eyes opened. I stroked. She seemed to enjoy it.

I didn’t want to leave her exposed to the raccoons and possums of the night. What to do. She wouldn’t leave.

I thought about a book I’d read that one of my birder friends had recommended (thank you Sally), that described birds lost in a fire in Santa Barbara because they simply slept through the noise of the flames and the smoke till they were overcome by it. It said that birds sleep very soundly.

It was night by now. And in the best way to heal, my little finch had fallen asleep. I stroked her gently again and she roused a little and looked at me and settled back into herself.

There was only one thing to do. All my childhood warnings from my parents came back to me, the don’t-touches, the warnings about downed creatures in the deep woods we explored all summer long and I ignored them and gently scooped her up, cupped between my hands. Her feet reached for a proper footing, her wings moved tentatively, wonderingly, but, it felt to me, with somehow a sense of trust.

I put her up on that stained-glass feeder. She did not fall. She gained her perch.  She has food; whatever may come, she is safe.

I remember, when we lived in New Hampshire, a woman I adored at church (yes, Herb, your mom) who’d lived in southern California most of her life and who had a hard time understanding what seemed to her a frosty culture where one must give much notice before dropping in on someone; “Lighten up, people!” I also remember that she was the only person there I knew who could pick out the one avocado in the store that would actually ripen before rotting after the snowplows opened the roads back up so you could get to the grocer’s.

Years later…

I dropped Don an overdue note: I’d knitted him a hat (no not the pink one I finished last night) as a thank you and needed to get it over to him sometime.

The response: would now be a good time?

It would!

And so we had an impromptu visit at what turned out to be just a perfect time for him when he had much to be happy about; thank you, Don!

Our chat was interrupted by a spammer calling my phone. So when, just after pulling away from his house, it rang again, I pulled over in front of his neighbor’s thinking at the spammer that hey, what part of Do Not Call do you not get?

But it was Richard: his aunt and uncle, who live halfway to Santa Cruz, were on their way over.

That gave me the incentive to explore using the freeways rather than surface streets for the route back. I managed to beat them home, where Michelle was doing a quick sweep and spruce and we were both glad for the kitchen do-over yesterday.

They wouldn’t stay for dinner but did succumb to good chocolate and a very fine Sunday afternoon was enjoyed by all.

I came away wondering, whatever the house may look like, why don’t we do this more often? We’re always happy when we do. Why do we let silly things snow us in? I hereby resolve to visit more and enjoy more.

Speaking of which, before I emailed Don? My Cooper’s hawk, which I had last seen every single day that I was waiting for my biopsy results, arrived and visited me, again right outside the window here.

And only just now as I type this am I realizing that that was such a shot of joy that I had to go email Don.

Thank you, everybody… Much appreciated.

Between the server crash and the dermatologist making cutting remarks yesterday, I forgot to mention.

I have posts here and here on DrGreene.com, Dr. Greene being my old friend Alan I grew up with. I was going to mention those Monday, and there will be one there for each day through Friday, but yesterday, an Apple a day kept the Doctor at bay.

I chatted a little with the Cascade folks today, hoping there might be some hope of bringing the Epiphany back; they wished so too. They said they’re careful to test the fiber contents for quality control on the yarns they have milled for them–which is why the changed label on the last run of it. They loved that yarn, too.  But, along with the pricing issue, it’s got to be what it says it is.

Meantime, I was picking up a few things at Trader Joe’s this evening, and the clerk, well, he was having a good time. Chatting with the customer before me. Chatting with me. He clearly wasn’t on clean-up crew tonight because he grinned that in ten minutes he got to go home. All was well in his world.

“So! How was your day?” he added.

Oh it was fine, I smiled back.

“Nothing exciting? No adventure?”

(No long line of customers behind me, so hey, why not.)  So I told him about the friends visiting from out of state, the book, the huge surprise that totally blew me away and the exquisite yarn yesterday.

You should have seen the grin on his face as he took that all in. “Wow. That is so cool”–and so much more of a story than he’d expected for his question: adventure indeed. “That was AWESOME!”

Okay, I can tell you a little background here, but but but it doesn’t follow that–I mean– ! I absolutely in no way deserve anything remotely approaching this.

Several weeks ago, as I’ve mentioned, my friend Robin was visiting from my hometown along with her close knitting friend Kunmi. We went to Coupa Cafe for the world’s best hot cocoa, we hung out a bit although not anywhere near enough, we had a grand time with what time we were able to have together, and I adored Kunmi on the spot and immediately saw why they were so close. And Robin is a peach.

Kunmi wished out loud that she could find a copy of my book. I exclaimed, Oh hey, I’ll give you one!

And so one went into the mail chasing their airplane home the next day, because Richard rightly insisted that night that I was just too tired to safely drive back over there.

And I didn’t go to Purlescence last night because I was just too tired to safely drive over there.

I got an email from Nathania, one of the owners, that was just enough of a hint that I had to today, though, and see what was up, if anything; besides, I needed my Purl Girls time.

After I got there, Sandi, another of the owners, mentioned that the Epiphany had arrived.  She knew I’d been waiting for it, although I thought I had till Fall to save up for it because that’s when I’d been told months ago Cascade was likely going to expand their color lineup of it.

This red, sold out in the shop for months, is it: the royal baby alpaca/cashmere/silk blend that I so adore, that I splurged and made an offwhite shawl out of recently, guessing the recipient would love all that softness too.

“They’ve discontinued it.”

They’ve WHAT?!

Sandi nodded, “I know,” and explained that the cost of the cashmere and silk fibers had risen so much in the past year that Cascade had decided they couldn’t sell it at a reasonable price anymore. She pointed out that the 60/20/20 had become 72/15 silk/13  for this one last mill run–“and when that’s gone that’s that.”

There sat the new bag of maroony red I’d been waiting so long for, while hoping maybe a good non-muddy teal green might come out too. (Nope.) The price of a whole shawl’s worth right now, budget-wise, much less coming out their door with more than that…  But–this was the last of it… ! Half the bag of the blue was already walking off with another customer on the spot; she’d knitted this stuff before, she knew what it was too.

Just then, Nathania sauntered over with a not-successfully-suppressed grin on her face. An envelope suddenly appeared with my name on it.

What’s this about? I opened it. Inside, a card that on one side simply said Purlescence with a pretty picture of yarns. I turned it over…

A gift certificate for, oh my stars, one hundred mind-blowing dollars. With love from Robin and Kunmi.

On the day that coveted yarn came in. There’s my shawl’s worth and then some.

I…I… I am still just totally, utterly blown away.  *THANK* you, Robin and Kunmi!!!

Cheryl asked me yesterday if I had a lot of yarn, and I laughed and answered with a story on myself: the hot water heater once burst and flooded out the back of a closet where there was, ahem, more yarn tucked away–Richard knew about the stash in the family room closet…

But I’ve been thinking since then that although I was sheepish about it at the time that that happened, telling that tale that way wasn’t fair to my husband.  He has so often seen me find out about a need, someone who needed support just then, and seen me go to my stash and find what felt like just exactly the most perfect yarn to launch into for them and I go for it on the spot. Knitting is love made tangible. He has seen the joy. He has shared in that joy.

And I knew he got it, he really got it, 18 years ago when his sister, whose name was also Cheryl, was diagnosed with late non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He asked me if I would knit her something? And he insisted on coming along, driving me and our four kids across the Bay to the  now-gone Straw Into Gold store in Berkeley where the stock was immense, helping me pick out colors for her multi-colored vest. (There was no way I was going to feel sure I could get sleeves to fit from long distance, but a vest, that I could do.)

We wrapped her in our love together for eight more years.

I actually asked him just a few days ago, after a small cone arrived from Colourmart, if he minded how much yarn I had. (Side note to my fellow knitters: those come with mill oils that feel like dried hair mousse and the yarn must be hanked and scoured in soapy hot water, dried and balled before knitting, a lot of work and the missing steps that you pay for when you buy a yarn store yarn. But the cone was Zegna Baruffa, very soft, and the prices are what they are.)

He looked astonished. “No! That’s what makes you happy!”

Not just the collecting it, not the owning it, but the impish anticipation and then the moment in the recipient’s face (whether I get to see it or not) when it all comes together: every skein is a symbol of those moments. My job is to make them come to be in real life.

And this is true, too: the gift my lupus gives me is that it sits me down, especially on a bad day, and demands: KNIT.

So that it becomes no longer about me.

Cashmere Superior with Malabrigo Lace, shades of green. I wanted it supersoft. I knitted a lace scarf for the wife of a childhood friend after finding out they lived not too terribly far away and that his work brings him to my town once a week.

But then I had a bad attack of shy and it sat there. We hadn’t seen each other since we were 18; it’s easy to feel awkward barging in on someone’s attention like that.

The last two weeks put a lot of things in perspective, though, and it felt like it was time. I sent him a message after I got my biopsy report (I wanted to have that sense of relief first), explaining what I’d made, about the shyness thing and saying as how vanity concentrates the mind; given that I was about to lose some hair off my scalp permanently–while I still looked like me, would it be okay to schedule a get-together?

He was delighted. Today was the day. I drove over. After he got off work, we talked for awhile, and then his wife arrived and joined us and we were all old friends together as if it had always been so all around. She’s a peach, and I am so happy for both of them; they’re a great couple. The kind of people who, when you step into their presence, you are instantly home.

And come to find out, through the years we had forged connection after small-world connection with no idea till just then. And even just this week we were forging more.

When I answered his question about where Michelle’s internship was, his jaw hit the floor and he stared. He named her bosses. Close friends of theirs.

The person I’d mailed a shawl off to last week–dear, dear mentor to him and a  friend of his dad. Known her for years.

When his wife came, the twinkle in his eye as he just waited for her reaction–she’d been reading my blog, she’d read about that chocolate torte, yes–and then, listening to him, she turned to me and went, WAIT. *YOU* made HER birthday cake?! (And then she laughed, going, “Yes, she really did have a horrible rotten no–good I think I’ll move to Australia kind of day.”)

And Cheryl, I found out today, is a knitter. They now have a copy of my book, autographed with great delight. I am now a proud owner of “Feeding Baby Green,” autographed with great delight.

And I on sudden impulse on my way out the door had stashed a copy of a book by, as it happens, that mentor in my knitting bag, having no idea.  They didn’t currently have a copy of it. They now have it. I apologized that I hadn’t had time to find a more pristine copy.

Too amazing. Too wonderful. To life!

I bet you Sue knows what I’m going to write about tonight.

1. But before I get there, I knitted a little Camelspin on the side today in a sudden hurry to get that done yesterday.

2. Nope, no phone call today from the doctor, or at least not while I was home, and no messages were left while I was out foraging for chocolate.

3. My daughter had a co-worker who, last Friday, was having a horrible, rotten, no-good-I-think-I’ll-move-to-Australia kind of day. (That’s the refrain on most of the pages of a certain children’s book–just to make that clear since one person who’s going to be reading this has a loved one who *did* move to Australia and who clearly has turned out very nicely for it.)

4. So I offered to bake a chocolate torte for them. (Here’s the recipe.)

5. Tomorrow is that person’s birthday, it turns out.

6. Well then!

and, 7, since I always make two of them, and since today’s our anniversary, and since Michelle can’t eat dairy, I substituted hazelnut oil for the butter, coming about two tbl short out of two cups needed for two cakes–close enough. We’ll call it the low fat version. I can’t begin to tell you how heavenly it smells.

8. Richard and I are home now from going out to dinner so we might go cut into that second cake if I stop typing a moment.

9. We went to the restaurant where Sue works, hoping to see her; for those of you who’ve read “Wrapped in Comfort,” (still available at Purlescence) it’s the first story, and yes, that Sue. Nope, they said, wrong night, not here, sorry.

10. On our way out I explained to our waitress why I’d so hoped to see her: how, when we moved here we came here a lot while on a per diem the first month, and how 20 years later she still remembered what my then-small kids had liked to eat. She loved my kids and we all adored her.

11. At that point, a different waitress exclaimed, “She’s here now!” Sue and her husband had decided to beat the heat and go out for dinner too, coming to this really great place they happened to know really well.

12. Hugs, love, intro to her husband, and then Sue told him that our kids were the best ever. “Some kids in restaurants, you know, but yours were always perfectly behaved.”

13. They were just shy of 1, 3, and 5 at the time; I don’t remember them being perfectly behaved. But I do remember them as being perfectly loved around her. Every parent of a small child needs some other adult who feels their kids are adorable: it helps the children and it helps the parents, too, to all rise to the occasion.

Sue was there. Our occasion got even happier. She laughed to her husband about my four year old who liked lobster. (It was a moving-expense per diem, the corporation didn’t care in the least what she ordered as long as it was below $25. Come to think of it, four-year-olds ordering lobster several times a week because they miss New Hampshire would be memorable.)

14. Happy anniversary, Richard! With no skunks this time.

(If that one of the three budding amaryllises turns out to be white, I’ll know it was the one Sue dropped off at Purlescence for me back when I was sick. Thank you, Sue!)

Love you, Richard!

I wrote in my book about my friend Lisa who, when I was diagnosed with lupus, offered to trade off babysitting our preschoolers every morning so I could do swim therapy and then she would go work out, a gift of her time I could never hope to repay–when all she had to do was put her toddler in his stroller and run if it had been only about the exercise.

Her little boy David used to religiously leave a toy or some small object of his at our house to make sure he’d be able to come back.  It took us awhile to catch on to him; it was such a funny little thing to do. And he did it just about every day he came over.

My husband’s aunt lives in the hills nearby and her youngest is two years older than our oldest, so we got frequent and very welcome hand-me-downs from her.

I would come across some stray whatever and wonder, where did *this* come from?! Must be an Aunt Mary Lynn that I just don’t remember. I would check with Lisa on the phone later, or David would reclaim it quietly the next time–and stash something else behind a dresser, under a bed, or whatever hiding place appealed to him that day.

The so-called Aunt Mary Lynn objects became a regular joke between us, and when Lisa and her family found they were moving to Michigan she lamented, But who there is going to know what an Aunt Mary Lynn is?

I drove over to meet Robin at her brother’s house today and we sat and knitted awhile together. Then after a phone call or two and some time meeting two small nieces waking up from their naps as their mommy arrived, it was a good time to go pick up Kunmi.

Going to the door, Robin had her hands full; I offered to grab her knitting for her, tucked in a plastic bag and just a few steps from me.

Sure, thanks!

I had my cane in one hand, my purse and big knitting bag in the other and then hers and decided the easiest way to deal with this was simply to stick her knitting in with mine.

We went off to Green Planet Yarns in Campbell (hi Carol there!) and had a great time. Robin found just the yarn for hats for those nieces: soft baby alpaca with sparkles. In pink. It doesn’t get better than that.

I came home quite tired. “Mom? What are those red spots on your face?” Lupus rash. A little too much sun. Time to take it easy for a day or two.

Robin and Kunmi’s flight home to Maryland leaves early tomorrow morning.

And I sat down on the couch, pulled out my knitting–

–you saw this coming–

–and out tumbled Robin’s Alchemy sock yarn and half-done project in its bag.

Aunt Mary Lynn yarn. This is a first.

(Richard told me I was too tired to drive it back over there and to just mail it to her; I called her, and she reassured me she was quite happy to knit those hats with that new yarn and not to worry about it.  Robin is a dear.)

So now you know she has to come back. It’s the rule.

Robin and her knitting-group friend Kunmi, having flown out together to visit their families here, stopped by today. We were chatting, and then Kunmi glanced out the window and exclaimed, “You have goldfinches!”

We walked over into the family room with the big picture windows and the feeders just outside and I discovered a fellow enthusiast.

The birds played their part perfectly: I scooped out a little suet cake and tossed it on the box, saying that that would bring in a Bewick’s wren, and right on cue one flew down from the trees to the patio, then the dolly, then up to that box for its snack. They’re friendly, I explained, and plentiful right around here but nearly extinct on the East Coast; I treasure mine.

I described how my son Richard and Kim had given me a book for Christmas that both describes various species and lets you play their songs–right up close to my ears where I can hear! Cool! So, Friday I’d been playing the calls the book says that Cooper’s hawks make when something threatens their nest.

I looked up to see that everything had fled, gone, the patio, the feeders, the hanging cake, the box. Even the squirrels. Too funny.

But even funnier was sitting down at the computer the next morning and, not having seen either hawk since most likely their babies fledged a month or so ago, there was the adult male: right on the box, right there, looking eye-to-eye with me through the window.

For about a minute.

You know how breathtaking that is. And it was a cool morning, so midway, he fluffed up his feathers a bit; I wanted to stroke them, they looked so soft.

Hey, hey, none of that thought, and he fluttered over to the dolly and looked again from a little bit farther away. Cocked his head and looked around; there hadn’t been any prey around when he came in, it’s as if he simply wanted to make sure about those sounds he was hearing the day before. Or something.

American goldfinch, lesser goldfinch, house finch, Cassin finch, Oregon junco, plain brown California towhee vs the brilliant colors of the Eastern ones, Kunmi loved it.

In came a jay, and she exclaimed over how different it looked from the ones back home. They laughed when I said, Yes, it’s long and thin like it’s ready to hit the beach.

I told the story of the new world-leading cardiac center at Stanford that came to be because of a blue bird, I’m assuming a jay because of its willingness to hold still through all that.

A moment of kindness that changed the world of cardiology.

We went off to Coupa Cafe, where both of them found a way to treat us all; we went to Apple’s flagship store, about to be–hmm, re-shipped? There will soon be a much bigger one.  (Hey, Robin, I bet your brother already knows about it.) We meandered through some of the old areas of town and neighborhoods near Stanford, enjoying the architecture.

It’s wonderful to see the place where you live through the eyes of those who do not.