Lynn, here, the post where I got to meet her in person in Texas the day after she got engaged, her happiness lighting up the whole church. I got to see her again last month when we came back to see my in-laws, and Lynn and I spent an evening at her old knitting group in the Madeline Tosh ship in Ft Worth where she’d been a regular before she’d married and moved a few towns away.

I twirl a small forkful of Lynn’s late mother-in-law’s orange honey that she gifted me with about every other day, savoring it, trying not to run out too fast, thinking of her and how grateful I am for her friendship every time I look at that jar. How glad I am that she and her Beloved found each other in their lives.

Yesterday was their first anniversary.

Today her beloved, one of the very best, slipped away before hospice could even finish setting up at their house.

I’ve wanted to grab the next flight. I can’t afford it. What I did do was go searching in my house, for–something, I didn’t know what, and found a shawl project that I’d long ago stalled out on: it had been put aside while I’d debated how to finish it and while I had had people needing the love from something hand knit Right Now, and so the shawl had become abandoned altogether and at last pretty much forgotten other than the occasional guilt twinge in its direction.

I didn’t even remember which pattern it was; I was surprised when I pulled it out to see it was Y not Z. Huh. I always did like that yarn.

I sat down with it. I decided, seventeen months after I’d started, at long last what to do: a few rows there, that’s all it had needed all this time, that and a decision, and I cast it off, blocked it, and with that I tied up one loose end in my own life. It is done. And after its submersion in the water, it feels like one of the most beautiful things I have ever knit.

And it’s not at all Lynn’s color, darnit.

I got a note from an old friend from junior high, who knows I knit: might I be interested in a commission?

Not sure what she was asking and worrying it might be aran sweaters or who knows, I replied, I knit for love, not money; money just takes all the fun out of it. (Trying not to inwardly protest that I just got this perfect yarn from DebbieR that she instantly knew was for the pharmacy clerk I wrote about and sent it to me, and when I opened it I had the same reaction–this is it! So I have that hat to make. And I have someone else whose wife’s scarf is coming along, and the purple for Purlescence. The queue…!) But I said none of that.

Betsy thought on it awhile and got back to me today with: would you knit a hat for love, for me?

I laughed. Of course I would. Any allergies, what colors do you like.

It just so happens that Michelle had dumped a whole bunch of my yarn stash in the family room and I’d been sorting through projects and skeins all day, so it was easy to find what I was looking for. And: the missing size 5 that was driving me nuts and keeping me from getting that guy’s hat started? I’d been short circ-ited. Turned up two rows after I braved through the start of Betsy’s on ragged old bamboos, gold-plated Addis no less, boom, there you go. I’ll do hers and then his. I found them!

What she had no idea of, and neither did I… As I sat down and got started, her yarn next to me started plotting, rubbing its woolly little paws together in glee. I had had this half-baked idea for some time, and a hat is a great way to test a pattern on a small scale, and I’d needed a woman’s hat to do that with, and wouldn’t it be cool if Betsy’s request got me to finally work that idea out?

And I’m off. And if I push I can still finish all of those projects by the end of next week. Betsy, hon–I owe you, bigtime. Thank you!

Sam’s roommate surprised her with the scarf she’d made while waiting with her at the hospital. She’s just the best.

Sam ended up in the ICU last night.

And Sam was at long last discharged from the hospital tonight after she was able to keep the beginnings of food down and her platelets had gone slightly up–with a long way to go, but it’s a start.

Y’know, it works a whole lot better when the hospital isn’t serving you broth with gluten in it and then wondering why the patient who can’t eat wheat is suddenly a lot worse.

A huge thank you to everybody for your much-needed prayers and good thoughts her way. (Long, long exhale.) Phew.

Note DebbieR’s comment two days ago about the 80-mile drive to Purlescence.

She came with her mom, a kind and gentle soul, and now I know where Debbie gets it from: the kind of people where you walk into their presence and you know you’re among friends. The kind of person who knits fingerless gloves for someone else’s daughter they’ve never met just because they really, really came in handy for Sam, who loves them and all that they convey.

We swapped stories and laughed all afternoon. There was a middle-aged man I didn’t recognize who came in and was quietly knitting away behind their backs, not looking our way, not butting in, but breaking out into a big grin at all the punchlines.  (It’s a big room like that.) I loved it. I did apologize to Nathania at one point for monopolizing the soundwaves and she grinned and waved me away, You’re fine.

Pamela was there, and bless her, came over at one point and told me, You’re not drinking enough.  She grabbed the cute little 7 oz thermos that Michelle had given me as a souvenir from Japan and went and refilled it, taking good care of me when I wasn’t bothering to myself: without a colon I have to drink 8 oz every two hours. Debbie and her mom approved. Go Pamela.

Near the end, Debbie had a thought and asked, And by the way, how are you?

I hesitated but confessed: I had woken up this morning with BAM, instant Crohn’s flare, totally unexpected and out of the blue. It did get a little better as the day went on–and then all this laughing and loving and I’d completely forgotten about it. It’s not gone, I added, but it’s a whole lot better than it was.

Crossing my fingers.

To be more specific: this morning’s angry belly had had me thinking, if I barf I’m in the ER. Do. Not. Barf. I hesitated, but there was just no way I was going to miss out on this afternoon, and certainly not after they’d driven all this way for it.

And then afterwards I found myself feeling like, and look at me now! This works! (If only it were always so easy.)

I ran a quick grocery run, got home, hadn’t quite finished putting things away when the phone rang.

It was our daughter Sam. She *did* barf, and she *did* end up in the ER. Turns out someone had offered her a quinoa salad at a New Year’s Eve party, not realizing that couscous mixed in there means wheat–and Sam’s a celiac. Throw in a lupus flare and an ITP platelet crash and her roommate ended up picking her up and putting her in a wheelchair and getting her to the ER faster, she told us, than the paramedics could have done it.

The roommate brought her knitting and started and finished an entire scarf in the 24 hours it took the doctors to decide to admit my daughter.

Taking deep breaths and saying lots of prayers. And wishing I could send DebbieR and her mom to make Sam laugh like they did me, while grateful to Sam’s roommate who sounds like she’s pretty good at that herself.

Milk Pail‘s fresh almond paste has a higher almond and lower sugar content than the stuff in tubes elsewhere; amount will be random, but aim for the .5 to .7 lb range slab. Cut it up a bit and Cuisinart it with 2/3, or, if you like it sweeter, 3/4 c sugar, 3 eggs, 1 tsp almond extract, long and hard, then add in 1/4 c flour (of the type of your choice, I imagine, though with Sam gone home I just used plain old plain old) mixed with a tsp of baking powder. 8″ springform pan 35 min at 350. A near-instant recipe.

Michelle wheedled and threw Bambi eyes at me when I got home from Purlescence tonight and then pounced the moment it was cool enough to unlock the pan. No added fats, unlike the original Fanny Farmer version. Eggs and almonds and no allergic reactions, hey, guys, save some for breakfast.

And while I was at knit night…

Nathania got everybody’s attention: Pamela had had an idea and they’d thought it was a great one. Since the shop had moved into its bigger space (in the same shopping center), they’d had this big white bare wall. Purlescence has always tried to offer a sense of community to all who love to work with yarn as they do; Pamela’s idea was that we could all pitch in and create a community wall of–knitting, weaving, crocheting, tatting, you name it. Square, round, funky, big, little, Nathania asked, whatever appealed to you: like some of the get-well afghans out there (boy did I feel proud and happy and blessed by so many friends and lucky all over again as she said that) and then they would move the furniture out of the way of our knitting-group area and sit and piece together whatever comes in the door with this idea. Put a piece of yourself up on display with everybody else’s. Let’s make ourselves a giant wallhanging, a permanent display of who we are in our community.

My one request, she continued, is that it be purple. Your purple, or your purple (gesturing to one person, then another) or yours, or mine, whatever appeals to you and whatever you define as purple.

And it needs to be done by Stitches.

There are several celiacs in that knitting group. Maybe I could make some almond cakes with Bob’s Red Mill safely non-wheat flour to help celebrate when this big project is done. Pass the purple blackberry/raspberry sauce and dig in!

Wholly (non-) cow was this good!

Michelle’s friend Jenny came over: they have an annual tradition of baking something scrumptious and unusual together in our kitchen over the holidays. Everybody looks forward to it.

Michelle loves making cream puffs but had had a hard time coming up with a dairy-free version that didn’t make us all wish she could eat cream and butter like the rest of us.

And so. I don’t know what they did differently re the puffs themselves, but they were crisp and perfect and what they had always aspired to be. But the filling! Chestnut puree made into a thick–they called it pudding, but that doesn’t quite do it justice. It did not soggyify the puffs even after a few hours together in the fridge.

“Mom! I thought you didn’t like chestnuts!”

I didn’t even remember that nor know if it had been true– “It’s been so long since I’ve had any,” I answered. But THIS! Wow!

I’d had a little bottle of maple butter long hoarded away, ie, simply, maple syrup cooked further down, and they’d mixed that up to top the things off with. I’m not normally a big icing fan–who needs random straight sugar covering up good-tasting food?–but paired with that chestnut, this was a revelation. I’d never had anything like it.

“Did you use a–is there a written-down rendition of what you guys did?” I asked her. “I want those again!”

“Well, sort of,” she said; Jenny was going to get back to her with it.

I’m waiting….

Meantime, Costco had shelled, peeled, roasted, all-the-work-done chestnuts for $4-something a 20 oz bag and we have a bag. The next stage in the experimentation will be with making our own sweetened puree rather than the tube that Jenny had brought over, and I am running back to that store tomorrow before it’s all gone post-holidays.

And I’m clearly going to be ordering more of that maple butter. (Actually, after typing that, just did, a pound and a half, since the extra half pound wasn’t going to cost any extra shipping charges.)

Remember that weight that doctor wanted me to gain? Well now.

Heard an interesting talk at church today, creating one of those inner visuals that will stick with me a long time. The guy likes dogs as much as the next person. But. He was in a foreign country and had a long walk back that night to his hotel; he decided to take the shortcut that took him along the pier, a rough area, it turned out.

He found himself approached by six mean-looking–not men but dogs, a hungry, feral pack, and they meant business. There, there, good doggy? Not so much.

He instinctively did what they teach kids to do here re mountain lions, which is to put your hands over your head and make lots of fierce noise. The dogs weren’t intimidated in the least and actually the growls and the threatening stances increased. They were a pack and they had meat in front of them and they and he knew it.

“I said the” (he hesitated, looking for the words to describe it) “shortest prayer in my life. Father help me.”

Immediately he heard, “10, 20 meters away,” the hiss of a cat on the top of a tall fence. The dogs wheeled away to chase their mortal enemy–and he was saved. And so, for that matter, was the cat by where it was as he escaped to be able to tell the tale.

It was a homecoming at church amidst the annual celebration of the Christ child, the timeless mixed with a time warp again and again, seeing this family, then that one over there, and then another. And ohmygoodnesslookwho’shere!!

We’d had no idea any of them would be here much less that they’d get to cross paths and see each other. California, then Missouri, then Salt Lake for one family–now there’s a random-sounding set of uprootings. There were people who’d grown up here, people who had lived here when their kids were little and now were back visiting family for the holidays, all of them finding themselves surrounded by old friends, arms open forever.

This child was born after her family had left–but three wasn’t too old for a cheerful game of peek-a-boo, ducking between her daddy’s legs. That child still loves her hat–and is in college now. Another, middle school and braces.

Welcome home! Joy and wistfulness wrapped in the words in pretty bows.  It was so good to see them. Y’all come back now, y’hear?

Part 1. Turns out my daughter has her own Piano Guy friend. He had no insurance and was saving his money to pay for the surgery he knew he needed but the stroke beat him to it. At 30.  Sam blogged a link to the effort to raise money for Jeff’s medical expenses and I’m passing it along.

Any amount is an emotional as well as a financial support and makes a difference. Thank you.

———

(Edited to add.)

Part 2. Later in the day I read that there is a surge of interest and donations to the Brady Campaign, with politicians and others coming through their doors who perhaps would not have been seen there before, asking what can we do to help? On Brady’s site, they decry the official NRA argument of it’s all guns vs no guns, setting forth proposed limits that most NRA members would find very reasonable.That we have had in the past. But to go on with no changes, now, even after Newtown…

Again, out came my credit card. My token amount was a small but present voice among the many.

I hit submit.

It took me very much by surprise how fiercely the feelings came, instantly. I had owned my voice. I had used my voice. I knew then that I will use it again. Our children and grandchildren need our every voice, and when they needed me I too was there for them, is the only way I can put into words how strongly good it felt: more powerful than, as Superman says, a speeding… Yes.

Well, and with a whole generation having happened in between.

It had been twenty-six years last time, surely at a winter-break coming-home time from his college, so even there, I rarely saw him; he’d graduated from high school just before we’d moved to his hometown in New Hampshire, when we were newly out of grad school ourselves.

There, that first Christmas, the good brother at church leading the meeting stood up to announce we were going to sing “With Wondering Awe.” Only, the guy pronounced it “With Wandering R” and Richard and I about died, hands clamped over our mouths to try to physically restrain ourselves from bursting out laughing, trying not to glance at each other for fear that would be it and we would lose it: that good man with the thick Down East accent had R’s that wanduhed in and out all ovah the place! What a perfect and perfectly inadvertent rendition of a small New England town at Christmas!

I kept sneaking glances over thataway during Sunday School today and finally mouthed, Are you Dave’s brother?

He grinned and nodded, confirming out loud after the lesson was over: Yes! Adding, looking at my now-gray hair and new-grandmother face, I remember you!

Their mother had been, in Mormon-speak, my Relief Society (the frontier-era-named women’s organization) President back when our children were small and hers were in high school and, this one, college.

The older I get the more it seems like random people from my past will somehow randomly show up again–and so often, you pick up right from where you were as if the conversation had never ended, somehow.

But I know that I’m glad that it’s so. Those are moments that bear witness to the immortality of the too-often-hidden love for one another that underlies our day-to-days.

It’s your birthday and I get the cake? my friend Deanne marveled yesterday in a message. But somehow, for all the attempts at getting together, it didn’t quite happen then.

I had made her and her family a chocolate torte as a thank you for an airport ride and the other of the pair was to go to Julia and her family for the same reason.  (Sue waved away the calories for now.) I had decided I’d better call before dropping them off, since the ganache part shouldn’t be at room temperature for hours on end–but yesterday we just didn’t connect, any of us, I just got answering machines.  So the tortes stayed in my fridge for the day.

I also had two almost-rollaboard-size suitcases to give to a young family, in great shape because they had no wheels and so had long gone unused–those, too, I was supposed to get delivered in the last two days but somehow it just didn’t happen.

I picked John up from the airport this afternoon. I was never so glad to see my own sweet child right there with me safe and sound and my heart is beyond words for all those parents in Connecticut who will never again have that comfort. I was listening to the President on the radio as I drove, and the long silence… twelve seconds, the reporter said it was, and then seven more as he struggled with his tears, all of our tears on his face and in his voice… All those innocent kindergartners and first graders. All those good people. They were our children. They were our teachers.

The chocolate tortes got delivered today, instead. The right day. (Who could possibly have known.) Friends opened their doors and exclaimed over them, over John being with me, home for Christmas, how good to see him! We zipped back home for the forgotten green Travelpros and then dropped those off too, waving hi at the little kids playing outside with their next-door friends we knew well, too, that dad raking the leaves as he kept watch over them, the other young parents welcoming us in.

Love and coming together, again and again and again, was such a dearly-bought, vitally needed thing.

Happy Dozens Day!

I signed up for freecycle.org awhile ago to give away something, and so now I get the local posts in my inbox.  So it happened that one caught my eye last night: someone had a tree full of Hachiya persimmons, my favorite type, and was looking to give them away.

You can find the hard Fuyu ones in the stores but the fragile, very-soft-when-ripe Hachiyas, not so much. I love them but my husband does not and so we do not grow our own.

I waited hours to let others go first.  And then I sent off a note, saying that I remembered the days when my children were young and my food budget tight but that was not the case anymore; please put me in the back of the line, but if there were a few left after that, then I would love.

When the man responded, his name showed up in the email; there was plenty, and he would love me to have some, answered Eric.

While I was thinking, wait, are you…!?

I decided to take the plunge: are you Walt’s son? (I could not remember having ever met him, just Walt bragging on his kids and grandkids happily.)

He answered in the morning: yes, I am.

I adore your parents! I told him. Small world.

I offered to come pick up the fruit but he asked for my address. Shortly after, my doorbell rang and I opened the door.

And then we both stood there in surprised delight. I *have* met you once before! I thought. What a good man from such a good family!

He had the same wait–I’ve seen you before, I’m sure of it! look on his face, though I don’t know that we’ve ever actually had a conversation before. He asked for a box and I grabbed a mixing bowl from the kitchen; he opened his trunk and filled it up, then asked if he could give me more and filled a second large bowl. He assured me there was plenty for everybody. Pointing to the tree down the street that was all winter-nakedness with bright orange dreidel shapes hanging, he said his tree was even bigger than that one (and it was a good size.)

I told him those neighbors, after they’d moved in, had asked around what on earth to do with all those and I had told them, Call Second Harvest Food Bank; their volunteers will pick them, clean up the drops, and put the crop to very good use. “But I haven’t had the chutzpah to knock on their door and ask for a few for me,” I laughed, grateful for his. There is nothing in the world like a homegrown Hachiya persimmon, something I had to move to California to experience.

Wait–there was that one time they were giving out samples in New Hampshire of this new shipment of exotic fruit, only, they didn’t know the difference between the two types and the woman was sawing off rock-hard pieces of the very unripe, very astringent Hachiyas. I, uh, don’t think they sold too many.

Eric so enjoyed my anticipation. He mentioned a site with persimmon recipes, and afterwards I looked it up and then some more and emailed him that I was intrigued by the jam idea. He wondered if I might share a jar with him if/when I do?

Ever since, I’ve been thinking, Hurry up and ripen, you guys, c’mon, I’ve got me some jam to give back. I can’t wait!

I had ignored the reminder message for quite some time:  the rheumatologist likes to keep semi-annual tabs on me whether I like it or not.

Don, do you remember from the pool… I will forever remember what a woman there I had always thought of only in terms of being a very sweet, kind old lady once related to me. She had long been severely disabled by juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. She had gone in to see her rheumatologist after a long absence and he’d demanded of her, “Where have you been?!”

She retorted sharply, “What have you  learned?” If he couldn’t do anything new, there was too much life to live to bother with being reminded again and again of what she couldn’t do, so, hey.

As a newly-diagnosed lupus patient at the time with Crohn’s soon to come, doctors aside, she taught me a valuable way to look at this chronic stuff. Just go live!

I should add that in the 24 years since then, the medical field has learned a lot about her JRA, actually.

Well anyway.

So I went in today. And asked the doctor how he was doing.

“Busy.”

Oh?

He told me he was now coaching his daughter’s basketball team.

Cool!!!

He was pleased with how pleased I was with that, so he asked after my grandson and then asked if I were doing any writing; somehow that became an opening for me to tell him about the Warm Hats Not Hot Heads project (which I totally mangled the name of, trying to spit it out, giving him an on-the-spot example of lupus brain fog) and how we knitters had knit a hat for each member of the Senate and a goodly percentage of the House; I gave him my line about “to tell them to put a lid on it,” not the most, um, diplomatic way to describe it, and he laughed and added, “And get to work?”

“Yes!” My turn to laugh.

So we didn’t come up with any magical cures today. But I came away feeling heard about the medical stuff that I honestly didn’t particularly want to talk about because we had heard each other out on a few of the important things near and dear to our hearts. Which made the rest easier to discuss. (Stupid chest pains. He looked up the cardiologist’s notes and reassured me. The cardiac cough is in remission, always a good thing.)

Okay, then.  I’ll see him again in six months.

The first batch of chocolate tortes in thanks to those who gave us all those rides to and from the airport is now cooling on the counter. Ganache shall commence in the morning, and then doorbell ditching (but only if they’re home, since they need to be kept refrigerated when not being eaten.)

I’m not sure how but I forgot to mention the honey.

Lynn, the friend who took me to the Madeline Tosh shop, gifted me before we parted with a jar of orange honey that had come from her late mother-in-law. I’ve wondered if there was a story behind it–did she have hives? Orange trees? And did I mention to Lynn that the fresh orange juice we bought in Ft Worth was better than any we have had this year  in California? There was this surprised moment of, Wow, that’s good. The $8 a gallon organic  stuff at Costco doesn’t begin to touch it–Texas does oranges right. (And Dallas Fort Worth airport very, very badly–the GPS kept trying to steer us onto former roads that were now concrete crumbles, to chained-across no-man’s lands; we spent an hour in long circles trying to get to the car rental return in the dark alongside a few other wanderers just as lost. The place is city-sized unto its construction-mangled self.)

But enough of the whine. It was so good to spend time with those we hold dear.

And Lynn’s honey was as exquisite as the oranges it came from. I had to put down the computer, typing that, to go sneak another twirled-forkful.