Years ago my mom had a co-worker who was close to some kids whose parents were going through a nasty divorce. She wanted them to have a promise of hope: to see a couple who were long married, who’d raised kids together and gotten them off on their own, who were living a full life. Together. Who cherished each other. So she set up an appointment and Mom and Dad said sure, come on by.

The locals will understand when I say I grew up in an Eichler-esque house: floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room at the back of the house looking out on the woods, highly unusual architecture for Maryland, only, different from the Eichlers in that the living room rose to a cathedral ceiling.

It was the season of Christmas.

Every year Dad would get the ladder and hang globe ornaments from the top beam between the living and dining room. These were huge, deeply colored, beautiful, but something you couldn’t put in a normal ceiling without someone bonking their head. We got to have them. I’ve never seen them anywhere else. The whole area was decorated as only an art dealer and his wife could do: things collected from trips to Europe, happy-making and pretty, only the lights being your average store-bought. And even then… I was so thrilled when bubble lights finally came back on the market a few years ago.

Anyway.

For whatever reason, Mom got delayed, the co-worker and kids came early, I don’t know, but when they came only Dad was home. Mom apologized profusely later to her co-worker.

Who told her no, that was perfect.

?

My father had loved those children and had wanted the best for them before he ever laid eyes on them; I imagine the very request got him thinking how blessed his life was and how much he wished it for them too, and he welcomed them in and joyfully showed them around as they talked. I picture him showing off the painted and glittered plaster-of-paris ornaments we kids had made for years growing up, with varying levels of skill and childhood showing–Mom and Dad always insisted on putting those up long after we kids thought we’d definitely outgrown the scribblings or sloppiness or whatever lack of perfection might be in them. A little snip of twine was embedded in each to hold a hook for the tree.

Come to think of it, the best birthday party I ever had growing up was having my friends come paint a newly-cast set of those ornaments and letting them take theirs home. December birthdays rock.

Those kids went home that day with the joy of the season. It was infectious. My dad is the most joyful celebrant of Christmas you could ever hope to meet.

And the best celebrant of his children’s lives a daughter could ever ask for. Happy Birthday, Dad. I love you.

The doorbell rang this evening. Wasn’t expecting anybody. It was Phyllis and her husband Lee, newly home from Morro Bay–small world, Nancy!–offering a small but potent sachet of fresh lavender from a grower there. (This looks to me like enough to protect any size yarn stash. My little sachet is 8g.)

I had to know if they’d seen… I told them there are two nesting pairs of peregrines on Morro Rock that sits at the edge of the land: one only hunts this direction, the other, only that, with a gentlemen’s agreement that neither shall cross into the other’s territory.

Lee: “We saw one!” Wayyy high up in the air, as they viewed it through someone’s scope; with his camera ever at the ready, “I got an eight pixel picture,” he laughed.

Sounds about right.

Michelle flying in just after midnight, my old friend Nancy now of Morro Bay 200 miles south of here dropping by at noon. A great way to start a day.

Then this article arrived in the mail. Ginny Russell was the kindergarten teacher for all four of my kids. Every year her classroom watched the life cycle of silk moths and the slight variations in the silk as they spun, working around and around in their sliced stacked-up toilet-paper-tube sections. There was a guinea pig and/or a bunny every year. One must be gentle, one must not frighten nor chase. Hold them like this so they feel safe and secure. They raised butterflies. They were taught to value living things and themselves.

Ginny mentions her butterfly enclosure in the article; it doesn’t say, but she used it for kids whom she saw needed a moment’s intervention before a coming meltdown–she would grant them butterfly time, where they were to hold very still in that little place and let these beautiful things they had all helped raise land on their hands and shoulders and head, surrounded too by the plants they’d grown to feed the larvae, the butterflies’ kindergarten stage.

The powers that be want the image of a great school at the expense of a real one. Ginny’s pleas to let the kids have a year of productive, learning, playing and learning to socialize went nowhere.

This acknowledged master teacher whom they had had mentor others, who was the very image of kindness with a profound empathy for the children in her care, was told she had to conform to the new high-tech standard and to pretend to be oblivious to the effects of assigning five-year-olds to tracks, to reading achievement levels in front of each other. (In kindergarten!) And her view that children need the realness of the smell of chalk and the feel of a pencil or crayon in their hand was deemed too old fashioned for Silicon Valley.

And so she is out.

Those who want only touch screens for small fingers are the ones utterly out of touch.

Years ago, I wondered how Michelle, my third, would cope with this whole idea of going off to school and all its unknowns for the very first time.

She marched right into that classroom without even looking back to wave goodbye to me: finally it was her turn to be in Mrs. Russell’s room! The silk worms, the bunny… It was hers now!

Both my girls studied biology in their undergrad and you know where they got their good start. I want to show Ginny this: part of Sam’s ongoing trajectory from all that Ginny blessed her life with. She taught my kids to love to learn and to love one another. Even the difficult classmates. “Why do you think Sean acted that way?” They talked it out. Understanding happened.

Love was the language there.

Such a loss. Such a crying loss. I can only fervently wish the decisions could somehow be reversed. And man, did my kids luck out.

I wanted to make a blueberry cake (best recipe ever is here) and started to set up for it. (Thank you again for the pans, Don!)

Only, that bag in the freezer wasn’t blueberries after all. Huh. Mixed berries I could experiment around, but with strawberries? Too wet. I decided to run to Costco, hoping to get that done early in the evening so I could put my feet up and knit afterwards.

And then I checked some messages.

My friend Laurel was in the hospital. She moved a few years ago, still in the general area but far enough away to be a trek; we simply hadn’t seen each other in awhile.

That was going to be a goodly hike across bad traffic.

But I remembered all the people who had come to visit me in the hospital when I’d needed it–and how my laptop would go home with Richard at night so it wouldn’t walk away while I was asleep, meaning that once he left, I felt really truly alone. Every single person who had made the effort to visit had lifted some of that burden long beyond their time in that room.

And so I drove up to Redwood City and wandered around till I found her.

It was so good to catch up. She has a baby girl now to go with her two little boys? Cool! She showed me pictures. Such beautiful children! (Well, yeah, look at their parents.) She laughed and loved as she scrolled through my Parker photos on my Iphone.

I told her my first had been in kindergarten when my fourth was born; I remembered the intensity but also the joy of those years. We traded stories, we had a grand time, and the best was when she pointed to her tray and said it was the first meal she’d kept down in days. She should be home tomorrow.

I got out of there with no time to get to the Costco near home–but there was one a few blocks away. If I hurried I would make it.

The blueberries were in stock. (Not a sure thing at our local one.) So were a few other things that very much surprised me, because ours had discontinued them. That organic sharp cheddar is a small thing, but to me in the moment I saw it it wasn’t. Small favors…

The blueberry cake just came out of the oven–wait, there it goes… Now we just have to get Laurel home.

Hamilton? I didn’t hear the rest so I parked on that street and pulled out my phone; Holly appeared within maybe ten seconds and I waved.

It’s not often you get to share lunch with a knitter who lives on a different continent. (And then she surprised me and treated me at Coupa Cafe–thank you, Holly!)

We talked knitting, we talked kids, we both looked forward to the day she and her husband actually move here and stay put, but in the meantime, we grabbed what time together we could.

And then I very reluctantly drove her to the train station and went home to do exciting things like getting laundry done and put away.

Our nephew Ryan will be arriving tonight. I can’t wait!

Strange, strange shadows this evening: sharp and long and very dark, slicing the brightly lit outside in zigzags.

The bigger birds and one squirrel didn’t care but the finches, titmice, and chickadees went home to bed, leaving the birdseed untouched from then on.

We drove through that weirdly semi-Decembery black and white light and went to Nina and Rod’s. Where old friends were gathering and looked at the eclipse with special goggles and chatted into the night.

And almost forgot to actually sing it. To a very good man: Happy Birthday, Rod!

Ten a.m.: a baby shower. A cabled-brim hat of superwash, soft Malabrigo Rios that looked absolutely adorable on the little newborn, who had arrived before the originally scheduled shower. I’ve always said the best way to get a baby to come is to commit to doing something else. Hey.

Had a lovely time, dashed, came home to a message that Kathy had called and ran right back out the door to Stanford hospital, where our friend Kelli (scroll halfway down) was recovering from surgery. Never rear-end someone on a bike.

The three of us laughed, we told stories, I stayed four hours till I really did have to go: we had shopping to do before Costco closed and we had to un-claim Sam’s old room. (She had yarn in her old dresser? Who knew?)

Our nephew Ryan is arriving Monday for the summer.  His room is ready. Our Michelle will arrive ten days later. It will be good to have young’uns around again.

I drove to San Jose near sundown to see the peregrines in person; it’s that time of year. I didn’t get around to it last year and I wasn’t going to miss it again–it’s the birds but it’s also most definitely the people.

Old friends were there: Eric, the gifted photographer who gave me one of his photos two years ago; he let me see the babies on the ledge through his camera on a tripod. They would flap their wings mightily and then hop down and back into the nestbox with their siblings (via the streaming video Alicia had on her Iphone), not ready to take off like the one that oh oops fell over backwards yesterday while preening on the ledge and had to start flapping fast. That was Cobalt, and he has flown well since then–and he had the sense to stay put all night last night. He has gained some altitude in his flights, something they have to learn fast.

Meantime, the three surviving San Francisco fledglings are soaring happily.

Debbie and her sister Gerri (did I spell that right?) arrived. Debbie had come from Reno, and I was very honored that they both made a point of seeing me. Two hats, one knitted like feathers. I wish I’d had one for Eric and everybody else for that matter, but it was okay; he already had an official one, a baseball cap with a falcon embroidered on it. Hard to beat that.

And a good evening was had by all.

Three to fledge yet here. Tomorrow will be a big day for them.

What’s your favorite color, I asked her a few weeks ago.

Red, she answered, looking at me…

Went to the bridal shower for my friend Marguerite‘s daughter tonight. (Quietly rejoicing that Marguerite and her mom, too, for that matter, were there to see the day and in good health.)

A red mink/cashmere scarf may have appeared. A soon-to-be bride may have looked across the room in great thanks. A future husband, good man that he is, may have gained even more incentive to put his arm around his loving wife. Yes.

A few years ago I bought several skeins of Cascade’s Eco Alpaca at Purlescence, a very soft undyed baby alpaca for a project that was never to be.

Heading out the door tonight for the Mountain View meeting to defend the continued existence of Milk Pail–for the record, it was the Environmental Planning committee meeting in the council chambers, not the city council itself–I decided I needed a mindless project for it and I didn’t have one. Needed two circs in a size I didn’t have available–well, then, 8s it would have to be, what goes with 8s?

And so I grabbed two leftover half-skeins of that baby alpaca and decided to knit them doubled, hoping I would have enough. I weighed them: 50 and 52 g. Sounds okay.

I cast on as the meeting began at 7:00 sharp. Hmm, too short, rip. Started again, guessing at the eventual size and give of the ribbing; it wasn’t a gauge I normally knit hats in. Sixty stitches. Okay, hope, go.

The seats in the chamber were filled. There were people along the walls and a few sitting on the floor, the place was packed–and you know which side they were on.

The meeting started out sounding really bad, though: the developers went on and on and didn’t seem to get challenged much. Gradually, though, I started to breathe as person after person got up to speak from the audience when it was our turn. (I didn’t; not being a resident of that city, I didn’t think they would allow me.)

The thought came to me, you know, this yarn is about the color of Steve’s hair, I bet he’d like it…

One elderly fellow had to be told he couldn’t speak again, he had to let everybody else have their four minutes. He waited patiently till all were done and then he came down to the podium a third time, and this time a gentle chuckle went around the room. The subject at hand was only the commissioners’ first of the night and we were well over two hours in, but they heard him out.

Dang–in my town they’d have cut the mike. They never did.

I had no scissors, I had no sewing needle, and even individually, those two strands refused to break for the amount of effort I was willing to put into it.

Well then. I wound in the first end with my knitting needles and somehow managed to get a tie-off, and then a second tie-off on the top of the hat. Turned it right side out, done, with the two almost-gone balls of yarn inside still attached.

Afterwards, Steve let me catch him for a moment. I apologized for the lack of scissors and told him he’d have to snip the yarn but it was ready to go, done. There’d been a lot of cold wind blowing his way of late, and… I hope it fits.

We won! The worst round, and there will be more rounds to come, but, we won!

Last week Nina gave me a box she’d been meaning to get over to me for months.

Inside was an amaryllis bulb–not the pink and white one pictured there, but one that had sent up a shoot that bloomed red in the dark, then another stalk that didn’t open and that stayed ghostly white.

And then. A third (!) stalk. It had not yet shriveled. It had a foursome of white leaf tips pointing up next to it.

Now, amaryllis buds are begun in the bulb before the next year’s season, so this one came from a superb grower for it to have had three sets: one is normal for your average Christmas-gift kit, two from a bigger bulb is wonderful, and three is the best your average nursery will have.

The bulb was still alive. The case over the buds inside had opened, just like the first stalk, but like the second there was no color.

Just four tiny white flower buds, open to the world in the darkness, waiting, sure that light and water must be out there somewhere.

I planted it. I watered it. I put it in the window.

That was Thursday. The tiny leaf tips poking out have tripled in length and gone from white to barely green yesterday to deep green and red by this afternoon. The first flower started to open this morning–and by afternoon and to my surprise, its vivid red had a white-to-green center. Had I not been running errands I probably could have watched the color flow in in slow motion. Glorious!

The other three buds have already doubled in length and started coloring up.

Sometimes you just have to get a good thing started and then, as they say, it takes on a life of its own.

(Speaking of which. For those who want to advocate on behalf of Milk Pail, you can write to Mountain View City Council via the left column, six down, here. )

It seems so obvious in hindsight.

The other thing I did yesterday was…

I came home slightly sunburned and tired: I was a klutz, no, but I mean, even more so. I smacked my head hard into the metal birdfeeder, of all things–it’s not like it had moved from its usual spot–and my foot into the corner of the treadmill hard enough to wonder if I’d broken it. Jammed my thumb just to keep it in threes.

I had multiple plans for the evening but that foot wasn’t going anywhere.

I wound balls of yarn, not sure what to knit next, needing to feel useful while station-nary. I had several people right at the top of my list but with no idea on the color for one coming from out of town next week nor whether she should even be first in line. I met her in person two years ago, briefly; I just had no idea. (Although, Afton, her sister has your hair, in case yours ever goes missing.)

So I did what I do, I said a prayer. This ball? Eh, could be okay. This one? Not interested. This one? Definitely not!

And then after quite a bit of stash diving, I happened to see some that had not and would not have occurred to me and it leaped out at me anyway and stamped its little feet and demanded. Nothing else had felt remotely like that.

Pink? A light pink hat? Seriously? (Truth be told, it was fragile laceweight mink that must be knitted at least doubled and I’d done several things in that stuff of late. I was quite ready for something else. Although, slick Addis rather than my usual rosewoods, like these here, probably would have helped.)

But it knew even if I didn’t. I surrendered. Tripled strands. I worked all this afternoon and evening on it, my feet propped up as needed, and now it just needs the ends run in.

I found as I knit that I kept thinking of the hat a friend knit me while I was so ill, how warm it kept me at night, how grateful I am for its pink-and-gray-striped warmth–three years later, I still wear it on cold nights.

If my friend getting this one should ever need a warm super-soft hat, whenever the time, well, she’ll have it, then. She doesn’t have a major illness–but her husband does: slowly, slowly progressing, and in the end he will not survive it.

Just because it’s not new news doesn’t mean it isn’t hard. My goodness, what could I have knitted her but that mink!

It had been too long since we’d gotten together. And the Malabrigo Superfine Merino was a one-time run from the mill, delivered only to Imagiknit, and when it’s gone it’s going to be gone.

It is really hard for me to go to that store alone: parking is non-existent and the walk in the sun can be very long if there isn’t someone willing to drop me at the curb if need be and then take a hike. The fact that it’s down the block from a popular park in the City doesn’t help.

And so my old friend Nina, bless her, who loves to knit, too, threw an unexpected afternoon free at me and we  drove to San Francisco today. We actually got a spot within the block.

At Stitches West back in February, Antonio, one of the Malabrigo owners visiting the show from Uruguay, told me about that mill run and that the micron count was 14.5 (wow!) He fervently wished there were more of it, but there just wasn’t, and so…

…I went straight to the Imagiknit booth and talked to Allison about it. Went home and ordered that Solis colorway.  Gave up petting the thing and actually knit it up this past week: because I needed to work with it and I needed to know what it was like running between the fingers for hours before letting myself be tempted to buy more.

And the answer is? It is glorious.

So. The woman running the shop today was surprised when I told her the shawl I was wearing was one skein of that SFM; the stitches looked too thick to her to be that.

Bingo! She noticed! It’s 100g and 336 yards, but off the ball and onto the needles it somehow relaxes and widens out as if it were a worsted. It is airy and light and soft as fur and perfect. It’s still wool, which still has scales, but still!

There was one skein on their high wooden table of the stuff in a color that wasn’t on their website. It was the most perfect thing I could have asked for, so, that and two skeins of Malabrigo Sock came home with me.

A few minutes after I got home, it suddenly dawned on me that the Abril Sock I’d bought… Wait, let me get it knitted and done before I tell the story, but, it matched with something that has waited three years for me to finally get with it. Now I know.  Perfect. To be continued.

So we got home Monday night and flew out again Thursday morning and home again tonight. Richard’s graduation and then Michelle’s, with the help of some very antique frequent flier miles.

I so wanted to stop by Diana’s on our way to the airport, but we had made it Thursday morning by three minutes before they started boarding, and snow–*snow*!–was predicted in Michigan; Richard didn’t want to risk the time, not with all the people who might be cramming the airport with the graduation festivities all ending and the possible road hazards with the weather and returning the rental car.  And all that.

Michelle’s roommate had her mom staying with them and so Michelle’s friend Melissa offered sight unseen to put us up for the two nights; all the hotels around had been booked for that weekend for months, we were told. So a big shout-out to Melissa for her kindness; she’s such a good soul, and her grandpa she takes care of is a love, too. Apple. Tree. Yes. And Grandpa loves his birdfeeder.

It was so good to see our daughter in her own environment. To see where–well, everything, and quite a few really good people. To meet her peach of a roommate.

We did stop by Friday night at Lisa and Mike’s, the friends whose daughter Tara is the namesake of my redwood-burl-pattern shawl. (Holy cow. $899 for a new copy on Amazon tonight? Hey, y’all, go to Purlescence; they’ve got it in stock at cover.)

I asked their youngest, now in high school, the only one not born in California, if he remembered meeting us when he was little. How I picked him up and twirled him around and around, arms to outstretched arms, spinning, spinning till we both fell down and his oldest brother David exclaiming, NOW you’ve had the Sister Hyde experience!

Nope, he shook his head a bit bashfully, don’t remember that.

That’s okay, you were pretty little.

Today, our GPS tried to route us straight through campus to get to the airport.  As if! We turned left instead and made it tell us how to get to the highway going around all the other celebrants.

New adventures and new places to come. Our children have the whole world open to them.

“Wait a minute. Say that again?” She zipped around to my side of the counter to hear better.

I was explaining the term manufacturing cream to the clerk at Trader Joe’s as an explanation for why I had a five-high stack of their Pound Plus 500g bittersweet bars and not much else to check out; one bar, I told her, a cup and a half of that super-heavy cream that I bought around the corner at Milk Pail, and you’ve got the glaze for two chocolate tortes.

And a half gallon of that cream is enough to make ten of them. (Or lots of truffles to go with.) Hence the stack.

“You’re a baker!”

I grinned.

The first two tortes were already cooling. I got home, threw the first bar on the floor over and over inside its sturdy paper wrapper (usually I put it inside a ziploc too, but I was living dangerously) to break up the chocolate for melting into the cream, and glazed and cooled the cakes.

And then I took one to each friend who’d played airport taxi for us on last week’s trip. I loved loved loved seeing the looks on their faces as I rang the doorbells and handed them over.

I saved a spoonful of the glaze for melting into my hot cocoa tomorrow.