Reader Susan to the rescue: she sent a knitted koala for the neighbors whose baby got locked in the car. Big enough to be safe for a little one, soft, cute, easy to hold and cuddly.  What Susan probably didn’t know is, remember my tiger? (He’s in this post too.)  My sister got a koala at the same time, so, koalas bring back happy childhood memories for me; I wish she could have seen the smile on my face as I opened the box up. (Wow, that came fast!)

And now Jack will have a little bit of America to take home to Ireland that is small enough to easily go in a suitcase or be tucked down the side of his carseat onboard. Cool. Thank you, Susan!

That red amaryllis yesterday? That photo was taken right before I cut it. The young mom and her family across the street are about to move home to Ireland, and it seemed to me that a large, bright flower to help cheer them while they pack and get ready and that won’t take up any suitcase space seemed just the thing.

Meantime, these will offer a wave hi at them from our side of the street.

Happy Easter!

(Ed. to add, in the proper tradition of the season, we can’t forget the Peeps, with apologies for the ad at the beginning. #30, of the Metro subway in DC, is my personal favorite.)

To tell the rest of the story:

I think, re the car rental company, it was just one clueless twit who happened to be the one that answered the phone there.  Can you just see the newspaper headline telling what he’d done?  Can you imagine corporate headquarter’s reaction?

My first draft of yesterday’s post was indignant for a different reason, though: the tow truck driver had decided to come after all, had roared up fast behind the parked firetruck, and the guy had leaped out and run to the other side of the car with his own tool while the firemen were working at opening the passenger-side door, standing closer to the mom.  The tow guy beat the fireman by less than a minute.

I noticed the fireman kept going at it till he too succeeded–he’d started the job for that woman and he was going to finish it.

The tow driver came over and whispered a hint at the fireman after both sides were open–the driver’s side works better and faster. Okay.

And then the tow guy waited till the firemen and I had left, which to me later meant so the young mom wouldn’t have the emotional support of the rest of us telling him he was out of line, because I saw him then approaching her door with a clipboard: his bill for her to sign.

When he had previously told a distraught mom he couldn’t help her, and when she was so obviously already being helped when he’d raced in.

So yes, the firemen opened the door without breaking the window.  And they were wonderful to the mom and the baby.

The tow guy seemed embarrassed by her show of emotions, weeping as she at last reached for her crying son and held him close. Or maybe he was embarrassed at himself.

I was pretty indignant. But my husband came home just as I was typing up the original post and calmed me down by trying to present it from the tow truck driver’s point of view: he might have been tied up. And then he got this call. The mom was upset. A baby was locked in a car.  That’s something he could do something about.  He finished what he had going on as fast as he could and came running to help, sorry he’d said he wouldn’t, and the firemen weren’t succeeding so he stepped in and helped.

And if I were really kind (and a little more naive than I am), I’d believe that it was indeed all selflessness on his part rather than hoping not to be thwarted in grabbing a quick buck.  Yeah, I wish… But I was grateful to Richard for reminding me not to judge and to look for the good in others. I thought that was my job!

Yeah right.  Dang. The guy’s actions still annoy me. Maybe they shouldn’t. Eh.

But I was right when I sat down and wrote about how wonderful the firemen  and firewoman were to the mom and her baby boy–that’s the real story. That’s the part that matters.  They helped not only with the mechanics of the door lock, but to comfort two people who so much needed what they had to offer.

I was on the phone on hold. On holdonholdonholdonholdyourcallisnotreallyimportanttousorwewouldanswerit borrrrrrringgggggg…

I have got to come up with a way to hold a phone close enough to my ears so I can hear on it while being able to knit. I already always have it on speakerphone as I hold it up.  There’s got to be a way.

I glanced out my window; the young mom across the street was standing looking in the window of her new car. That was a bit odd.

And still was a few minutes later.  (Still on hold.)

And still was a few minutes later. (Still on hold.)

I hung up on the voicelessmail and went over there to see if I could help. I’d guessed right; her baby was locked in there. Her own car, you couldn’t do that, but this was a rental and you could.

She’d called the rental company.  They told her it would be at least an hour and were not the least bit moved by a crying small baby locked in a car.  Could a friend go and pick up a spare key from them? No.  She called a tow truck; he said he couldn’t get to her anytime soon either.  Bag that. She called 911, and the firemen and a firewoman were wonderful and came straightaway.  They had the equipment to hopefully unlock the door, but said they would break a window if need be. The mom said fine. They agreed with her that her baby was all that mattered; he was pretty distraught in there.

I was impressed at how gentle they were with the mom.  The older of the men told her he’d done that too once back in the day with his own baby.  The firewoman smiled at the baby and told the mom how cute he was.  They not only helped her with her car, they helped her feel supported in a situation that was very hard on her.

Good folks.  I was impressed.

And the knitter in me is wondering what to make her small son to help her feel better…

It was time to get a knit on!

(I wondered if I could get a good picture of the colors and the deep black in the same photo. The answer is not yet.)

I knitted scarves for all those nurses, and meantime, the larger project I’d started had been put aside.  Black laceweight in a fairly fragile cashmere (fragile as compared to, say, the tensile strength of baby alpaca, the fiber I knit with the most often) is a bit of a challenge to work with. If you remember this you’ll know I am perfectly capable of dropping stitches in dark colors and not seeing till I go to block the thing.  This project would be far harder to repair and take far more hours if I had to frog and redo.  So the knitting on the black shawl for my surgeon was going very carefully. Very slowly. And for about a week there, not at all.

But with my new get-well afghan in my lap, how could I not be inspired?  Given how very thrilled I am at being on the receiving end of it, my desire to create that same thrill at being thought about and cared about like that has given me the push I needed to really get going.  I’ve done a huge amount of work on this shawl the past two days.

Meantime, the block in one corner has LynnH‘s handdyed yarn with a tiny heart and a sock appliqued on the square, and inside the sock, a note-in-a-bottle effect in ocean-colored yarn.

Haven’t figured out how to do that in the shawl. I guess I’ll just have to leave it plain.

A few weeks ago, a customer at Purlescence asked me how I liked the afghan.

Afghan?

Apparently, uh, oops.

And then a few people on KnitTalk started mentioning it: Elizabeth had been gathering knitted squares from folks who wanted to wish me well and a speedy recovery, starting back in January when things were so very bad.  Elizabeth told me last week the result was now finally on its way.

I promised not to peek at her blog.

(Did you peek?)  That was really hard! (I didn’t, though.)

Today, the mailman went past. No box. Just like yesterday.  Just like the day before.  The UPS guy let me be disappointed just long enough, and then, tadaaah!

Wow.

And just, wow.

Sitting on top inside was a large ball of silk yarn from purlsyarnemporium.com, a lavendar pillow, and, wrapped in gray silk, a stack of cards and notes offering hopes for my return to good health and expressing a great deal of love, over and over, as I opened the envelopes.

There are ninety squares in this afghan.  Some knitters wrote; some let their stitches state plainly and clearly what they were feeling.   Some squares came with stories, some of them were the stories.

All the yarns are soft.  They match up beautifully together, and if you’ve ever tried to knit squares of different yarns to the same size, even just one knitter working alone, you know how hard it is to get the sizes to match. And yet, in Elizabeth’s hands and everybody else’s, these all came together just so.

Elizabeth’s mother did a square that I’m sorry to say the post office has yet to find.  The afghan came up one short. Elizabeth’s husband knitted his first item to make the last square. I don’t need to tell her this, but he’s a keeper.

This last photo is a shout-out to Robinfre, who’s been signing her emails with these words for all the years I’ve known her: she gave me my best laugh of the day!

And now I’m off to Purlescense for Knit Night–and where 37 of the 90 squares were knitted and contributed when I wasn’t looking.

(p.s. Ed. to add: Jasmin and Gigi with their Knitmore Girls podcast got the word out for the squares being collected at Purlescence.  Thank you!)

Russ was one of two musicians playing in the Bing Concert Series at Stanford Hospital this afternoon.  A good excuse to go back to visit. I got there a little early.

(I brought my camera but forgot to use it; this is an old picture.)  Before Russ arrived, a doctor I knew came down those long stairs with some others; I called out his name and he did a doubletake. In great excitement he dropped everything and sat down next to me and asked how things were going and exclaimed over how good I look now. He couldn’t get over it.

He’d been my hospitalist six years ago when he was very new in the job, and again in January and February.  He’d seen me very, very ill, twice. He’d never seen me well.  It totally made his day.

Then a few minutes later, after Dr. D left, again, two doctors were walking by, coming from the other direction this time and towards the stairs, and I recognized one of them.  My face lit up and I did a small wave hi as he glanced towards me.

And then I laughed to my friend Mary sitting there as he glanced back away, “He doesn’t recognize me when I’m healthy!” At that, hearing my voice, Dr. C suddenly got it. He, too, stopped, left the other doctor, came over, and wanted to know how I was doing and wanted to exclaim over how well I looked.  “You had that surgery, didn’t you?”  Well, yes.  He was one of the ones who’d listened to me saying I wanted to give the Humira time to work, that I was so sure it would.  Well, hey.  It didn’t. And look at me now.

Waiting for Russ, the violinist came over to me and said, “You look familiar.” It took me a moment, so it wasn’t till after the concert was over that I got a chance to say to him, simply, “Marguerite’s celebration of life.”

“THAT’S it!”

And all of ours too that day, I thought. All of ours too.

Then it was time to go try to visit my nurses.  They either weren’t on duty today, or I just didn’t find them.  At one nurse’s station, the woman there looked me up one side and then deliberately down the other and pronounced that no, she could not tell me what day P might be on duty for me to come back to say hi.

Well, that was interesting.  I could just imagine P’s reaction to that.

Then, since I’d been a patient in three different departments, I tried the next one.  I had much better luck there; while I was asking, the charge nurse, who’d never had direct care of me while I was in, nevertheless recognized me, came up behind me and said, “I know you!” And to the woman at the nurse’s station, “This lady wrote a book!  She knits all these lovely things!” (I was wearing a Constance shawl, tied in front.)

Which is how she got first choice of ten lace scarves, only, not the bright green, it was promised to P. She took the Casbah dark teal in great delight; “For ME?!”  You betcha.  I wasn’t going to tell her that the lady downstairs kind of sealed it for her: you’re glad I’m here, I’m glad I have something that it turns out I’d knit just for you.  Thank you for making my day and remembering me.  Good for you.

She told me where to find C, the one nurse I already knitted for while I was still in the hospital. C was with a patient; I waited at the station awhile, then went over and stood outside the patient’s room, telling myself I didn’t want to get in the way while getting more in the way.

C glanced out the door. She saw me.  She did a doubletake as I smiled a yes, you! at her.  Her eyes got big and she came out and we threw our arms around each other.

I almost said, Wait. You’re supposed to be about a foot taller. I was always looking way up at you!  We were both laughing for sheer joy.

She said it was so wonderful when patients come back to say hi.  I imagine so: it validates everything she, as a nurse, goes through day by day.  It would remind someone working in the blood, sweat, and tears of a hospital why they do what they do.

To make people well again. To help them become whole.

It was good to be back.

The first picture is of a money plant, so called for how the seedpods look like a silver dollar; I sowed some inside that planter box 15 years ago, never again, and to this day there are a few upstarts. This year they’re growing on the outside of the box, just to be cute. I guess I got my money compounded with being interesting over the years.

Meantime.  Someone my husband works with stopped by last night, and I was all prepared: I’d found the perfect one.  Plastic pot–no ring of white growing on clay.  Needed watering–no damp spots on the floor of his car.  The stalk just starting–no top-heavy tipping over while he would be taking it home.

We showed him the huge dark red amaryllis in the kitchen so he could see what this plant in this pot I was offering him was all about. Then the Hercules amaryllis in the living room. I told him I thought his was red but I wasn’t sure; it should bloom in about two weeks.

“I’ll stop by your house more often!” he grinned.  And he took it home in great delight, eager to show his family.

By the way, Sue, if you read this, my oldest goes by her nickname Sam on my blog, in case you read back a bit.

Sam happened to call Sunday night, and I told her I’d seen Sue.  Sam told me what I’d already written here, because it was so true, that Sue had held everybody and everything together during Theron’s illness; she would dearly like to see her again herself sometime.

I’m all ready to spring for her plane ticket from Vermont.

Meantime.  Being hearing impaired can be entertaining.

My mom is an excellent cook, as are my daughters; it skipped a generation, but meantime, Mom’s here and it’s fun to have her playing in the kitchen–and to her it is playing, like I play with yarn. Always a new idea or ingredient or recipe to try out.

Which is how I parroted back to her the phrase I’d heard tonight:  “Would you like that wombat with sour cream?”

I think every good punster needs a hearing impairment to help keep their skills up, don’t you?

When my oldest was in high school, a dozen years or so ago, there was a young band and orchestra teacher, Theron Pritchett, in his second year there.  His enthusiasm for music and his love for his students was such that his classroom quickly became the place to be, and the number of kids signing up soared.

Then he found out he had cancer. When he said they’d taken a 15-lb tumor out of his stomach, everybody went, Where?  I mean, the guy was tall and thin to begin with, but afterward it was like his shirt could blow right through him in the wind.  Fifteen pounds!

But it was apparently self-contained, they were very sure they’d gotten it all, and he was relieved to be back at work with his kids.  Mine absolutely adored him.  He was a good one.

I was sitting in my daughter’s next concert at school when an unexpected mental image came to me. I’d been spinning some 90’s (Bradford count) merino.  Now,  I didn’t know at the time how rare it was to even find a wool that fine to spin.  Where I got it no longer has it.  It was seriously soft stuff–the micron count was finer than cashmere. I had a baby blanket in mind to make with it, but as I sat watching Theron conduct and the kids play up on that stage, I pictured a different project entirely and I absolutely knew that what that wool was for was for making him an afghan to wish him well with. To try to convey how important he was to all the parents in the high school music community as well as the kids.

I did a fair bit more spinning, two-ply skein after two-ply skein.  I wished fiercely that I knew how to knit lace.  Had it been a few years in the future…  I could picture exactly how I could have used lace leaf patterns and a faggoting stitch for a trunk to knit the idea of a Tree of Life, but at the time, it was simply beyond me.  That fervent wish later helped propel me to sit down, books and needles in hand, and start to make myself finally work through and learn what I’d needed to know then.  My first attempt at one repeat of Dutch Elm Leaves, in Theron’s memory, took me over an hour to do across 15 stitches with two mistakes I couldn’t figure out how to fix.

And look at me now.  But this story isn’t about me.

So, instead, for his afghan, I sketched out what I had in mind and knit up that tree in a combination of knit and purl stitches gansey style.  When I got done, you could see it if you saw it in light that let the purl stitches shadow across just a bit; otherwise, it was just a white blanket, but very nice.

I don’t have a picture of it. What I really wish is that I had a picture of Theron with it.  He loved it and was fairly blown away; and then the thoroughly delightful exclamation of disbelief I knew was coming: “You SPUN the YARN?!!”

Memory says that band enrollment tripled and that that was when the school hired a second teacher to help handle the load.  Who was Sue.  Whom I got to see last night at the concert.

Shortly after she arrived at the school, I spun and knitted her a scarf–triangle and in angora, if I remember correctly.

Theron was there when I gave it to her.  She was totally thrilled and stunned.  I got to watch the grin on his face as she exclaimed the exact same words he had, “You SPUN the YARN?!!”  He told her about his afghan in great delight.

Then the day word came he’d relapsed; it was hard.  And yet I want to say: my daughter marveled to me at the time at how the kids across the high school came together, how they stopped judging each other the way teenagers do but simply saw each other as fellow travelers.  Life is short; treat each other well.  Theron had a positive influence far beyond what he knew as the kids reached out to each other in their grief.

Sue was one of the small group of friends who played a deeply moving rendition of  “Amazing Grace” at his funeral.

Where I met Theron’s partner and introduced myself as the one who’d knit his afghan. He told me Theron had asked for it and had kept it on the bed with him his last week.  I loved that.  I loved thinking that the love I had tried to knit into it had comforted him.  That comforted me.

I am so glad I got to see Sue last night.  I am so glad we went!

Now that you have that earworm singing away…

I had an amaryllis outside with a bud that was just starting to open when the stalk got blown over.  I expected it to recover and come back upright, but no; its reaction was, fine with it; bloom where you are face-planted.

But since the flowers were hiding on the far side of the picnic table where nobody could see it from inside the house, I cut it and brought it in where it could brighten up the room and not just keep to itself.

Meantime, today, Nancy, instigator extraordinaire who talked me into taking handspinning and dyeing classes years ago, stopped by today with flowers and chocolate.  She’s also the one who knit the circle shawl for me to give away to whomever that turned out perfect for one of my doctors, who loved it.

Granted, John and I have been friends for 22 years.  But still!

Six years ago, I called my audiologist after getting out of the hospital with what had been, up till then, my worst Crohn’s flare.  I was having  a hard time hearing and was wondering about my hearing aids .  John’s reaction, not knowing I’d been ill, was to ask me if I’d lost weight recently; well, yes, thirteen pounds.

He told me, That’s it, then; you lost weight in your ear canals and your earmolds no longer fit properly. They’re not transmitting the sound well enough.

“I lost weight in my EAR CANALS?!  How useless is THAT!”

He laughed.

So here I am.  I lost twenty-five pounds since Christmas, have managed to get eight back in the last month by working hard at it, and I’d been thinking I was just going to have to wait and simply be deafer till I get back to normal.  New earmolds are a SeaSilk two-skeined shawl each, and I knew this was temporary–there’s no chance I’m going to stay this thin.

My deductibles and co-pays are a staggering $8800, besides various hospital incidentals and not-covereds, etc etc.  (I know.  At least I have insurance. I have no right to complain.)  But I felt I just couldn’t afford to go get new earmolds on top of that.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on the phone with my insurance company and with vendors, trying to straighten out how to get ostomy supplies, which are by prescription only and not something you can just go buy off the shelf; but I got the impression the company doesn’t seem to be popular with a lot of vendors.  (Yeah, I could tell them a story or two myself…  See why I wrote about forgiveness?)

I ‘ve been finding I have to walk with the speakerphone on over to my mom so that she can help me figure out what the person at the other end is saying, and ohplease don’t let them call me back while she’s out on a walk. I kept thinking, what on earth will I do after she flies home?

I got frustrated enough after the last call to phone John’s office. Uncle! I had to get at least one new earmold, even if it’s only for a short term and I never make use of it again. I had to be more functional than this.

John and his office knew what I’d been going through this time and have worried and done their fair share of praying.  And John knew why I’d put off coming in.

He told me he was making me new earmolds, and that that was his gift towards my getting better.

What do you do with a friend who makes your eyes leak like that.  When could I come in?

How about right now?

And so Mom and I went off to Los Gatos.  One ear had too much wax for an impression, the other was clear, so John and I both got our way; one earmold, at least for now, coming up.

Oh, and those ostomy supplies? The vendor promises they’ll be here by Friday.

Grace surprised me with a box in the mail today: a shawl she had designed based on my patterns and that she’d named after me.   Wow. Thank you, Grace! I so totally did not expect that!

Joanne Seiff and I grew up on opposite sides of the Potomac River, fellow Washingtonians and email friends.  She has been working on a book, “Fiber Gathering,” a celebration of the various American fiber festivals, and a copy arrived yesterday.

I love that Joanne’s husband traveled with her and snapped the photos for the book; reading through and admiring the work of both of them is like watching them being happy together.  It makes me want to pull out my drum carder and spinning wheel and get back to work with my soft-as-cashmere kid mohair fleece in the closet.  (Let’s give the surgery recovery a little more time first before I use that carder, though.  And I’m not quite so sure about treadling the wheel either, yet.  But I want to!)

There is a Fishtail vest that was designed by Terri Shea, who, years ago, sent me a copy of the children’s book, “Love You Forever,” having no idea that I’d wished for a copy but hadn’t bought one because my kids were really too old for it; but I used to sing the little poem in it to my friend Lisa’s baby, Tara, whom I designed my Redwood Burl shawl for–Lisa and the by-now-teenaged Tara both, whose story I told in my own book.

Lisa’s family came from Michigan to Sam’s wedding reception five years ago, and I asked Tara if she remembered that song at all; she didn’t, which was no surprise, but someday I hope to sing it to her children.  And to my own children’s children.

Terry’s Fishtail is held together in Jeff’s photo by a shawl pin designed by–I don’t see it in the text, but I recognized it instantly–my friend Rosemary Hill.  (Wait–“Resources,” pg 160. There it is.) And there were other patterns designed by people I recognized from the Knitlist and whom I’d had a conversation or three with over the years.  Going through this book was like reconnecting with old friends.

Then there’s a picture at Estes Park, Colorado, at a spot I recognize: it’s next to where I snapped probably my own best-ever photograph.  A friend’s dad had lifted his hand up to a very large bird soaring near us, and it had come and landed at the edge of his hand. There was a backdrop of a single white cloud framing the bird as I shot the picture from below.  I will forever think of Estes Park with that breathtaking moment.

I can just imagine all the memories Joanne and Jeff created together as their book came to be.

Meantime, with all this gifting everybody’s doing, hey, honest, I really do knit too! Blocking, not so much, though, lately; it’s that stages-at-a-time thing again.

Sam flew home last night; Mom flew back in this morning.  My family’s taking good care of me for a little while longer.

Mom and I went to Purlescence’s Knit Night tonight, where I cast on my new Casbah yarn, started to knit, looked at it funny a moment, counted about forty-leven times, started another row, stopped, took it back off the needle, frogged, chatted, cast on, and started to knit again–but mostly we just chatted. (Hence the frogging.)  People time!  And we all flirted shamelessly with Meg’s cute baby.  When someone I didn’t know complimented my shawl and asked if I’d made it, I proudly told her, no, Mary did.

On our way out the door, Nathania told me, Hang on a second–and handed me this  lovely get-well card card from Michelle in Ohio and this cool little tote by Debbie R that would have been perfect tonight for my small project and many a doctor’s waiting room.

Good to be out and about, and spoiled on top of that!  Watch it you guys, I’ll be insufferable before you know it.

Two and a half hours.  Stitches West.  Disneyland for knitters, totally filling the large Santa Clara Convention Center near here.  I’m exhausted.  (I know, we all knew that was going to happen.) But I’m so glad we went!

First, before we left, though, another box arrived on the doorstep: they were so tightly closed up that Sam’s first reaction when we opened the box, was, what are these?  I told her, just give them a few hours.   They’ll open up very fast.  They’re daffodils.

They have already begun to and to perfume our family room.  Two dozen flowers in a hefty vase from Kelli, a friend of mine at Purlescence, the friend who already gave me her old camera.  Goodness! That LYS (that’s Local Yarn Store in knitter’s lingo, Don) attracts very giving people.

I debated what to wear this morning, and decided blue with Chris J’s socks to match would be just the thing. I hadn’t seen her in ages, and one could only hope.  Which is how, it turned out, I got to show off to Chris J how happy my feet were and to watch her face light up, which she’d totally earned.

Sam and I of course kept running into lots of people I knew, and very occasionally one or two she did, like Karen Brayton-McFall of the old Rug and Yarn Hut.  People stopping us and they and I throwing our arms around each other.  Over and over and over.  I was mentally thinking in the direction of some of the hospital personnel of two and a half weeks ago or more, you see why I couldn’t miss this?!  You see why I had to go?!  Some of the friends there I only get to see once a year, at Stitches.  I might admit that well, there were a few times I was really glad this person or that was wearing a name tag.

You might forget a person’s name. But you never forget how they make you feel. I felt well loved, and they I’m sure did too.

Rosemary Hill of designsbyromi.com came up to me and tucked her heart shawl pin into my shawl and gave me a hug.  I wondered out loud why she wasn’t wearing Muir (which I happen to particularly like); she was wearing jewelry she’d knitted,  wire earrings (free patterns at the links) and a necklace, which makes sense, given the recent release of her book on the subject.

Gracie Larsen of the Lacy Knitters Guild asked me to come sign books and we agreed on 2:00 pm Saturday.

Sam used that as a carrot to get me to let go and give in to being tired and go home, on the grounds that I’d miss out totally on tomorrow if I overdid it today.  “You’re more tired than you think you are.”  Wise woman there.  She was right; I knew as soon as I stopped moving I would be ready to crash.  And so we came home.

And a good time was had by all.