On his way out the door from church today, carried in his mother’s arms, was a baby not quite at the walking stage yet but with a marvelous mop of light brain (note to my big sister: yes, I meant to type brown, not sure where mine was on that one) hair and usually I can get a cute grin out of him to match. I don’t think he’s quite ready for a finger puppet yet; he might try to eat it. So I just play peekaboo and the like with him when I get a chance.

It had been a long time away from his crib and it was naptime and he had the face of a little one who’s about to start making it known loudly.

And then suddenly he saw me. His little face burst into a grin! And he stayed smiling, waving bye bye at me, all the way out.

I tell you. I could float on that one for days.

I don’t use it very often, which isn’t good for the batteries.

Richard had them recharging last night.

I can’t do Stitches West on my feet. I’ve tried. The old head injury effects go into overload in the massive visual presence of the place and my balance disappears even worse and there’s just no way around the fact that Disneyland for knitters equals chairtime for me. That’s okay; there have been many many people looking wistfully at my ride by the end of the day every year.

Richard set it up and went out the door for work; I tried it out.

Dead dead dead. Ain’t goin’ nowhere. Darn.

Jasmin‘s brother Sam, who pushed me last year, was in LA.

My daughter Sam, who pushed me the year before, was across the country.

Well, I *could* try to walk it. (Yeah, let’s see if we can induce a seizure finally after eleven years?)

Um.

I did not call him. I did not text. I didn’t say boo. What could he do? I simply didn’t get myself out the door. I was about to, I kept telling myself, looking at the clock, noting that I’d paid for a two-day ticket, while arguing back at myself, okay, so then, when? How? Use the manual as a walker so you’ve got both hands holding on, at least?

Suddenly there was the front door opening again, and *My Hero* (trademarked) walks in: he wanted to make sure I didn’t get stuck and had it worked no okay he’d wondered if it might not have right he’ll go get that other battery pack and try that one oh yes he’d had it charging too.

You’re home? You did? We do? You can?

He was in a rush to get to work (some days I really really love that short commute) as he unscrewed the battery pack and replaced it. Here try that love you bye gotta run.

YES!!!

And that is how I got to go zipping around Stitches West and have the time of my life among my fellow knitters and friends that I only get to see once a year.  And to meet some new ones. (Michelle, did you see? I was wearing your socks you made me while I was in the hospital.)

I came home to the news that we had gone past 30% of Congress today. GO KNITTERS! Then I read Jocelyn’s post and followed the link in it. Folks, we need gentility, top down, and we need civility in Congress now. If you haven’t yet, will you join Ellen and me and 162 hats’ worth of other knitters in spending a few hours to help get the word out? How often do our few stitches get a chance to create changes for the good for millions of people? Good wool, good work, good plan.

Stitches still has plenty of good yarn left for it. I promise.

The first speaker at church today said many things, but one that stuck with me is that her father had told her, if your heart and your head are ever not in agreement, pay attention. Sit down and figure it out till they are.  We are to follow the Spirit that leads to all that is good in our interactions with God, ourselves, and each other.

The second speaker talked about his little sister Katie.

Katie was born with hydrocephalus. I grew up with a kid my age around the corner with that, so I was particularly interested to hear him tell about his sister, whose case was clearly far worse than my friend’s; Katie wasn’t just a little slow, she had definite mental retardation.

Her brain shunt got infected and she passed away recently.

People her family didn’t know not only paid their respects but showed up in their lives to tell their stories. Things the family had never known. Lives she had touched.

And one of those was a girl who, twenty years earlier in kindergarten with her, had been, she realized later, bullying another child in the class.

Katie’s reaction was to step in, hug the victim of the moment, and tell her, Stop! She’s my friend!

To Katie, everyone was her friend.

The woman told the grieving family that it had made a permanent impression on her: from that moment on, she wanted to be more like Katie.

A kid who was different.

A kid who set the example for everyone else around her to live up to.

A kid whose heart and head were forever in the same place.

(Oh oops. I was adding the hats not committed yet to individual recipients with the number next to it, which was the overall total, not the committed total. (This reading charts thing…) So we’re up by nine to 103 today, and my apologies for the mistake.)

Phyllis and her husband Lee came by this evening, the last night that they could visit with my folks before they go home, and we celebrated with sponge cake, homemade chocolate sauce (zap dark chocolate bars with heavy cream, making sure to first dunk all the chocolate completely so all of it has touched the liquid before the heat is added so none of it seizes into unmeltable lumps) and homemade strawberry mousse (run random amounts of frozen strawberries, sugar, and cream through the Cuisinart for about ten minutes. Turn your ears off first.)

The puns were flying around in their natural echo-system. For instance. My hubby had been one of the computer scientists working on the then-new UNIX system at DEC. (Anybody remember DEC? You know, the then-second-biggest computer company? The one whose CEO proclaimed there would never be any use for a computer in the home?)

Lee asked something about was it genderified?

Me: Genderally speaking.

And a good tine was had by all.

105 hats. 17.42% of Congress. Go knitters go!

My dad has an old high school friend who lives in the area and they were looking forward to getting to see each other before the folks leave.

She called yesterday; she knew my health situation, she’s lived through her own and gets it (she would anyway, but, just saying) and she had woken up with a cold. She was very disappointed but wasn’t about to expose me.

Well crum.

After making sure today that she herself was up to it, we decided I would drop the folks off at her house and come back later and get them. I’d love to see her too, anytime–she’s a dear woman. But sometimes you deal with how things are rather than how you want them.

I came back at the appointed hour and pulled out a book in the car, picture windows above me where they would be sitting, hoping to be conspicuously preoccupied so they could keep talking if they wanted to. It was a good try.

She came down the front steps with my parents, the very picture of graciousness; I stepped out of the car and got to see her a little bit after all. And then we gave each other goofy air hugs from a distance. She sent us home with leftover mango mousse. Good stuff.

She and Dad can tell you that being nice to others when you’re a teenager (or at any other age) has lifelong effects and brings a joy that is far beyond what any kid could ever begin to be able to see coming.

My father being an art dealer, we spent some of my summers growing up going museum-hopping.

I remember, on one such trip at 16, admiring a gorgeous landscape in a room full of natural Western scenes from the 1800’s, and an artist friend of Dad’s, Nat Leeb, asking me, “What’s wrong with this painting?”

Nothing was wrong with it, it was beautiful!

Look again.

*confused look*

Then he pointed it out: the light is coming from this direction, lighting up this area and leaving that area in shadow–but over here, in this one corner, look: the shadow goes in the wrong direction.  The light also should not have caught that detail; it’s in the wrong place for it.

M. Leeb decided to teach me a lesson on how to draw as we waited for our meals at a restaurant. “You observe for ten minutes. Draw for one.” And then he grabbed the paper placemat and drew a horse by sketching a perfect series of quick connecting-Slinky ovals that surprised me: he was right! It was a horse! Here, he told me, you draw it like this and learn the shape of it before you draw it in a different form.

I knew I was getting a lesson from a master but struggled with my teenage desire to harrumph that I knew what shape a horse was. I had the sense to simply nod and say okay.

My little sister was probably absorbing the lesson too, though I don’t remember: it was where she totally outshone me.  I, being more musical, got the piano lessons from a master teacher; Anne got the art lessons at the Corcoran Gallery in DC.

(Side conversation with the folks just now: Anne rode her bicycle a good ten miles+ each way down the C&O Canal towpath during her summers in high school to get to those lessons. It’s funny what you don’t remember about your siblings that was so day-to-day to them way back when.)

So. Today Dad wanted to see the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford. After the Loma Prieta quake, the museum was closed for years and years, needing millions to rebuild and redo, and now he could finally see it again.

It was way better than the building that was destroyed. The marble walls and high, ornately done ceilings of the new, the rotunda at the center, all reminded me of Washington, DC: the Capitol building, the Senate offices, and on and on. I said that to Mom and she gave me a look of, Oh yes!

I’d seen last summer’s exhibit with my niece, but the place is surprisingly large and with her toddler in tow we hadn’t made it upstairs.

There’s no way Dad was going to miss upstairs. He had waited too long for this. There’s way more than all those Rodins and a few paintings to be seen.

Two Picassos up there! I’d had no idea.

But what intrigued me most was one small plaque: it said that with the completion of the transcontinental railroad–remember, Stanford was a railroad baron, and two of the ceremonial spikes from the joining of those rail lines was in a box downstairs on display–with that new transportation, the land that, as the plaque put it, had belonged only to dimestore novels and Twain and Brette Harte were suddenly open now to artists.  At a time that landscapes were considered the pinnacle of art in popular American culture.

And so they came.

We’d been on our feet a long time and I finally sat in front of my favorite there to wait for Mom and Dad to finish. It was a painting of the head of the American River in California. It was huge and the details were exquisitely done. You could almost feel the slipperiness of the moss on the twiggy brush near the river, the white of a rider’s shirt catching the sunlight exactly so as it filtered between the mountain peaks to burst on the area of greatest interest. There were men on horseback, a burst of cloud at the top of the falls, rushing, falling water that splashed on the canvas, twists and turns of desert plants. The thing was just gorgeous.

But dang if the light didn’t shadow one mountain back there the wrong way. I wonder if I just rediscovered my long-lost artist.

(The Warm Hats Not Hot Heads count: we are now at 75 committed hats for the campaign for civility in Congress. Go knitters!)

We drove across the Bay and up into the beautiful, wooded hills, the reason for the folks’ visit to California: Dad had someone he wanted to interview for a biography he is writing.

It turns out the man’s son was there too, and that the man is himself a writer–and the kind of warm, bright, engaged, energetic 92-year-old I can only aspire to be someday.

He gave us copies of several of his books, waving me away when I offered to buy some, and I, having discovered that his daughter-in-law crochets, wished fervently I had a copy of my own book to share with their family, too.

We had a lovely morning of it, time I for one would never have had with good folks I would never have had the good fortune to meet but for the passion both of the older men in the room were bringing to the project at hand.

I’d driven my husband’s Prius, switching cars with him for the day since we were the ones who were going to be putting on the mileage.

And as we walked back to the car and opened the trunk to put away Dad’s equipment from the interview, there it was: a copy of “Wrapped in Comfort” that my husband had proudly put in there to be ready to show off my work and me at any time. I asked him later and he said, “Oh, I always have one in there!”

I hurried back down the walkway and rang the doorbell one last time.

I knew what I really wanted to give my folks for Christmas, but I just didn’t know how to pull it off. I so did not want them to get thrown in a drawer. I did say what my wish was; Dad’s reaction was, “What if I don’t wear them?”

“Fine,” I retorted, “then I’ll stop wearing mine!”

“No! You need them!”

“Welllllll…??”

And now while they’re here…

I drove them to my audiologist’s office today for them to fit Dad for my old Oticons, perfectly good hearing aids–for someone with better hearing than I have now.

Joan the technician summoned Dad back to make the earmolds and Mom went back with him; I, knowing the size of the room they were likely going to, stayed put with my knitting.

After they were out of earshot, though, I got up.  I went over to the receptionist and told her I wanted to pay for those molds.

She protested, “But they’re not even back yet!” They have to do an impression of your ear canals, send it out, get it back, check the fit, attach it to the behind-the-ears, and only then are you done. She would have told me all that, but I just smiled and said, “I know.” I gestured towards where they’d gone and–she got it. She told me she didn’t know yet how much to charge me for John-the-audiologist’s time for adjusting my old aids to match Dad’s audiogram, though.

Fine, not a problem, we’ll deal with that part later, just, quick before they come out.

She grinned. On it!

Joan told us, coming out to talk to me too when she was done, that the one thing is that the length of the tubing is a question. Yes, John likes to check the fit of everything and Mom and Dad won’t still be here, but tubing or fit, Dad can take it to an audiologist local to him for that last little bit. Or we might just totally luck out and have it come out right.

As I handed her my old aids, she smiled, “Oh, I like these. These are good ones.”

Not as good as my Sonic Innovations, but then, Dad doesn’t have a musician’s ear so he wouldn’t care about sounds being pitch-perfect. (Note that I have no idea what Oticon’s latest might be, this is simply what I had.)

And the thing is: I told Dad these were my back-ups in case my new ones ever had to go in for repair.  And then I told him how much the Oticons had cost.

“Well then I can’t take them.”

“In two and a half years I’ve never had to repair them. ” Then I told him how much my new ones  had cost.

Because by golly, I knew those hearing aids needed to come with the gentle pressure of John and Joan asking if they’d worked out well for him; I knew that if Dad knew I’d given up something valuable to me for him to have these, he would wear them out of sheer gratitude; he’s a good guy.

I told my mom she was going to need patience too with how things were going to change for him–having the world suddenly much louder is going to take him some getting used to, no question about that.

But I remember how, back when my older children were babies and I would start my mornings with a long racewalk before my husband left for work, there was the day after I got my first-ever set where I stepped out my front door in the quiet of the early day.

Only this time it wasn’t quiet.  I stopped dead right there on the doorstep, stunned.  What on earth were all those sounds.  Where on earth *were* they.

Birds. There were birds singing, greeting the new March morning. I hadn’t heard birds like that since age 12. I. Had. Forgotten.

Back home again, sitting down to lunch, Dad suddenly realized, aghast, “We never paid for those molds!”

I looked up. “Yes we did.”

“No we didn’t!”

“Yes. We did.”

Heh.

I made it through the first meeting of church today. I had a plan.

It didn’t quite go that way.

I recently gave someone new there a baby alpaca lace scarf as a welcome; in conversation, I found out she had two daughters.

I asked a mutual acquaintance, since I’d never laid eyes on the kids, and he told me the teenager likes dark colors, the younger one, rainbow. Bright.

Sharp eye for a guy, I thought; I was impressed.

So the last pink sparkly cashmere hat was to go to the nine-year-old. As for her sister, I knew just the thing.

But this morning as I went to pull that waiting blue scarf for the teen out of its ziploc, something wouldn’t let me. It just wasn’t it. But I…! Nope.  Just wasn’t.

Huh. Okay, I’ve learned not to argue with that feeling, even if I wish it would explain itself. But then, what then?

Going through ziplocs, I found a baby alpaca lace scarf I couldn’t quite place. But it instantly felt right. Curious. I took it out, examining the pattern and the soft hand of it. Yes. Okay, then, and I put it with the hat and took them to church, touching both of them as little as possible and trying not to breathe on anybody.

That scarf was from yarn I’d hand-dyed awhile ago, as a matter of fact, it’s a remnant of one of the overdyed balls shown with the original light blue color at the center in my “Wrapped in Comfort” book.

I remembered later: I had taken it out several months ago, looked it over, and thought it would look great on someone Hispanic. I didn’t have anyone in mind but it became my carry-around project for those odd moments, eventually bugging me because it simply didn’t get finished but rather kept nagging me in my purse with no sense of accomplishment–because it had no intended recipient to motivate me.

So I finally simply sat myself down one day, probably around November, and spent hours on it till it was a length that pleased me. There. Done!

Now it just needed someone with coloring to match it.

And then I totally forgot it existed.

Yes, they’re Hispanic. Yes, the color would look perfect on any of them.

But then no, I didn’t see them at church. So much for that.

I was fading and asked Richard to take me home. First, though, I saw the person who’d told me about their color preferences and handed him the ziploc, despite his hesitancy, saying, he would see the mom before I would, here, you take it.

As we were getting in the car, two more meetings yet to go inside, guess who walked past us on their way in.

I explained why I was leaving and told them what was waiting inside for them and who had them as the grins on all three of their faces got bigger and bigger.

I could just picture the moment inside right after that, the glow spilling over onto the person left holding the bag.  And probably anybody else around.

Sometimes the plans are bigger than mine.

Does anyone else find themselves wishing they could knit hats for everybody in Egypt? I wish and hope the best for them and thank them for their peaceful efforts; they are representing themselves well to the world. I’m holding my breath and fervently hoping they’ll get to do so in their government too.

We are so blessed.

Here at home, there is now a Ravelry group at http://www.ravelry.com/groups/warm-hats-not-hot-heads for the campaign to knit hats for our Congresspeople and there will be a Facebook group soon.  If anyone feels so inclined, please, feel free, spread the word on your blog or your knitting group or wherever. If you knit a hat for your congressperson, please shoot an email to Ellen, here if you would; we’re hoping for Feb. 28th as a deadline to get them all shipped by, en masse would be great but if you want to sooner, more power to you. Sending it to your representative’s local office works well, in person even better; the whole idea is to make it feel as personal as possible to them.

Those who tell Ellen so she can put it on her spreadsheet, by whatever moniker you want for yourself there, will be the ones I’ll be able to know about for sure: because when this is all done, I told her that as my thank you I’d like to draw a name and send out an autographed copy of “Wrapped in Comfort: Knitted Lace Shawls” to that knitter, wishing I could do it for everybody. I know, I don’t need to bribe anybody, so many people are already simply diving in and doing this without feeling the need to tell about it, but I’d like to be able to do something by way of thanks to those who do.

Ellen and I talked on the phone tonight, and someone she knew had gone from, I could never knit for…!, to, I need to knit for them. Don’t I. Yes.

And so I told her the story of a nursing assistant in the hospital during my first severe Crohn’s flare in ’03 who was just an angry person, consistently and bewilderingly mean to her patients–just angry. I wondered why on earth, at that time of all times, I had to be stuck dealing with her. Her accent was thick, my brain equally so in my illness on top of my hearing loss; we were not a good match.

And then a few days into this I found myself wondering what it must be like to be her. Or what got her that way.  What is it like at home for her? Where is her family, what are they like?

That stopped me, and I said a prayer for her: not completely willingly, and apologizing to God for that, but this much at least I could try to do. Please bless her? (So I don’t have to?)

The next time she walked in my hospital room, though, what happened was definitely not sweetness and light: I beat her to it and immediately snapped at her. The one time she had done nothing to deserve it, I just didn’t want her in my room just then, I’d had enough.

And she, instead of yelling back or defending herself, suddenly looked deeply sad. She spun on her heel and was gone.

I felt TERRIBLE. That was so not what I had prayed for, my stars!

The next time she walked in the room it was by coincidence a step behind when her boss did, a nurse who was one of my favorites, and I grabbed my chance: I said to the woman, in front of her boss, “Thank you.”

(Say what?! on her face.)

“You came in here and I snapped your head off and you were kind to me. I did not deserve that. Thank you.” Because I knew that for her, that was the best she could have done and she did it.

After she left I said to her boss, “I’m so glad I got to say that to her in front of you.”

And the boss, a dear woman, answered with a glance to the door to make sure we were alone, “Me too!”

That nursing assistant completely changed. The next time she came in I honestly didn’t recognize her, her face was so different. She looked radiant! She had finally seen herself through someone else’s eyes in a better light.

I later knitted a lace stole in the boss’s favorite color and several more things for quite a few more people there; and I knitted a hat in case I might see that nursing assistant, whose name I never did know–she’d tended to keep her badge turned over, I always guessed so that people wouldn’t be able to complain about her by name.

I didn’t see her but she saw me down the hall when I came back for that visit. She ran down the hall and she *threw* her arms around me with great emotion. She had no idea yet about the hat. No language barriers. Friends, in the deepest sense of the word; she wept, and I knew then that what I had done had meant everything to her.

I said to Ellen, Now, can you imagine if I had NOT made her anything while I was handing out my handknits? Thank heavens I did. Thank heavens I knit that hat.

Ellen said, “It made all the difference to you, too, then, didn’t it?”

Oh you bet. Oh, honey. It was one of the most important things I ever made.

Our family was once on a tour of the White House when the guide (gotta love his question) pointed out the ancient but still-sharp-looking Eagle rug.

I told my aunt, who was with us, that certain species of moss nearly became extinct because people had so coveted it for the color back in the day; it grows back so slowly.

I was reminded of that today.

At the grocery store, I ran into an old friend of my husband’s, who recognized me but I didn’t him till he called out my name–I recognized his voice. Ah yes–one of the other ham radio/disaster services volunteers, how are you?  He was amazed to see me out and about and looking so well, when just a year ago, who’d have thought…

…It’s been two, actually, I told him. Hard for me to believe it too. I wanted to add, and isn’t it wonderful amazing glorious to be alive on a fine day like today!

Later, the phone rang. It was one of those calls that is the price of caring about people who happen to be mortal.

The first of my outside amaryllises sent up a bud today, my Dancing Queen, one that, going by the book, I should have tossed two years ago when it contracted red virus; it wasn’t supposed to survive anyway. But it just kept on doing what it does despite my absolute neglect during my months of being so ill, and there will be flowers again this year in a month or so.  I pulled it inside so the squirrels wouldn’t give it a taste test.

And inside the pot was a good thick covering of healthy, green moss. Thriving. I very much like it.

Later, a Bewick’s wren was bopping around at my window, its beak inches from my nose at the glass as it glanced upwards. Somehow, when I need a moment like that, it comes.

Then I picked up my needles at last, cast on, and got past the brim on the third and last pink sparkly cashmere hat: I will finish it and give it to someone who’s going to love it and then, that yarn will be gone.

And it will be time to let a new one dance in my hands.

(Picture this line as the ticker tape streaming above the blog: the Warm Hats Not Hot Heads campaign has more knitters. Yay, and thank you!

And second, copies of Wrapped in Comfort are available at Purlescence at the cover price+shipping. Hey, I’m not good at this marketing thing but I have to try a little occasionally. )

Back to the blog.

To quote my sister quoting my mom on the phone today on the subject of reading: “I can abstain but I cannot be moderate.” We had a good laugh over that one because it’s so true; a good book is for getting totally immersed in. Good yarn, too, definitely.

Speaking of which–it was knit night tonight. Last week, Kaye exclaimed emphatically, “Oh *cool*!” at the pink sparkly hat that was going to someone else, turning it over and around in her hands to see how I’d made it.

Well hey, I know how to respond to that.  So I went home and knitted a second and you know whose head it stayed on the rest of this evening. That was way too fun, and there’s one more hat’s worth of that Classic Elite Intrigue;  I offered to give it back, since it was their yarn to begin with, and they just waved me away.

And even more: they handed me another bag with another murmur of You’ll know what to do with this, another explanation that this too just hadn’t worked for them personally.

And I instantly did know. I asked permission and got an Oh, perfect! in response.

Just let me catch up a little here first.  I am definitely not abstaining. But my limited number of arms and the brain cells it would take to keep track of all the multiple sets of projects they’d be holding forces me to moderate the pace at least somewhat.

Five o’clock at Trader Joe’s. I usually avoid grocery stores at that hour, but there I was.

And there was an old friend; she saw me first. Hi! We talked a moment, I did the grandma stereotype and whipped out a couple of Parker pictures, we laughed. There’s nothing like an unexpected moment together to take the drudgery out of the shopping.

And then, as we chatted again at checkout a few minutes later, there was a young mom with a toddler and he was quickly going into escalation mode.

My friend smiled at them both, remembering when her teenagers were that size, saying that they get tired and hungry at this hour (as in, it’s okay); meantime, I reached over with a yellow-with-brown-stripes duck fingerpuppet.

The woman looked at me, gobsmacked, questioning…? No, I told her, I didn’t make it–though it is handknit. A women’s cooperative in Peru does these.

And now the man behind her in the line was smiling.

Another young mom with another toddler was next up behind A., and that little girl with the most adorable curls was as happy as could be. That mom helped us help the stressed mom by admiring the ducky to help the little boy be charmed by sheer peer pressure. (Totally worked, too.)

So out came another one. A striped green fish!

Oh you don’t have to do that! the second mom exclaimed in surprise.

May I?

And then I got to watch those two playing happily with it while A. finished up–and now everybody around us was happy.

The power of the fingerpuppet (not to mention A.!)

Maybe I should make a hat with a pocket and tuck one inside.

Parker’s being Kinneared.

I bought a single skein of Arctic Musk Ox Blend in the 2-ply a few months ago, undyed just to get a peek at what was underneath before I bought any more, and it’s been my carry-around project for awhile: small, mindless knitting, easy to stuff in a purse, and laceweight, taking extra stitches to work up in case I got stuck somewhere for awhile. (Always a possibility when your minivan is older in car-years than you are.)

But it was easy to feel it was never done, so today I simply stayed with it till it was finished, all but the blocking–18 out of the 22g. I actually had some left over.

What would you do with 4g of qiviut-blend laceweight?

Although, I have to give J. credit. She’s an old and much-missed friend who now lives back East and was in town yesterday, so a bunch of us got together and caught up for old times’ sake. J., I noticed, was careful to enjoy both the small crowd as a whole and individual time with each one of us.

I pulled out my needles and showed off. J. thought it was just so pretty that I came away feeling like how could I not have had this done and finished and ready to go?

A little water now for it to relax in the pool by, lay it out on a beach-sized white towel, let the amaryllis come play palm tree to complete the scene, and it will be.

My friend E. spoke in church today. About braces.

She needed braces as a kid, she wanted braces and was all excited about it till the day came that she actually got those braces. Hey! They hurt! Nobody said it was going to hurt! And not just for that first day, either!  She said she cried, she told her mom she wanted them off, and you can just picture the rest of the story: being reassured she would have a beautiful smile when it was over, retorting that she didn’t want a beautiful smile, not if she had to go through this no make it stop I don’t want them.

And now? She’s one of the smilingest people I know. Her mom was right.

You know the point she was trying to make about our Father’s wisdom.  And of course, life puts real teeth into the analogy.

It isn’t always easy. I listened to her while remembering two years ago–remembering my decision to try to find meaning in the experience by praying silently for each person who came through my hospital door and what a vast difference it made in our interactions, even though those doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists and wheelchair pushers and the list goes on and on never knew. But I did. And then I had to live up to the request I’d made on their behalf.

We are meant to learn, to grow, to find ways to serve others better and with more compassion through each experience we have whatever our background, and, best of all, to come out in the end smiling.