Clara Parkes asked today if there was a time when darkness, however one might choose to define it, had made the light more clear.

I answered with the following story from 2003. I probably said it here years ago but in case not I want to make sure my kids have it, so here goes.

—

I was in the hospital fighting for my life and a nursing assistant was assigned to me who was a mess. She was clearly depressed. She had a thick accent and hated that I had a hard time hearing her (hey, I have a hard time hearing anybody.) She hid her badge to avoid her name being reported for lashing out at patients.

I resented the fact that at a time when I was so ill and in so much pain I should be stuck with someone like her.

But I also had time, while there, to think about it. I couldn’t do anything about whatever her situation was–but at least I could say a prayer for her. It couldn’t hurt. Why hadn’t I even thought of it earlier.

The next time she came in was at a peak moment of difficulty for me and in spite of all my best intentions I snapped at her. Before she’d even said anything.

To my surprise she didn’t snap back–instead, she looked terribly, terribly sad and turned and fled the room.

I felt terrible. I was the one with the good life and support structure and I was taking things out on someone else?

The next time she came in the room the nurse who also happened to be her boss (I didn’t know that) also happened to stop by steps behind her. I apologized to the NA in front of her, and said, I was mean to you and you were nice to me in response. You didn’t deserve that. I apologize.

I later told that nurse that I was glad that the woman had had her there to witness my saying she’d treated me better than I’d treated her.

That’s when I found out the NA was already in the process of being fired for her treatment of patients. The nurse knew it was depression and had been trying to find a way to reach her and help her. And here the two of us were presenting the NA to herself as being better and kinder than how she’d been seeing herself.

I later went back to the hospital with a stack of handknit little items for the people who’d taken care of me. I assumed the NA was gone by then, but just in case, I had a hat for her.

She wasn’t. She saw me from down the hallway and came RUNNING and threw her arms around me! Wow!

She was saved by my having lost it.

My portion of my late dad’s art arrived today.

I had previously had a few paintings shipped to me and they’d arrived carefully cushioned inside thick cardboard boxes. So that’s what I was expecting.

After I’d pre-paid the shipper he happened to mention that it was not going to be delivered inside. The driver’s contract stops at our garage door. Although, I could hire their other guys at our end to bring it in for us.

Sure, how much?

My brain refuses to remember how much above $600 he said because I instantly said no. I could call in friends if need be; I could carry those boxes myself, even if it might take me awhile with a bad back. Could they give me a warning once they actually hit the road with them, since the delivery day was uncertain. I knew it was a twelve hour drive.

They did not do so.

This morning, there was their delivery guy in my driveway with three big wooden boxes just past the sidewalk. Heavy and nailed shut. Holy cannoli. And I thought I had it all planned out where the items were going to go. As if.

I walked back in the door with the guy’s piece of paperwork and said to Richard, who is limited by having once broken his own back, We’re in trouble.

Walked back out and shook my head as I read the weights Sharpied onto them: 207 pounds, 201, 109. Clearly, the boxes themselves were a great deal of that weight. Someone with the skills could easily rework them into furniture.

The young driver was blown away at being met by only this little old lady. He just couldn’t leave me like this. He insisted.

I had found yesterday (because I so seldom use them) that I was out of checks–that was stupid–and he’d gotten there before I had any chance to head to the bank for replacements like I’d planned.

He simply said, Pay what you think is right, and started working that first box forward, twist and push, twist and push.

Wait, I said, running to get the dolly. It helped for the first two, with me helping as best I could, but he thought it too small for the third and put it aside. The low raised step into the house was the biggest challenge. Even he had to stop and breathe a moment, but he did it, he got them all in just inside the door. I thanked him profusely and emptied out my wallet as he watched me searching for one last ten or twenty to throw in there, but at least there were quite a few. Richard added his twenty.

I’ve iced and stretched my back while praying for that guy’s all day long. He didn’t have to do that. But he did. I so much want him to be okay.

Richard got the drill out after dinner. He wanted to make sure everything looked good in there, and he removed all the nails along the tops.

Those guys did a good job protecting everything.

And then, immediately after saying out loud that I was going to have to be careful not to drop that heavy board from the biggest lid on my foot…

We know the drill by now: if I did break it it will hurt worse and more specifically tomorrow, and with that we did not go to Urgent Care. Yet.

What I most want out of those boxes is the painting that I had loved but that had had a several-inch tear in the canvas. My brother has the skills and he repaired it for me and touched up the paint there. You cannot see where and would never know if you didn’t know. That one means a lot. I want it on my wall first.

I think we’re done lifting for tonight.

(Ed. to add in the morning, I don’t think it’s broken. Yay.)

There was one more thing I’d been wanting to do since late summer. Michelle and I drove to Andy’s last week and this was one of the reasons why I’d wanted to go.

A Christmas card. A pretty little bag.

Inside, two small half-pound boxes of figs stuffed with dried peaches plumped up with honey, candied orange peel, and nuts. I look forward to these every December. They were so popular last year that I entirely missed getting any and I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

But also, since that surgeon had become an instant Andy’s fan with that first peach he’d shared with his wife, I wanted to make sure he knew what else that farm can do.

The second box was for his nurse.

The card read, One last thing…

He’d told me with great love, “I never want to see you again! For your sake” after finding no cancer and not having to do surgery.

I didn’t see him. Nor his nurse. That’s okay. The receptionist asked me if I was there for an appointment? and then took that bag with so much joy for them at someone coming back to say thank you. At her wonderful boss being recognized, and the nurse, too. She had no idea what was in there, but it was the being there that mattered. She made sure my name was in there for them before she let me go.

Her love on their behalf will carry me forward through so much. Just like theirs still does.

$395 later, we have a working dishwasher again. Yay.

(When the rent is too $!$!! high, so is everything else. The average for a one-BR 649 sq’ apartment is $3007 here.)

(Nighttime photo.)

It amused me no end and I went to take its picture. Where did I put my phone… And then I got distracted to something else.

There had been a pair of pomegranates hanging onto the tree that I could have picked weeks ago but I’d never gotten them past the critters long enough to see how long they should/would stay there if I let them. I had a small pop-up style birdnetting tent–not over them, trying to balance it in those branches was too fiddly, but sideways with the fruit sort of just inside the bottom of it and the top of the tent facing the fence: En garde! (Autocorrect added an n. I am much amused.) I knew they were accessible but the critters who could reach it didn’t have to know that from their favorite runway and I knew they did not want to be in a cage.

It worked!

Michelle’s a fan of pomegranate juice and on her last night here I squeezed the ones that had been kept in the fridge, and that was as much of that work as I wanted to do at the time.

I checked. The two on the tree were still there.

This morning she was back in Boston and some sheer curiosity got me to go outside to check those fruits again.

Picture a little kid on Christmas morning tearing open a present: the strip of wrapping paper still attached to the tape in their hand while the box falls away. That’s essentially what was left: two stems, each with a thin strip of the bright red outer rind.

While all of the rest was utterly gone.

I laughed. The timing! As if they’d only been holding on for her! How did something get to both of them among those thorns, how did it eat that much? I wanted to get a photo. Didn’t I put it–where was it? Huh. Whatever.

We were just sitting down to dinner when something just really nagged at me and I apologized and said, I have to know if I left that phone in the car, I haven’t been able to find it anywhere. He said Go ahead, and meant it, so I got right back up from the chair I’d just sat down in.

It wasn’t in the car.

It was on the ground in front of the passenger door for all to see where it had fallen out of my purse when I got out this morning.

Had I waited ten more minutes there wouldn’t have been enough light left to see it there and I might well have stepped on it going to the car door to look. I’m just glad it was still there.

Thank you pomegranate silliness…

No water coming out of the air intake at the top of the sink? It’s the dishwasher, not the pipes.

Got that scheduled.

Off to the clinic, where I told the nurse dilating my eyes, My calendar says Dr M followed by a quick check by Dr. R but only Dr M shows on my online appointments and I did see R a few weeks ago when there was a problem. Will I be seeing both?

Oh yes, she assured me, we always have you see one and then briefly the other when you’ve had the two surgeries done in tandem like that.

Dr. M came in, was pleased with my progress, went to go and I confessed to having knit each of them a hat. And that I’d then kept on going, so, choose a color?

There were five (there was also a dark blue), with a sixth color on the needles.

He loved the dark green stripes. He was thrilled.

That was fun. So I waited for his colleague to come in.

And waited. And knitted. And waited. Eight rows.

A different nurse came in, flustered, not sure how I would take the awkward news that I’d wasted my time and saying, You don’t have an appointment with Dr. R. He’s seeing you in March!

That’s fine, I assured her. I explained about having confirmed with the original nurse but it’s no big deal–just, could I ask her one favor?

?

Could you take these to Dr. R and ask him to pick one? (I figured she could interrupt him at a more knowingly timely moment than I could.) Meantime I would go to the waiting room to get out of the way.

That instantly changed everything, and when she came back to me she was radiant.

I would have sent her off with one, too, but I was afraid of a contrast between that and the unknown nurse who’d given me understandable but wrong information that perhaps had tied up their room, and I let the thought go. Didn’t know her name, didn’t want to take the other one’s time chasing people down again.

Still wondering whether I got that right.

But she was already showing me that making him happy had made her happy. She made it be enough.

(Mark my calendar. March. Two nurses. Maybe more. Be ready.)

Our house is reminding me of the two-year-old Chevy we bought in the late 80’s that quickly got us introduced to every tow truck driver in town.

So.

Still waiting on the Speed Queen dealer to answer my I’m-no-longer-asking re dryer replacement. I sent off a firm note yesterday. A few hours later:

E:24, it said, and being the Bosch of us refused to go any further.

I cleaned the dishwasher filter again. I turned it off again. On again. Reboot.

It worked up to the same point as last night and then for the third time, that same error code. And we have our dairy-allergic daughter in town for a few days and really really don’t want cross-contamination happening–we need that dishwasher.

Not draining, explained their troubleshooter page, asking, Did you recently get a new disposal? Then the installer didn’t remove the cap.

No, but we had the entire plumbing under the kitchen sink replaced October 15.

Richard had no doubt that was it before I’d even Googled.

I didn’t remember the name of the plumber nor could I find his workup sheet. I was sweating this.

Yay blog: I found the date. Yay plumber: he’d sent me an email receipt.

I called, and if you know me you know how desperate I am to get this done to do that, but thankfully the person who answered had a deep voice and we muddled through.

The work had a 30 day warranty.

The guy hedged. I said point blank, Having it nineteen days out of warranty on an eight hundred dollar job bites.

He sounded almost relieved, like I’d just made up his mind for him, and said he’d send a guy out to do diagnosis first thing in the morning, no charge. He said something else, and I couldn’t make it out, and I am hoping hard for no surprises.

So we have to be ready for a repair guy at 8 a.m. who might not get here till close to when I have to leave for the eye doctor’s but Richard will be here and they’re coming.

XKCD today. I love how the older memories are in gray, the more recent in black and white and easier to see clearly. Pure poetry. I love the confirmation that his wife is still okay. Beautiful piece and very close to home.

Meantime, over here it looks like all systems are go! We’ve got us some memories to go make.

Scene: the bank, since I was in the neighborhood anyway and I needed to get this dealt with. We had had a very unwanted surprise bill from FedEx for a tariff fee on the heels of a delivery and it was a lot.

Then 47 played Taco Don (Trump Always Chickens Out) and that particular tariff, at least for a little while, disappeared.

FedEx sent us our hundred dollars back. Who knew it could work that way? Only, the check was made out to Self. Do not ask me why. The teller had to ask his manager because that was just too weird–but then this whole tariff/no tariff/who’s got the tariff nonsense is weird. We all shrugged a who knows? and they processed it.

So there we were and then the teller, who up to that point had seemed stressed and probably counting the hours till he could get out of there, said dutifully, Is there anything else I can help you with?

Well, I said: Could you make me a couple of pies?

He cracked up. He smiled warmly. He asked after my Thanksgiving and I wished him a happy one and it was so gratifying to be able to pay forward the gift yesterday from the single dad at church to someone else when they needed that.

A night of very little sleep (too much dark chocolate pie last night but it was good), a morning that started earlier than it had any right to even though it was our usual time, so so tired but it was time to get up.

A few minutes later I saw it before he did.

He had stepped on who knows what, but since he couldn’t feel it he didn’t notice it. It was even a whole new toe to worry about, not the old one. I followed the blood across the hall, across the carpeting, so much on the carpeting, and then where it had obviously started. It was bad.

I’m tired of collecting Southwest future travel do-overs.

He cleaned up his foot while I tried my best to clean the carpet. It was too early to be having to work that hard and that much. I did not succeed in getting it all. It was time to go, and we made it to church on time. Breathe. The meeting hadn’t started yet so I pulled out wool and needle and started casting on a hat because boy did I need my hands to switch to the language of happy anticipation.

He tried to tell me I should be setting up my phone for the Zoom caption. I told him I was doing this (waving the needle) for me. Which was nicespeak for (and we did talk it out over lunch later), I am just barely holding it together right now worrying about you and being frustrated with you and this is how I am not bursting into tears out of sheer fatigue and worry and yes you are right and I don’t want to hear it while I have these thirty more seconds to do this so zip it buddy.

Just then someone dropped a little notecard in his lap and smiled and continued walking on past.

I put my yarn away the moment it looked like the meeting was about to start and, for the sake of the both of us,  just immersed myself in the good spirit that others had brought to the moment. It was there, waiting for me to find myself in it again. And what a story one woman told of the power of Love and the redemption wrought in her life!

After the meeting, we finally opened that envelope.

It was a handwritten note. From a single dad.

Saying how much he enjoyed and admired Richard for this, me for that, and that he had just felt moved to say so out loud.

I sought him out afterwards and thanked him. I told him, You could not have known. You had no way to know. But that was the day we most needed what you took the time to give us. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I hadn’t signed into freecycle.org in months. Somehow it just felt like I should, and so I did today, wondering why I was wasting my time on this.

Wait.

Someone had posted two weeks ago that they were looking for some vinyl or linoleum flooring, not a lot, basically enough for a bathroom redo by the sound of it.

When we remodeled thirty-one years ago our contractor’s wife owned a candy shop and he had put an industrial-grade linoleum floor in it for her and then installed it in our kitchen and down the hall and bathrooms. Ten year warranty. Meant to last.

For thirty-one years we had a rolled up remnant of that stuff tucked away.

I hauled it out of there and gave it a look. Eleven inches at one end and five at the other were a waste of time–too yellowed, too kinked.

But the rest of it, from inside the roll? It laid almost flat with no effort and it would be easy to make it entirely so and the color looked great. Like new, which essentially it was. 48.5″x 98″ before cutting? I think they got the sixteen square feet they wanted.

I remember what it was like to want to do some work on the house while having to pay for that house when we were young and raising kids….

A minivan pulled up.

They were so happy to have it. I was so happy to see it literally gone for good.

The leaves, crinkled and brown, have all given way to the season on my zucchini plant.

So it was a surprise to look out the window this morning and see brilliant upturned yellow on it. I went outside to check: it had! It had bloomed! How?

But once I got close enough to really see it I saw the rest of the story. Something out there in the night had likewise been delighted to find a flower and nearly all of the lower side of it had been eaten clean off, leaving just the top and the inner edges of the sides to go Ta Dahhh!

I chuckled, glad that my plant was still providing sustenance to the world out there. It didn’t have to be for me.

So. Today the wound care doctor had him come in.

He told Richard the other guy was full of it. Don’t do it. A PCC line with antibiotics was his recommendation.

(Note that PCC lines have their own infection risks.)

Richard came home going, Who’s in charge??

Me, pointing out what he knew: Doing the other is permanent.

But after a few more minutes knitting and considering the thing, I went back over to him and made a pronouncement. YOU are. It’s your body.

Okay, wound guy had then said to him, You need to go back to the Infectious Diseases guy and have him….

He saw it coming and had already come to terms with it. I didn’t and it threw me. I’d thought, we fought that back once and we’ll do it again.

The wound care guy two weeks ago had said we’re done here and took him off the antibiotics he’d been on since August.

Four days later the bone infection came back. No (over the phone when he tried to be seen again) you’re fine. Yesterday the visiting nurse called the guy and read him the riot act from our kitchen and asked my sweetie, Who’s in charge of this anyway?!

Well, he saw that guy, and the podiatrist, the family medicine doctor, and the infectious disease guy and the answer was, nobody, as far as he could tell.

So today was all the everybody elses. One appointment turned into three with just enough time for him to surprise me with a text, hurry home and grab a quick bite and me for my retina appointment and then head back to the clinic.

Where, when it was my turn, they took pictures and then waited for my surgeon.

The before and after were up. I had been looking at repeats of the same image through two years of screenings–but wow! That one was WAY worse than those had been. No wonder I was having such a hard time seeing those last few months! I’d had no idea it had come that close to tearing through the retina. I had gotten seen and had had it taken care of just in time, and the recovery was and is much easier because of it.

There’s still a bit of red, though, and he wanted me to go back to full dose on the steroid drops and then start tapering off again. But he was pleased with my progress.

Richard, though.

Suddenly he was getting estimates of one week to three months and they’ll schedule it when they schedule it and let him know.

Any travel plans are entirely up in the air right now. I don’t know how long it takes to recover from a partial toe amputation but we’re about to find out. After all this time that we’d thought we wouldn’t have to. He’s totally okay with it. I’m trying to be.

But at least it’s only part of only one toe at this point, and that is far better than it was.

We picked up his new antibiotic on the way home.

Radiology department. They took him to the exam rooms for awhile. Sent him back to me. Made him wait. Made him drink something. Made him wait. Ran him through a CAT scan.

The waiting room was very small. There were five chairs, full most of the time; the receptionist let someone take the sixth chair next to him from time to time since no one else was on duty just then. Except for when there was.

I had two hours to knit quietly.

I had put on a green turtleneck this morning, and before we’d left had decided the only gerdan I had that really went with it was the huge sunflower one. (Photo is from when I got it.) It’s kind of loud, but–why not. It might make someone’s day. So I did.

Two women came in. They were clearly mother and daughter, the ages of mine and me.

The younger woman checked her mom in and settled her in a chair in the other corner, standing next to her.

And from there she glared at me.

I considered whether to offer her my seat. But the only place I could go other than where she was standing just then was behind the door swinging open, and I cannot stand for long periods of time and it would be weird to move over close to her mom in her place. There was no other spot, there was no room.

Just then they called Richard back, so hey, that makes it easy, there you go.

She tended to her mom a moment and then returned to glaring at me. Standing. She refused to come sit next to me.

Huh. Okay, whatever.

My knitting did not distract her eyes, though the receptionist or her mom did a few times. Right in the eyes. I’d never seen her before in my life. I was the only one she glared at and that glaring was what she wanted to do with her time. It struck me as unspeakably sad. And yet her mom smiled quietly at the staff and was clearly grateful for their efforts. I was glad I had wool and wood needing my attention and distracted myself with thoughts of some future happy recipient loving that shade and softness.

Finally they were called and the mom shuffled painfully, slowly down the hall with her daughter looking out for her. Good for her.

I mentioned them to Richard on the way home. They had passed him in the hallway, turned out, with the daughter translating for her mom.

He voiced the same thought I had had, the only one that made any sense: maybe they were Russian. Maybe they have a son or brother fighting.

We do have a number of Russian ex-pats in the area.

But why, I wanted to somehow ask them, would you find fault that a stranger supports people who don’t want to live under Putin’s murderous rule when you didn’t want to either and you got out?