Green Planet Yarn had a meet-and-greet today: TNNA, the Stitches-type get-together for wholesalers and yarn store owners, was going to be here this weekend and thus the owners of several yarn dyeing companies had agreed to come to Beth’s shop with samples of new lines and just to get to meet some of the people who actually use what they create.

My going would mean being at least an hour and a half late picking Richard up from work. He encouraged me not to worry about it and just go. (A co-worker offered him a ride home in the end.)

It wasn’t just that I wanted to see the yarns: I specifically wanted to thank the folks at Blue Sky Fibers. I’m sure I’ve told the story here before, but not recently I don’t think, so here goes.

I was in the early stages of working on my lace shawls book. Meantime, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee was coming to Berkeley for her first-ever book signing in California–Stash, I think was the name of the place–and Jocelyn and Cris and I carpooled together to go. After knowing Stephanie via the Knitlist since our kids had been little, I finally got to meet her for the first time.

Stash did a brisk business in books and yarn that night, and I came across some Blue Sky baby alpaca/silk that was both new and like nothing else out there. Wow. SO soft. Luminous, too, just gorgeous (and it is still one of the nicest yarns I know, all these years later.) I snapped up two skeins but definitely needed more to make a shawl.

Please, they told me: we know we have more of it in the back. We’re swamped. Can we just mail it to you in the morning?

Sure!

I got a very embarrassed phone call the next day: no, actually, they did not have any more, and there was about zero chance of getting an exact match on the next order. They were so sorry.

And that set off the great yarn hunt. I needed more and it needed to be that dyelot. There weren’t as many yarn stores online then nor that carried that particular yarn, but I called a few and emailed more and did what I could.

I’d seen ads in Interweave magazines for a particular shop back East that seemed to have a good inventory, and they said they would check and they asked for my phone number.

It did not occur to me to mention to them that I was three time zones away.

And thus the infamous story within the family of their starting the day by making sure I knew before I should head out for work that I had to keep looking.

Richard groaned awake in the dark, one of many times when being able to take my ears off at night has been nice for me but for him, not so much, and he reached over my head for the old Princess phone placed there on the small chance I might hear it ring if I really really had to.

“It’s your New York City boiler-room yarn pushers,” he growled as he shoved the handset my way at 5 a.m. “They want you to know they don’t have your dye lot.”

At that, I gave up and appealed to Blue Sky directly: did they have it? I was quite sure they didn’t do retail, but could I buy it from them anyway?

They actually had an exact match. I asked for two, they sent me three, and they refused to let me pay them a dime. Even when I protested.

I thanked them but it didn’t seem enough. Today was my chance.

Linda, the owner, was not there, but three of her staff were. As I found them one by one in the crowd, I showed them the shawl that had come of their generosity and gave them each an autographed copy of Wrapped in Comfort. Each one, independent of the others, asked to see what page it was on. They let me tell them what a difference they’d made to me and were delighted to take a fourth copy home for Linda.

Ran into old friends–including Jocelyn and Cris. Caught up a bit, had fun…

And noticed that one guy had been standing off by himself for awhile now and nobody was talking to him. Well that wouldn’t do, these things are supposed to be fun. Turns out he wasn’t a knitter. Turns out he was Michael, a businessman who was the husband of the Mrs. Crosby of Lorna’s Laces fame.

And as we talked, old friend and Green Planet employee Laura came by with a bag and offered me my pick. She worked the room and then came back towards me with another bag.

“It’s not my turn!”

She laughed. “Goodies for all! Take one!”

The first was a skein of Woolfolk from Blue Sky. The second was a bluegreen one-off dyeing of Shepherd’s Worsted from Lorna’s Laces, and I exclaimed to Michael over his wife’s beautiful work.

One brown hat and one bluegreen cowl as the next carry-around projects. (I had my oversized afghan project shoved halfway down into my tote, where it did not want to stay. It was a little ridiculous. But it did prove that I do like blues and greens together.)

And then the event was officially done and it was time to beat it home quick before the next downpour.

Forty to forty-five mph winds and a total deluge of water all at once. It sounded very much like being back East when a hurricane is coming at you. The water in the street was a fast river, rushing wave upon white-crested wave of water–and we’re on a dead end street. That had all come straight down from the sky. Whoosh! What looked like a tiny tornado touching down made the water suddenly twist and kick up high in one spot and it splashed back down in a twirl.

So I wrote about it on Facebook and within twenty minutes it was like a toddler with his fingers in his mouth looking up with a half-innocent smile, going, Who me? It was still raining but nothing like that.

The resident former Red Cross Disaster Services volunteer says that a third of an inch of rain in an hour causes flood advisories here. We’ve had close to an inch today with half of it dumped out in that one big fast blast.

We have four more days of heavy rain and two after that of the storms petering out.

Remembering the storm of ’98 when Richard and Sam manned the Red Cross shelter, where a friend of mine was after having woken up in the night to find her bed at the ceiling. When kids boogie-boarded down the street.

We are happily on a rise, outside the flood plain nearer the Bay, and not close to a creek.

(And this is why I tried to get the pruning all done yesterday.)

A footnote at the beginning: yes I asked her directly probably twenty years ago and she said he was fine but it was clear that being reminded of his illness was not something she wanted brought up, or at least not just then, so I respected that and never did again.

Today we gathered ’round to say goodbye to Lorna. Two weeks ago she was still playing the piano in church at 91. She had a stroke last weekend and held on a few days so her family could arrive to say goodbye, and then she was off to be with her long-missed George.

I was talking to one of her sons after the funeral and mentioned her elementary-school grandson who had lived with her for a year while fighting cystic fibrosis. (Having Stanford Hospital nearby was a good thing.) I had always wondered. Had he lived?

That’s Jeremiah, and he’s my son, the man said, surprised and gratified.

Yes, Jeremiah! He was a grade ahead of my oldest. She was in fourth and he in fifth that year.

The man thought a moment. He’s 35–he corrected himself without having been wrong the first time: He’ll be 36 this year.

Will be is a wonderful thought all unto itself, and in the context of why we were where we were we both knew it. I told him, Please tell him that Sam’s mom asked after him; he may not remember me but I imagine he’ll remember her.

He was very touched. It meant a lot to him.

I did not say that I remembered Jeremiah going through such a terrible emotional struggle with his disease that year and how he’d needed all the support he could get, as did they all. Now, whatever all else life might throw at him, he can always remember that someone remembered him from so long ago and that that someone still cared. Nor am I alone in that.

I’m so glad I went. We never know all the ways in which we might be exactly what someone else needs right then.

Or the dad, for that matter.

I am suddenly realizing I have no pictures, only memories.

My oldest was a new 6th grader and had enrolled in band. She needed a clarinet, and a place that rents them to kids like her was starting off the school year by selling some of their old stock over the weekend. Buying used, if at all possible, sounded a lot more cost-effective than renting endlessly and less worrisome than having a kid be responsible for something expensive someone else owned.

We knew Al had been in a band in the Army so he seemed a logical person to ask; Richard called him that Saturday morning and asked, How do you tell a good one?

Al, surprised: Why, you play it!

Richard: (oh well).

Al: Where’s the store?

Richard: Oh, it’s way down in San Jose…

Al: I’ll see you there in thirty minutes.

He must have walked right out the door.

Richard and Sam and Al all met up in that music store, Al picked out the best of the lot, and then asked what we were doing for lessons.

Richard, a little on the spot: The school…

Al: That won’t do. And he turned to Sam and made her a deal: if she would bake him bread every week he would teach her a lesson. But she would have to practice. He told us he wanted her to be personally invested in those lessons and if she had to work for them then she would value them.

And that is how Sam learned to bake bread in sixth grade. Some batches, well, Al told us years later, he took his little granddaughters to the duck pond and let them toss crumbs to the mallards, a tradition in town since the 1930s when what was envisioned as a small pool for kids, un-chlorinated because it was right next to the Bay, quickly turned into one for the birds and that was that.

Grandkid time. It’s all good.

Al had no way to know at the time that Richard’s then-employer had been laying off workers by the thousands during what was the first dot-com bust and his group was quite sure that, even though they were actually bringing in revenue, they didn’t have much time left. We were cutting all expenses to the bone. (With reason, as it turned out.)

And here was Al, saying he wanted to be paid in bread and that Sam had to make it and that was all the payment he was willing to accept.

The band teacher was so impressed at her progress that he asked her a few years later if she would take up the oboe for the high school orchestra come the next year? They needed one and he knew he could trust her to do the work to learn the instrument well.

She did, and Michelle started sixth grade and started taking clarinet lessons from Al. And saxophone. By this time we certainly had no problem affording lessons but he refused: he said Michelle had to learn how to bake bread too. For her own sense of accomplishment, and besides, he liked having homemade bread!

What we didn’t know was that Al had been putting in for retirement right about the time Richard called him that first Saturday morning and had been thinking that what he’d like to do next was to share his passion for music with kids. But he’d never taught lessons before. Sam fell into the picture at just the right time as his test case to see if he liked doing this as much as he thought he would. And he did. He ended up teaching a lot of kids. And a lot more than music–he was a deeply kind, compassionate man who taught my children what they wanted to be like when they grew up.

I got back at him, a little bit; I knitted for his wife and I sent my piano tuner to him a few times till he protested enough that I let go. But those two quickly became friends and I’m glad for that. Two very good people blessing each other’s lives.

Al grew up with a lot of fruit trees in the back yard because in the Depression his father wanted to always be able to feed his children. Plant the trees, do a little work, and let G_d help you help your own.

And so Al had a lot of fruit trees in his own back yard, which was not big but he packed a surprising amount in.

He told me something once about his peach trees and I was surprised: a neighbor down the street had told me right after we moved in here that peach leaf curl disease is endemic here and the fog and morning cool create the perfect conditions for the disease and it kills them just like it killed his, that you cannot grow peaches here.

Al roared with laughter: Of COURSE you can grow peaches here!

And that is how it all got started over at my house. The peaches, then the cherry, then the pear, then the sour cherry and the fig and the mandarin oranges and another apple besides the ones the house came with… Oh and yeah, the mango. Because if you can grow peaches, of course!

Al wasn’t in church on Sunday. He hadn’t been driving in quite some time but he always got a ride. But not this time; he wasn’t up to going.

Word came in this morning.

Al had quietly and peacefully passed away yesterday evening. It was not expected. It was not really unexpected.

He will be sorely, deeply missed. We are so much better off in so many ways for having had him in our lives. G_dspeed, dear friend.

Which surrounded us as the catamaran floated across Prince William Sound last June.

Slowly, slowly, a glacial pace… And the interior portion will end with two rows of white just like that.

I tried to capture the texture of the thing with the camera; I’ve started to think of it as the bubble wrap blanket, although the intent was more towards an idea of tops of trees in the Alaskan snow. Even though it’s knitted pretty tightly, I think it will still flatten out once it’s washed but I am going to enjoy it like this while I can.

The back seems snowshoe-y to my eyes. (Scroll down to see their) Montagnais-style, perhaps.

A few years ago an enormous old eucalyptus tree, one of many in a long line on the hillside, fell across the expressway near Richard’s office at morning rush hour and fortunately hit no one. We saw it from the other side of the divided road, which was heavily littered with smashed bits from the top. Meantime, southbound traffic doing 45 would just crest the hill and there it was right there–we saw the first few terrified drivers doing abrupt u-turns in front of it and heading back going the wrong way, knowing it was rush hour and the speeds and the danger and the cops got that direction shut down immediately. I was impressed.

I have kept a wary eye on those tall flimsy trees on rainy days ever since, and part of another came down at evening rush hour today: again, the authorities hadn’t gotten there yet when we went by, and since traffic could make it around that one it surely wasn’t on the immediate list this time. They are swamped.

We waited at the next light ahead just barely out of the reach of yet another, which was leaning hard over the lines of cars below as gust after gust threatened to javelin us all with it. It felt a lot like being in an east coast hurricane. That trunk was not upright anymore. I do not expect to see it still standing come the morning.

And we’ve got it easy. We have power and heat and no flooding. They’ve clocked winds at 173 mph and there’s water everywhere: we haven’t had this much rain from Oct 1 to this date since 1922. A mudslide on Highway 17 near Richard’s aunt took out the road and an ABC7 news van (and it amuses me that none of the other news outlets identified it as such, only ABC7 did, whereas it was very clear what it was. But I guess you don’t give a boost to the competition? I mean, that’s a heck of a way to get a scoop. I can just imagine, Here comes the mountain right there, do you see it Bob? Bob? Apparently nobody was hurt, so it’s easy to joke about.)

We are not near a creek and this is a good thing right now.

Tomorrow, when it hopefully stops raining for a bit, I will go put the new (it came! Yay!) remote-read temperature sensor with the mango tree and go back to my happy old habit of glancing up at the monitor on the wall every time I walk by to see how it’s doing.

At this point, the frost covers are doing double-duty as just a bit of protection from rain-overdosed roots. Yeah. As if.

And if the sky holds its breath long enough we’ll go up on the roof and see if we can find out what made that nice loud boom up there. No sign of fallen tree that we can tell from the ground, and besides, we already cut down all the ones that threatened to two years ago.

On our property, anyway.

Oh wait, there is that one last one that could have grown over the house again by now. Guess what it is? A thick trunk, but, a eucalyptus.

A surprise gift from Holly Saturday had me trying to find out what this was called and a little about it. She had bought it from a Romanian craftsman and that’s all we had to go on; she didn’t know either.

My sister-in-law, whose family fled WWII-era Latvia, told me, “It is like the Latvian kokle. You strum it, holding down the strings that aren’t played.”

There are 16 pairs of strings–wouldn’t you run out of fingers? I imagine if I said that to my Aunt Joyce, who teaches harp, she would get a good laugh out of it.

With thanks to Deb for the name, pictures of kankles looked closer to what we had.

After those first two I started clicking on more things under the letter k on their Global Instruments List to see videos of them being played. There are so many variants there, and more to be discovered as I knit.

Listening to that music, Holly, are you sure you want us to keep this? Now that you know what it can do. Beautiful.

Edited to add, Holly! I think I found it!

The forecast was for yet another major storm today–there were flash flood warnings for the entire Bay area, and the week to come will bring more. I remember our Hundred Year flood nineteen years ago, where I had to drive across the Bay and the water came right up to the end of the bridge (not to mention my windshield wipers died in the middle of the deluge on the freeway.) That night a friend of mine here would wake up to find her bed floating near the ceiling.

Plans were plans and we weren’t going to let go of happy anticipation that easy. We headed north to see Holly and George.

There was a little rain at the start and a little at the end but it was actually dry most of the drive there.

I am so very very glad we got to spend the time. (And I got to see Bill’s Hat before Bill did, whoever he is. He’s really going to like it.)

Gradually, looking out their picture window, those clouds were getting lower and darker–it was time to go.

There was a little rain at the start and a little at the end but it was actually dry most of the drive home.

I put a single cover over the mango tree just in case it got colder than expected–the rain itself is always cold here but it brings warmth with it–and marveled that I still felt no drops.

And then, with everybody safely inside for the evening, the sky really, really, really let us have it.

What is wrong with this picture?

When I knit this Monday I never even saw it. It was the first time I’d picked the project up since I broke my hand mid-November, having been expressly forbidden to in the beginning by the osteopath when I described it as heavy.

Tuesday morning I caught my foot on something immediately, and I mean immediately, after I’d taken the protective velcro splints off my hand to step into the shower and fell and landed with that very same finger a bit hyper extended.

But at least it was into the clothes in the closet for a soft landing. But so I didn’t dare knit for the last two days to let that calm down. I did not want it to hurt. If it didn’t hurt I didn’t have to tell the doctor. I did not want to start the whole ten week broken finger and knuckle routine from the beginning again.

Today was, yeah, yeah, I’m fine, c’mon, let’s get to it.

And there for all my good intentions it stared back at me just like that.

Dang.

Willing it to just not be like that didn’t work.

I Lady McBeth’d it. Out %*# spots!

Anyone who’s ever knitted blister stitch, I can just hear you going, Tell me you didn’t…!

I did.

I ripped out the two white rows and then I kept right on going through the next four green ones. All that needed to be gone was the white ones. All the green that was ever knitted on this thing has just been plain old solid stockinette stitch–the white interrupts it later. I ripped out an hour’s worth of extra work for no good reason other than my visual memory brain damage.

Well, it is what it is and you work with the brain you’ve got. I do like that Rios. I made a point of feeling how soft it is, of thinking how good it would be for the baby, how easy on the parents since they could launder it and how it would full together a bit when they do to help baby proof the stitches from him just a bit. Just a bit. (Yeah right. Remember Parker’s blankie after his brother was born?)

And so I knitted it back up, and then the next section, and now I’m on the one after that. My goal is to finish one 100g skein every three days, if my hand will let me. It’s coming along.

So today the House of Representatives, having decided that, Ethics Committee? We don’t need no stinkin’ Ethics! found that having the voters storm the gates by the thousands and thousands in protest meant that, Oh wait, what we meant to say was of course we do!

Meantime, we had one last Pilgrim butternut squash from the garden. It had been sitting on the kitchen counter for months. There was no way my still-broken right knuckle was coming anywhere near the size of knife and amount of oomph it would take for me to break into that thing and I didn’t like that stringy variety enough to ask Richard to bother–we’d tasted those.

It was left for last because it had a bit of a Death Star look to it: a squirrel had taken a bite out of the bulbous end when it was quite young and it had crusted over and healed while the rest of the bulb part swelled and grew huge around it. I figured there was no squirrel spit inside, but still…

Sunday, the Merc ran this column. Don’t slice your fingers. Just put the whole thing in the hot oven like a baked potato. Simple.

Well, that would finally get it off my counter, at the very least. I tried it. No foil, it didn’t deserve it and it kinda came in its own anyway, I just threw it in and on second thought grabbed it back and put a cookie sheet underneath. Good thing.

I’d felt a bit conned by the ad copy claiming it was one of the best-tasting.

Well let me tell you. It is now. Or at least til I grow me some Walthams later, as someone suggested here for next time. But man that was good! It steamed and caramelized itself and the shell peeled off like paper. Still slightly stringy inside, but I could Cuisinart the leftovers (it had been six pounds) into a pumpkin pie that wouldn’t need much or any sugar added; it’s got its own this way.

It did try to live up to that Death Star persona one last time, though: it exploded at the flaw straight down onto the cookie sheet, where the sugars blew up like a marshmallow and then blackened into a finely molded dust while the smell let you know that that squash really did need to come out of there!

Oooh, but the rest of it…! I am definitely growing squashes again and I wasn’t sure of that before.

I am reminded of the time when I was a young mom of thinking I would finally put the actual fillet knife someone had given us to its purported use and I bought a live fish from an Asian market. I chose it, they cleaned it, and then I painstakingly tried to follow James Beard’s instructions on how to carve the scales off. I spent quite a bit of time ever so carefully hacking away while trying not to damage the thing and finally, feeling like an utter failure, looked at how little I’d gotten done and how bad it looked, said nuts to this, and simply threw foil around it and let the oven take care of it while I caught up with whatever my kids had been getting into during my distraction.

I pulled it out of there with the skin falling away with the foil. The idea of trying to ditch the scales and keep the skin for the perfect restaurant presentation had been ridiculous all along. It didn’t have to be the hard way at all.

Fish, squash, and Congressmen: they can come out right after all, all you have to do is surround them with heat.

Being on hold for ten minutes on the left while single-handedly taking down the tree with the right: it takes balls.

Yesterday the young parents across the street were out in front with their small children, a girl old enough to proudly ride her red tricycle (cute helmet!) and her little brother, who is old enough to run and grin but not old enough to do much in the way of speech yet, or at least not so’s he’d let on to non-family.

They saw me and waved an enthusiastic hi! and she wheeled and he followed. I sat down on the sidewalk so I would be looking up at them and the little girl promptly got off her bike and sat down too so that she was looking up at me anyway. The little boy stood to the other side of me and grinned and grinned, his specialty.

I had been claimed. I was utterly charmed.

I showed them the yellow oxalis flower buds with the clover-y leaves that take over our front this time of year and told her, They close up at night or when there’s a shadow but when the sun shines on them they open right up and you can see them. You are welcome to pick some any time.

She gathered a bouquet. He watched intently, not missing a thing.

So this morning with Christmas vacation week still in effect the little ones wanted to come over and say hi and Richard told me, That’s the doorbell.

We said hi and I ran to go get my hearing aids. They don’t go in till the hair’s dry but that had been an hour earlier.

Meantime, the little brother had seen my small-boy-centric basket of toys near the door and when I came back around the corner he was playing with a sturdy Tonka digger truck in delight. The mom was apologetic that the kids had gotten past her as she and Richard had chatted, but no, no, you’re very welcome, come on in!

We had a grand time till the mom had to say a no to the daughter and there was a tiny meltdown and they headed off.

You know? I’d been looking for the motivation to do a major once-over on the house today after all that intense knitting that had allowed other things to slide the past few days. The floor is mopped and swept now, the bathrooms cleaned, the kitchen scrubbed, even half the fridge. Not that we’ll remember any of what wasn’t done when they came–just the joy.

The drive band is askew on my spinning wheel. And I can’t wait for them to come back.

Ends needed to be woven in, seams sewn, stitches picked up… My favorite tasks. Not. And I’d lost my deadline.

So instead of finishing the sweater, I spent the day knitting the cowl I had cast on earlier yesterday when I didn’t know yet that that yarn rescue was about to happen.

I had one cone of 64/36 fine cashmere/fine cotton (on sale through December–note they’re on England time, 150g/$18 ppd) and had wound it into three equal balls and knit them together. No scouring, no plying, just go.

There was no way I could do it in a day. I wanted it done today. It’s not large but it’s done. Helped by the fact that I landed on my knee outside along with the same part of my upper foot I broke six weeks ago, sliding out from under me the same way. This time icepacks made a difference so I don’t think I broke anything. Sit! Knit!

Measured before blocking it’s 9″ long and 22″ wide and it will be growing larger in just a moment. What surprised me is how solid it looks but how light it feels, so I weighed: it’s 40g, and I have 114g left. (Colourmart tends to wind a little extra on.) For my $18 I could get three cowls out of this and even without having scoured it first, even with the mill oils still in, it feels like–this is cashmere. And someone who likes bright colors is really going to love this one.

(Edited to add, one really ought to look up a new word before posting it but in this case we’re safe. “Smalt,” their description of the color, is “glass colored blue with cobalt oxide” or a dye made from that glass when ground up. That fits it quite well.)

This didn’t get finished in time.

In part because I ran out of yarn. I had made a baby hat, weighed it, measured it, and thought yeah I have plenty to make a matching sweater. Well but no I didn’t: there was no third skein different-dyelot emergency backup like I thought, either. Oops.

I searched my stash. There was more Malabrigo Rios but there wasn’t any Bobby Blue nor one that would do as a contrast color.

I do love that I got to use the musk ox needle (bought as a souvenir there last summer) as both stitch holder and working needle on this particular project. It needed to be part of it.

I’d started at the back, added and subtracted for the sleeves and then come down the front. I had not planned on a cardigan but somehow in the adding and subtracting stitches I discovered the knit 2 purl 2 was going to turn into a knit 4 at dead center–man. Someone goofed. (Note that I was totally winging the whole thing–there is no pattern.)

Typing that out it hits me that I could have added two more stitches and turned it into a cable going down from the V. If I’d thought of it in time. I would probably have just made it but with zero left to finish that neck a little more neatly.

Adding a button band and around the neck meant more ribbing and more yarn and I just plain didn’t have it. I would need to see the colors in person and had no way to get to a shop. Post-concussion, I’m not driving yet.

So it didn’t go into Michelle’s luggage to be proudly hand-delivered to her big sister and brother-in-law in Alaska tonight.

I did show off to Richard that all those funny angles I’d been knitting actually looked like a baby sweater now.

We all piled into the car and he asked, Which airport?

SFO.

Oh, okay, not San Jose, good thing I asked.

We were almost there when he asked me, Do you want to go to your yarn store in South San Francisco on the way home?

Me, surprised: Yes! Sure! Thank you! It hadn’t even occurred to me or I’d have brought it with! (Thinking, this not-driving thing gets SO old and here he’ll be taking me to the very place that dyelot came from!) I opened my phone and checked their hours. We were good.

And that is how once again we ended up at Cottage Yarns together at rush hour to Kathryn’s surprise. Remember those skeins of Bobby Blue I bought to go into stripes in that afghan? I asked her. They weren’t bright enough. She nodded. I did a hat and sweater instead–I need contrasting, or something, for the button band.

She knew right where the Bobby Blue was and opened the bag with the same dyelot mine had come from.

And we were good to go. And did. And drove home in the mildest rush hour week of the year.

Monday morning, we picked up the new walker in San Jose in time to head over for Betty’s birthday party with hers and mine stuffed in the car so that I could return hers with thanks. She may never use it again but she needed the hope that our expecting that she would could offer her. Our birthday girl was 92.

We parked on the street in front of the facility. It was a large assisted-living place with a step-up unit for those who could no longer do much for themselves, and Betty had been moved to that side whose front door now faced us.

Richard went for her red one and I reached for mine. Getting the black one out of the car, it was new and stiff and didn’t want to open back up. I had no idea why; I knew they were supposed to be able to lock closed but I hadn’t done that because I didn’t know how yet, and as I puzzled over the thing a moment Richard came around the car and started to try–just as three women coming off their shift with housekeeping badges on their pink uniforms saw us and rushed down the driveway to come help.

They didn’t actually know any more than we did; how could a rollator be hard? But it was just then and we got some good giggles in together while trying. At last the seat support straightened out and we were able to be on our way, having just made impromptu friends.

Every person we met inside was just like that–loving, eager to help, not the least jaded but rather tender and gracious towards each person under their care. I had no idea a nursing home could be like that but it was about as ideal as it could be.

If I ever end up in such a place I want to end up in such a place.