Before church started, I was enjoying some of my favorite little kids there running around a woman about my age who turned out (it was an easy guess) to be their grandmother. First I asked the two-year-old, Is that your grandma?

He stopped and looked at her with big eyes and then at me with a puzzled expression that said, Well who else would she be? How could you not know this?

Their dad was giving one of the talks.

Things I never knew, though I’ve known them for years. Before he and his wife had married they’d found out she had a brain tumor. Well then it was something they would face together, and they did, but they were sure that one outcome would be that there would not be a chance to have children.

Sometimes, though… Not everybody gets to have the blessings they fervently wish for, but sometimes…

They have two little boys and now a newborn girl and a blessedly normal life these years later.

And they know how good they have it. The rest of us came away more grateful for all that we have, too.

How else could we be? May we never forget this.

Delete a bajillion junk gmail messages from my Mac and the phone takes pictures again. May all our problems be so easily solved.

My friend Phyllis introduced me to the annual Harvest Festival in San Jose years ago and today was the day. Mel and Kris  are always there and that’s reason enough for me to go, and time with Phyl, too? Hey. Count me in.

So we made a beeline for them and the four of us chatted for a little while. Would they be willing to hold my purchases so we didn’t have to carry the heavy bag everywhere? Of course.

Phyl wanted to make sure I got to see everything and so we did, circling back at last to our friends. A pitcher, a large serving bowl, a soup bowl with a handle (so now I have two, which makes more sense than just one) and a small kid-size mug. Really pretty stuff, all of it.

I was at home pulling each item at a time carefully out of its newspaper wrappings when one of their business cards fell out onto the floor. My hands were full so I didn’t get to it immediately.

A minute or two later, a second one fluttered down. I grinned and picked them both up–and somehow happened to turn one of them over.

I’d been so worried over trying to write my name legibly on the credit card slip with that broken hand that I never even saw what the amount had come to.

They totally got me.

My favorite part of Thanksgiving? (Well, there were several, but here you go.)

Our kids are nearly as old as Aunt Mary Lynn’s kids, so they grew up together and definitely relate to each other.

You never know, though, where a Facebook algorithm is going to take anybody on any given day, so I asked the ones who’d arrived late, Did you hear Sam’s news?

“No, what?” with faces searching mine for a clue good or bad.

A heartbeat’s pause. “Mother’s Day.”

That’s all it took. I wish she could have heard those two long sharp astonished gasps in unison and then the whooping for joy for her. Yup, they totally instantly got it. Meantime, someone else was explaining to “the man who is calling upon” their sister who was meeting some of the family for the first time that this was something their cousin had thought she could never have, and so he was really happy for her, too (we really like this guy.)

Meantime, that impish grin I’d tried to suppress just might have tipped them off.

A friend at church saw my cast and chuckled ruefully and told me, “Yeah, I’ve been debating going in. I may have broken my elbow ice-skating yesterday.”

I said something about taking good care of it if he did, but I think what really got him to go in and get it checked was simply acknowledging the thing out loud.

Turns out, yes, it was.

Ah, the slings and errors of outrageous fortune…

So, what I was going to write about Wednesday before life so rudely interrupted that night. Let the one-handed hunt and peck begin.

Earlier that day I did a quick Target run that required I look for things at the far opposite ends of the store.

And that is how I ran into a mom with two kids in one of those huge red double-decker-ish carts with multiple seatbelts they have there.

She was highly stressed. Her little guys started to whine and cry, and they were all spiraling.

It didn’t help that here was this weirdo lady who’d stopped right there in the aisle and was fishing through her tote bag, almost in the way, and what on earth was that about.

(Pink, no, c’mon, boyish!)

There–two finger puppets, both of them white and black. I offered them to the mom.

She was speechless. She was thrilled. Her boys picked right up on the change and were suddenly quiet, watching–and then sitting up and happy as she handed them each one.

Did you MAKE these?!

No, women in Peru did, I confessed as I turned to go.

Wait! Are you–? She didn’t want to ask the question in a way that would sound presumptuous and was struggling for what to say because this was all so not what she was prepared for.

Merry Christmas! I grinned back over my shoulder.

Got to the checkout. Of course I picked the line that took forevvvvvver. Man that guy was slow.

When suddenly I was glad I was still there. I pulled my cart out of the line to go to another mom who was also struggling not to snap and her baby was fussing.

She was adorable.  About a year old. The pink flamingo got its moment.

A head suddenly popped up from the seat at the lower front part of the cart, a toddler boy with blond curls curious as to what was going on.

Oh! You’ve got another one! as another finger puppet came out. When this mom asked, I explained about the women being able to put food on the table and everybody wins. Happy Birthday! (Which is how I try to remember to always say it–everybody has birthdays.) I told her, I had four kids in six years.

Oh! So you know!

OH yeah! I grinned.

Back to the line.

But this time my attention got called back by three voices: the mom’s, the little boy’s, and a waving baby giving it her best try: “Thank you!”

And ever since, I’ve wondered if those two moms with the two little kids each and identical mom-carts saw knit finger puppets on the other kids’ hands and became instant friends right there in the store.

Actually two small breaks, the orthopedist told us. Off with the splint, on with the cast. (But I liked the splint.  I could take it off when I had to.)

He wanted to cast the whole hand but I cannot, cannot, sorry, I tried, do the ileostomy thing one-handed, so he left three fingers free. (What on earth do people do who are worse off than me?)

Which is still a pain. But: I didn’t break my left hand. I can hold the cane that needs to be on my left side to counter the balance damage from the ’00 car accident, where it has to be, and so I can walk. A little carefully, given that I go by visual and tactile feedback to keep up and down figured out and that there’s a constant distracting storm of input from my right hand–that cast is tight.

I can manage.

As long as you don’t ask me to open any screw top lids (almost went next door but gave up) or to plant that new amaryllis bulb that’s sprouting like crazy in the toasty warm house. (To self: toldja you should have done them all the moment they arrived.)

The funny part is that last Thursday the endocrinologist went over my bone scan at my annual appointment and told me that if I fall, to fall on my hand.  Hips are much harder to heal, hands are a lot faster. Put my hand out to catch my fall.

And I thought, like anyone has a choice in the moment it’s happening?

So there you go: I was just following doctor’s orders.

Typing left handed.  Slipped on mud in dark do still have teeth after picking/spitting mud out of them iced hand didn’t help called urgent care got told yes come got there apologizing for coming in four min before closing they splinted swollen finger–bones look okay though why did they ask about my head oh right of course they gave me info on head injuries and it took till just now to remember the word radiologist. Wasn’t in. Will call.

And Richard is my hero. Took good care of me.

Rueful.  Not what I planned. But the new Rios Solis yarn came with the mail about 7 pm and it’s a wonderful match: now I can finish that baby afghan and I wound the first one up immediately right before I went in the backyard because it’s really getting cold and an extra frost cover was going to be a necessity. (I did get it over the tree.)

Oh wait.

p.s. Earlier this evening while doing the first covering up the mango for the night–at sunset, reasonably, when there was enough light–I moved a board away that had been part of a border along the edge of the plants but had come loose with exposed nails (how did it get turned nails side up?) and I decided it had given up all pretense of being decorative, it was a hazard. Out.

And that is why, three hours later, I landed on soft mud only. My face would have landed right at those nails.

—–

UPDATE 10:20 am. They called a few minutes ago. Fracture of fifth knuckle.

Slower growth than summer’s but still coming along there.

Meantime, the neighbors kept a compost pile for years near the other side of the fence from my mango tree.

They weren’t trying to be part of the amateur beekeeper trend, but one day a swarm liked that spot and moved right on in. I don’t think they try to harvest any honey, they’re just glad to be doing their part in supporting the population. Even if inadvertently.

Which, when they told me, explained why I get so many.

Now that the weather is chilly at night a few of those honeybees are getting their feet snagged on my frost covers again, not quite making it back to the hive for the night. Or sometimes it looks like they just got there when I arrive in the morning.

I can’t pull them off. Too close to the stingers and I don’t want to dismember the poor things. I don’t want to walk across the yard to put the cloths away and have a bunch of upset bees around me, either. So I give the underside of the cloth a good pat with an extra layer or three of fabric between us to free them, one by one; a flick if that didn’t do it.

It was good and sunny by the time it was warm enough for the day’s grand unveiling and I grabbed the big straw hat by the back door on my way out.

And so the usual routine. Six this time–off you go. Sometimes they fly free, sometimes they plummet, needing energy and warmth or (I hope not) dead. But always, always, they are ever so polite about it to the big human thwacking around their feet.

Most of today’s simply fell to the ground. The birds would soon be checking for snacks.

Stepped just inside as I shut the door behind me while reaching for my hat.

I had just long enough to wonder what burr-type thing had fallen from where to have landed on my hat or was it falling apart? My favorite! But I had seen no such thing moments earlier and it didn’t feel like broken straw edges.

Nor do straw edges bounce up and down in your hand in agitation as one’s hand closes to grasp them. Mine quickly opened and I stared, and one upset honeybee, very much invigorated and very much alive, made its quick escape to parts still unknown within the house.

And still it hadn’t stung me for all I’d put it through.

May I be as forgiving and slow to anger against the stings of yesterday’s election. I can only pray.

Remember when I was celebrating Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s great news about her first grandchild being on the way and how the joy of it triggered a whole round of nesting-instinct housecleaning here?

Two days later we got this surprise photo from our daughter Sam and her husband. 

Tonight was the annual Scout dinner and dessert auction.

There were a lot of really good home-baked desserts on that table and a lot of people bidding on them; it went on for awhile. I pulled out my knitting so my hands and my eyes would clearly be busy engaged in doing something else and not letting myself angle for Andrea’s chocolate caramel cake–it hit $110 and deserved it but there was no way. My own *two tortes together pulled down $95, less than last year but no small amount.

Someone across the room whom I didn’t know saw me and pulled out her own knitting. And so when it was over and I went and admired her work and introduced myself.

English was a bit of a struggle for her, although it seemed to me that she was better at it than she thought she was, and I explained that I’m hearing impaired–it wasn’t her.

She asked me where I was from.

“Washington, DC.”

“No–where are you from.”

I wasn’t sure what she was getting at.

She clarified. “What country?”

I laughed. “England, about 400 years ago. Oh, and Sweden, for my great great great (great?) grandfather.” (There were random other add-ons after the Mayflower but I wasn’t going to burden her with the whole spreadsheet.)

She laughed, “I’m from Hong Kong.” Then she proudly pointed out her grandsons, who were clearly, like me, a bit of everyone from everywhere.

We had cowls on our needles at about the same point in progress. Hers was a mobius. Mine laid flat.

——-

*And there were two more in the fridge, one not-good-enough-for-company slightly overbaked plain chocolate, one hazelnut chocolate left over from a party I **planned for but had to miss. We really didn’t need any more desserts around here for the moment.

**Because no matter what that map program said, road A did not connect through to road B and there was no telling where it was and after much back-and-forth searching and mileage I gave up and went home (hey, hazelnut torte for us.) Next time.

Did not make it to Cottage Yarns before my appointment, and after, it was just too close to rush hour for that kind of distance.

So I started a new cowl project for the waiting room beforehand even though I’m usually a single-issue knitter.

My gastroenterologist had retired and this was the getting-to-know you with someone new and to get established as her patient before her practice gets full. So far I’ve had pretty good luck on the Crohn’s staying away post-op but you never know.

She spent a lot of time going over my chart with me and asked a lot of questions. She was thorough. (And, in a quick aside, she liked that yarn on my needles.)

Had I ever had a throat endoscopy done? I nodded. Who did it? she asked.

You, I grinned. In the hospital.

Oh wow! Oh so I did!

We totally hit it off. She mentioned that she loves and wears that shawl…and I thanked her but reminded her a friend of mine had knit it to thank her for her part in taking care of me when I’d been so ill in ’09. Ever since, I’d wanted her to have something from me, too–as I pulled a ziploc from my purse such that she could just see the colors inside. Pick one.

She chose the one I so much expected she would and that I had expressly knit for her. The Shibui Maai cowl. (The color is Imperial. Sorry I never took a better photo nor one of it finished.)

I told her that that was the last skein I bought at Purlescence before they closed.

Purlescence closed?

Yes, they did.

She’s a knitter. That flash of regret in her eyes at the news said it all. She stroked her new cowl and exclaimed over its intense softness and told me I didn’t have to do that.

May I, though?

She laughed and gave in and the way she loved that little bit of knitting and felt all that I’d hoped to convey with it was all that a knitter could ever hope for. I’m in good hands in her care–and she in mine.

She didn’t let me leave without a hug.

Y’know, other than the Christmas lights in the palm trees one of the strangest things about California when we first moved here was that the sun set at the beach.

But here’s another. I tried to capture it on camera and barely sorta maybe did if you squint hard enough: it’s that the snow flurries come after the first rains. And upside down.

We used to turn off the lights at night in New Hampshire and sit with our very small children in our laps watching the flakes fall, music playing softly in the background; George Winston’s December album was one, memorably.

But here, they rise from the ground all beautifully white and a-flutter and twirl upwards in the breeze.

Dang termites.

Playing a little with some Shibui Maai.

Photo two is closest to the color. Edit off left and right edges and what would remain reminds me of how in junior high we used to write on a piece of paper and fold it over and over till we had a numbered four-sided little toy you could pop over your hands.

Then you’d go ask a friend to pick a number. You would waggle the squares back and forth to the rhythm of your voice in answer; then stop, unfold the little flap that had the number they’d chosen, and there would be the great reveal as to what was written underneath. 1, 3? 4, 2? Life, the universe, and everything, there you go, the wisdom of our then-ages.

What did we call those things?

You know how, when you have a bad bug, things just kind of slide for awhile there?

Yeah, and it was getting to me. And so tonight the kitchen floor is scrubbed, the sink is scrubbed, the dishes are done, the mail is tossed, the yarn is more organized, the table’s cleared with a fresh tablecloth–oh oops, well, it was, and even some bathroom cleaning got done. And then I finished the cowl that was on the needles.

I think I’m getting better.

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee announced the very happiest of news and I guess I just got hit hard with spillover nesting instinct. Works for me.

I can just picture the first time she gets to snuggle that little one. I am so happy for them all and it just makes me head over heels with my own grandchildren all over again. There is nothing in the world like a grandmother’s love for that brand new person. There is nothing like that moment when they’ll first get to see her eyes looking back into theirs.

Except for the one after that, and the one after that, and the one after that, and all the years after that. To life!

After much debate back in July, I pruned one last branch of the mango tree towards the end of its flush of summer growth, thinking it would play along and get right to it.

Nope. It just sat there, stumped.

It was the only one that had had flower buds and I hadn’t wanted to cut them off, but they were five months late and still unopened. I’ve since been told that heat was the thing and that the tree hadn’t had enough of it over the winter. I’d worked at keeping it above 40F, knowing that below that kills the inflorescence; 55F was actually what was optimal for production. Okay, I will try my best this year. Change that auto-setting.

But here it is now mid-October and the tree is finally responding to that pruning. You see that cluster of leaves on the right? It looked like those tiny sprouts above it just yesterday, and it will want to grow to an 8-12″ long branch to start, with the other sprouts coming right after it doing likewise. It’s doing just what I wanted, just not when. Tender growth is vulnerable growth. I have me a bit of a challenge here.

Those two curled larger yellow leaves on the left? Those popped out right before we left for DC, where the Christmas lights triggered on with the temp but there was no cover at night because we were out of town and looking at the weather reports I was hoping it should be okay, and I confess I neglected to start the covering process for the season during the first two days we were home again.

Seven nights of colder than they wanted and their growth is stunted.

Last year I erred on the side of getting the tree more sunlight in the morning. This year I’m putting the double-layer frost covers on at sundown and keeping them on till the day warms up more (we’re talking 19 degrees’ difference between 8 am and 9 am today, with sunrise at 7:21) and I just ordered what will be a third layer of frost blanket. Greenhouse-ing it on the cheap.

Still learning.

(Meantime, the bug has gone to my lungs but it’s still just a cold. I’m glad for the comfort of knowing I got my flu shot.)