You slip the next (two, in this case) stitches coming at you onto a short double-pointed needle (aka a dpn, the light-colored one here) and stab it into the knitting, either in back or in front according to the pattern, to hold it out of the way. You knit the next ones on the regular needle, then bring that short needle back up and knit those delayed stitches. Voila: your cable.

When we moved to California it was several years before I knew anybody besides me who knit. It wasn’t till some time after that that I finally learned, after knitting since age ten, why those dpns were sold in sets of four or five.

To me they had always been, and had only been, cable needles. That was their name. I know because that’s what my mom called them. A memorable part of my childhood had involved watching her use them while knitting Aran sweaters for my dad and my next-older sister and an all-over-diamonds one for my grandfather.

On size 2 needles. In endless tiny hanks of tapestry yarn, because that was the only thing available back then if you wanted wool yarn at that fine a gauge. For her father, who treasured it the rest of his life.

Socks? They’re called dpns and they’re for knitting socks? Or even hats? On a kind of a scaffolding arrangement, and that’s why so many, and not because the manufacturers know you’re going to drop one somewhere down the cushions of the doctor’s waiting-area chair and never find it again and they’re just being helpful?

And none of the manufacturers even call them cable needles? Who knew?

A side note for the non-knitters: when you’re making most cabled patterns, you cross the cables while working from the right side, not the purl side. This limits your crossings to every second, fourth, six, eighth etc row.

I had someone for whom I’d been thinking a hat would be just the thing, so two days ago I was debating with myself: a plain watch cap? After all, ribbing is very stretchy and it would be guaranteed to fit without my having to worry about it.

Or do something fancier, like, cabled? I was well aware that cabling requires a third more both stitches and yarn and at least that much more time: cabling is a bit slow and the work condenses in on itself so you have to have more of it to create a wide enough fabric. Which also makes for a warmer hat–more wool in the same space and with some of it doubled over itself.

But most men like their clothing pretty plain.

At the question it felt as if Robin were immediately there and laughing, telling me, Fancier! C’mon, you have the skills, what do you think they’re for?!

Still makes me grin to think about it. Both because the thought made her feel so close by and because it somehow evaporated any doubt on my part as to whether or not the thing would be appreciated or whether doing it this way would be worth the extra effort.

Now the thing about knitting a hat is that, using two open-circle pairs of needles to work at the venn diagram where they intersect, you always have a right side row facing you, you’re not going back and forth but rather you’re simply going round and round and round. There’s no having to wait for that sixth row to start the cabling: you can do it on the fifth one and break all the rules.

And I’m doing honeycomb stitch.

Real honeycombs have five sides. Five rows. Fives rule.

Somehow that just delights me beyond all reason. And the fit is coming out right, too.

It got down to the 40s last night and it will tonight, too; it was time. I restrung the Christmas lights on the mango tree (I’ll clearly need another strand this year) and had to remember how to program Richard’s homemade thermostat. 13C is a little low–I changed it to trigger on at 14C, not sure if the line was connected all the way given the tomatoes growing over it.

They clicked on about 9:00 pm. Okay, that works. No cover quite yet.

Meantime, the Meyer lemon leaves were showing a bit of yellow and needed some micronutrients; I stopped by Yamagami’s Nursery.

Where I found myself in a conversation with one of their people and he was an avid fruit tree enthusiast so of course we hit it right off.

I described the bugs that had utterly devoured my sour cherry’s first attempt at leafing out, that I had caught in the act on the second round, just a giant horde of black beetles, so many that they were climbing all over each other in their attempts to get at those leaves and I asked if they were Japanese beetles?

“Sure sounds like it. They only come out at night.”

“Yup!”

(I had read that traps just attract more to your yard, so I wasn’t surprised when he said) “And nothing kills them. There’s really nothing you can do.”

In happy anticipation of being able to help, I grinned, “Oh yes there is”–and I told him what I’d done. Having found a suggestion online, I’d asked around for the ashes from anyone’s barbecue grill, was given about a half gallon’s worth, and I went out that night and doused those beetles with that powder.

They struggled and fell off immediately and died, and according to what I’d read, it breaks their joints. Very satisfying. As was watching the doves pecking around near the base of the tree later. Git’em!

And then, what I didn’t say to him but should have, was, I then scattered those ashes across those leaves every night and rinsed them off in the mornings so that they could get their sunlight. Back on at night as a protective layer. And it worked.

He had this excited ‘Wait till I tell Nancy…!’ look in his eyes. And I came away feeling like I had just solved a big problem for a whole lot of people. Spread the word. Grill baby grill! I wish I could put the real credit where it belongs but I don’t remember where I found it; I do remember I spent a fair amount of time trying to look up an answer to that very vexatious problem, so afraid I was going to lose that tree, so I’m hoping this post will help the next person find the idea a little faster.

Ashes for crashes, grill dust is a must.

I remember once when Robin discovered a chocolatier who did the most exquisite work. Reading her description was a good way to go on a chocolate torte baking binge if nothing else, and it was before Timothy Adams was available as a local remedy for such a keen oh-I-(quietly)-wish.

And then, you guessed it, a little while later there was a surprise box in the mail: they came in a delightful little hinged wooden box, so perfect in presentation in every way and then, oh wow! Definitely lived up to their descriptions.

She hadn’t wanted me to miss out.

There were two last plastic produce clamshells for the season on the Fuji tree last week guarding the goods from the squirrels, one at the upper right inside the fork in the dark branch here, you can see right where I picked, and one at the lower left corner. I opened the upper one Friday after a friend of ours did me a big favor with a physical task beyond my abilities. (I’ve started him a hat. He doesn’t know that yet.) He loves a good apple and to him it was the perfect thank you.

So I was standing where I took this photo from looking up right there into that part of the tree the day before Robin passed and there was no sign whatsoever that these blossoms were coming to be.

But I think I know now why I felt I needed to go back out there today and pick that very last apple of the year. Not tomorrow. Go see now. I did, staring in disbelief, and than ran for the camera.

Someone had sent me the most heavenly bouquet of apple flowers. In October.

I smiled at a shy, fussy baby at church today, playing peek-a-boo and I’m shyer than you are–no, I am! with him till he grinned. At last, he even let me hold him for a minute before almost-walking back to his mom.

He can manage two careful steps and hover unsteadily a moment and if he moves fast enough even three before going splat but that third, hurried one was always just too much to readjust his balance to in time. The arms go up, the bottom goes down.

Today. Such a brief snapshot of time. Tomorrow he’ll make it halfway across the room and fall into his daddy’s arms giggling, the next day he’ll really be walking and right after that he’ll be running, and then he’ll be off to college and his folks will suddenly have to learn not to buy Costco-sized bunches of bananas and to chop fewer onions. It took a lot of calories to get my older son to 6’9″.

But for today, this one was simply a tired baby boy who needed someone to smile at him, who needed a snuggle and who crowed in delight a little louder–okay, a lot louder–in church than his mommy quite wanted. (Oops. Sorry.) The whole room smiled around them both.

He was the gift my day had needed, and I am grateful.

This picture is of her face puckered up just before the laughter.

How do I do justice to all the love and all the memories. RobinM was not often in the comments because so often our conversation was already happening, and many a time she put up with my day’s blog post being a second draft of what she and I had already talked about.

We met through a knitting list long ago and occasionally emailed, and then more and more as we discovered more connections. She lived so close to where I grew up that when I said the name of the street in Maryland, she went, Oh! Which house?

And when she found out where I live now, she exclaimed that she’d once lived within view of my street here, in a home she would later point out to me. Small world.

Then her husband became ill and our conversations became a daily, ongoing thing.

The night he died in hospice care at home, she sat down at the computer to let me know the news. She has missed him deeply ever since, and from time to time has mentioned how she felt guided by him still, that whenever she wanted to know the right thing to do she thought about what he would say–and that when she did, he never steered her wrong.

I tried to be a comfort and a friend and so many times now she has been a better one to me and she grew into a very dear part of my life. With her brother living here and my family (for a time) still back there, we were able to get together in person every year or two.

She marveled, my first time at her house, that her dog, a Westie rescue and a shy dog at the time whom she said had never warmed up to any strangers immediately, he took to me as if we’d been best friends forever and I felt the same, sweet puppy, appreciative of his compliment; at the last he put his head down in my lap with a happy sigh and fell asleep.

“He never does that!” She was both astonished and admiring.

And I found I adored her in person as well.

That was about ten years ago.

She caught pneumonia recently, and in someone fifteen years older than me this is not a good thing. When things didn’t seem to be going well, I urged her to call her doctor, but instead she went to the ER, probably a better idea. They sent her home, and she seemed to feel like been there settled that. But from there on out she was suddenly sounding very different, just short notes, a sentence or two, and it felt from my end as if she could barely get the breath to sit up and type.

Then came a note asking if purple swollen feet were normal. For her not to be able to think clearly, or at least that’s how it sounded, was a huge change, and with a symptom like that, I tried not to sound as alarmed as I felt as I told her that congestive heart failure or kidney failure can cause those. (She knew I had gone through temporary bouts of both and could speak to the subject.)

I wondered whether to call her brother. She called her daughter and son-in-law. They had quite the drive but they came right away.

I got up this morning and ran to the computer first thing, highly aware of our three-hour time difference, to see if there were any news. The last message had been from Robin in the ER several days ago, waiting for a room to be checked into. Cardiac, tests were being run, was all she said.

And then nothing. I hoped it was that she simply didn’t have a device with her that she could respond from and I knew the hospital wouldn’t give me her room number to put a call through.

There it was, waiting: a mixture of grieving and wistfulness and love and one last bit of hope. And so her daughter had my email address.

Within the hour she was sending a second note and the news was different this time. But the love, it felt only stronger.

She told me a little of what it had been like to be at her mother’s side in her last few moments, a story that is hers to tell, and I can only hope I do right by my own mother like that come the day.

And just like her mother: she had sat down shortly after her unfathomable loss to let me of all people know her family’s news. I cannot begin to say how much that means to me.

……

My own daughter drove over briefly to give me a big hug.

At the last, opening the fridge at 5:00, one of us simply had to go do the grocery shopping. It felt just too strange. Richard wasn’t feeling well so I said I would.

I hadn’t been to Costco in weeks. I wondered whether I would run into someone I knew and how I would do when it was all just so soon.

Turns out I did, though, and it was a couple my kids knew well when they were teens. They were in the middle of selling their house and moving away and were glad to get to let me know and since they had enough on their plate it was easy to smile and cheer them on and just be glad we’d gotten to see each other. Serendipity.

And so I almost made it through.

I found myself turning and turning and threading my way down aisles I don’t normally go through to get towards the front and was quite surprised to find myself behind a line with only two people ahead. On a Saturday near closing? How does that happen?

The clerk turned my direction a moment and suddenly I saw who it was. Oh cool: he’s such a nice guy. I really had lucked out.

When I was up, he looked me in the eye and told me it was good to see me and that it had been awhile. (He noticed?!) “And how is your day today?”

It wasn’t a throwaway line; he clearly meant it, and as his hands passed the groceries across the scanner, that word ‘today’ and the complete caring in his demeanor just did me in.

“It’s been fine…” was all I meant to say, and then, “except that one of my best friends died this morning.”

A long, quiet, Oooh escaped him. He grieved.

She had had pneumonia, I explained quickly, not wanting to hold up the line behind me but not wanting to leave this good man unhappy, And she hadn’t been sounding like herself. Her daughter drove four hours with her husband to be by her mother’s side and took her to the hospital. Her heart gave out this morning. Her daughter was right there with her. She was not alone.

That mattered to him. I thanked him and hoped out loud for him to have a good day.

He handed me my receipt just so such that three of his large fingers closed gently over mine for one, two heartbeats, as we saw each other eye to eye. Those thanks went both ways.

And I left feeling like, I don’t need to write to Robin to tell her that or to miss being able to. She already knows, right now. She might even have steered me to that man’s line where he was all ready to truly hear.

And to be fully present.

In the choreography of G_d department that let a grieving mother know she is not alone.

A few friends of mine shared, via Facebook, an account written by a woman who was out having a meal last week with her friends. They happened to be the mother and sister of Sandra Bland, the young African-American woman on her way to her new job at a university in Texas who was pulled over for not signaling and who inexplicably, inexcusably died in a jail cell for it days later. Some say the background of her mug shot was the jail floor, that she was already dead by the time it was taken.

But this, rather, is what the woman writes about.

A man walked into that restaurant and sat down at another table, alone.

After some moments the writer, marveling, got up the courage to go ask him if he were indeed he. He was, and, invited, yes, he wanted to meet them very much.

“He took no record, he made no statement. He did not try to turn it into a publicity stunt. He simply made space for a sacred moment, and then let it pass without trying to gain anything from it.”

They, not he, asked for pictures to capture the moment.

He said Sandra’s name at Tuesday night’s debate to comfort her mother and sister, that she might not be forgotten.

Because that’s who Bernie Sanders is.

At knit night tonight I very nearly finished the first hat out of that so-soft Eco Duo. I eyed the bin, my fingers wanting to play with more.

And I said to Sandi: You remember putting that note on Facebook about this being on sale this week?

Yeah?

And I dashed right in and got some. And then all week long I’ve had the day wrong because, y’know, Purlescence is Thursday.

She laughed.

I almost missed tonight because I was sure it was Friday!

Watching the debate…

Jim Webb’s smile as he thought back on the North Vietnamese soldier who had shot at him who, he said, of course, wasn’t here now.

And the smile got bigger.

Was anyone else creeped out by that? I thought, that war is still damaging you, isn’t it.

And then there’s this man’s story.

Writing this down so I can figure out later when I did this.

Some time ago I knit a very soft hat out of Cascade Eco Duo, an undyed baby alpaca/merino blend.

I had gotten in the habit when I was so very ill of wearing a wool hat at night that someone had gifted me with, and I love her hat and her for it. I used it every night for about five years.

But the Eco Duo was quite a bit softer and I found my attempt to knit it for someone else completely failed–it became mine instead.

I packed it on a trip to a colder climate and that was that, I never saw it again. I’ve felt good about that. I had knitted it with the intention of giving it away, and someone out there who needs it against a harsher climate than mine has it, I’m sure, whoever they may be.

But when I got an email from Purlescence saying they were having a 40% off sale on that particular yarn this week that I knew was so soft and had no risk of crocking dye into my hair in my sleep if I sweat, I found myself jumping in the car and fondling skein after skein to determine the very softest, holding them up against my face because they’re going to spend a lot of time there. It’s still in the crazy-eighties by day but it’s getting pretty cool at night.

I bought two. One to knit up for me. One to give away.

(Mango tree today, lowest, next branch up, and top, rollover notes for details.)

It was a bit of an adventure but it is done: the van is sold and gone.

My next-door neighbor happened to be outside as a crew of strangers were soaping and hosing it down after the grand trek to the DMV and were making it beautiful (wow, they really did–I had no idea it could still look that nice) and I got to tell them how happy I was that it was going to a new family that would make good use of it again, as she added her enthusiasm to the idea. It had served us well.

It felt surprisingly difficult in those last few seconds to watch it being driven away. If I ever see it again on the road, I won’t even know–it’ll have plates (I think it already does) that it never had with us.

How do we get so attached to something so transitory and meaningless, something of no life. And the only answer is because my kids grew up with it.

The neighbor asked what we were replacing it with; I laughed and said, What we are or what I wish? What we are, probably (and I motioned zero). For now, anyway. Too many home repairs to do.

Now, a Tesla. If it were a Tesla I could definitely understand getting too attached to that. The X-model SUV as long as I’m totally dreaming.

Maybe it’s just as well we’ve got a humble little nine-year-old Prius. It’s a good little car and it serves the two of us well.

So what would you do with a volunteer tomato taking over the yard, flowering month after month but never setting a single fruit while the other tomatoes do? Keep waiting? Rip it out before it takes any more nutrients from the cherry tree above?

So that’s what was on my mind as I stepped out the door to start the Tuesday watering.

I’d noticed the little junco for a few days now.

Clearly I wasn’t the only one.

There it was on the box again, right next to me as I stepped onto the patio. With one eye gone and the other warily watching the sky, it didn’t take off till after I went past it and turned back again.

That post yesterday about being the boss of this place?

There, up on the telephone wire. I mentally apologized to the Cooper’s hawk for wrecking his breakfast and quickly got back in the house and out of the way.

He stayed there patiently another minute or so, feathers unruffled but a sure thing gone.

For now.

I finished the watering tonight and went off to the first night of a new knitting group; Alex found herself with a copy of my lace shawls book as a thank you. May there be many happy memories there to come.

I was asked if I would, said sure no problem, and ended up back at the DMV to ask for a one-day permit for driving the PNO van.

And got told no, the buyer needs to come in and get that. But they spelled out all the fees he would have to pay and they were half what he was expecting. Cool. I’m quite happy to make his life easier.

Then this evening I was out working in the yard, noting how much faster the late sun fades now. The camphor tree had several thick clumps of thin, weak sprouts from where it had previously been trimmed by Chris’s crew and those had gotten tall enough to start shading a few fruit trees a bit and this would not do. It’s easier to remove those when they’re new.

So there I was with this big trimming hook overhead when suddenly to my left a raven took off from the redwood tree just past the fence, heading towards my backyard.

Watching it come, I waved my arms as if to shoo it away as soon as it came past the shed.

Darn if the thing didn’t do an immediate abrupt turnaround and go straight back to that tree. If it was testing me it was conceding that it had been caught.

I’ve seen you chase my Cooper’s hawks and trying to steal their catches. I know you would kill my songbirds’ babies and that your population has been exploding while theirs are just hanging in there. You know I own this yard. Not you.

Then it came again.

There was nothing I could have done to keep it from doing what it wanted to do.

I waved again.

It again braked hard mid-air as if its heels sought to connect with something to help and again it veered back to where it had come from, swooping behind the redwood this time as if to hide.

Here it comes again.

Once is an oddity, two is curious, three and more, definitely a pattern–I started counting, watching, letting the camphor take care of itself a moment; nothing here but that raven and me.

I surely looked ridiculous. I was just a powerless little thing on the ground and its flights were almost as high as the top of that redwood. Each time it came in in a path that would take it straight over my back yard and me in the middle of it, but each time I would wave my arms just before it was quite overhead and each time it would stop right there, wings raised high flapping hard not going one inch further, then sharply away. The times it spent disappeared into the back of the tree became a few seconds longer.

The thirteenth time it retreated at last not to the redwood but across the clear open sky above several neighbors’ houses, one beyond the other, getting smaller and smaller and gone.

Yeah, like I trust that–I kept staring.

One potato, two potato, ten potato, coming from the left again with the redwood having been cover for part of its way back and here it came again. Whether it was determined to go where it wanted to go in the path it wanted to go in if I would just stop paying attention to it or whether it was simply a young one having fun playing a game with me and enjoying the attention–and corvids do play–I don’t know. But from there we went through three more redwood-to-almost-t0-me runs.

Territory: understood. Dominance: mine.

Finally, on round sixteen, it really did head way away, faster this time, across that open treeless airspace and at last that was the end of that.

I know crows and ravens recognize human faces and teach their young to at least the second and third generation to respond to those same faces. I can only wonder if this one had a family memory of a human with a gun.

Way too much sun today. Hopefully it will turn out just fine.

The doorbell rang 3:30, 3:45ish.

My first impulse was to point apologetically at the no solicitors sign and he was leaving but something propelled me to open the door and call after the guy.

I’m sorry, could you say that again?

Are you interested in selling your minivan?

Blink.

Okay, that van had been sitting dead in the driveway for two years now, the battery drained well away, with us wondering, should we try to sell, should we donate, should we let it sit and pretend someone’s home when we’re not but hey look at that thing, it’s not fooling anyone. The cobweb on the side handle is a dead giveaway if the dust isn’t and we weren’t about to use drought water on it.

It’s got a bad transmission and a bad axle, I warned them, and look at those (slightly sagging) tires. It’s a PNO. (Planned Non Operation status with the DMV.) I was in front of the driveway now, talking to what turned out to be a grampa and his son while the son’s wife managed the small children in Grampa’s truck.

The son’s family had just lost their apartment when the landlord had died. And they needed a car with carseat space.

Father and son jumpstarted the thing and with the dashboard alive now, Grampa got a look at the mileage, which if I remember right was 115k–not bad at all for an ’00. And it was an Lxi, a nice model, leather seats, heated in front. (The young wife did not look impressed on that last part, but even in this climate I know from experience that she will like it more than she knows yet.)

Grampa was doing the buying and he asked me for a price. I said $500 off the top of my head. Turns out the bluebook for poor condition was $1200, but you know? They would have a lot of work to do on that thing and we both knew it.

Grampa wanted to test drive it around the block and I warned him that if he pulled it out of the driveway it might not shift to go back in again; he was willing to take that risk. He pretty much had to to at least see for himself.

He came back a few minutes later with, Axle?

I reiterated it had one bad axle.

Okay.

Richard just happened to be working from home today, a rare thing, and I was really glad he was there. His conference call ended and he joined us a moment and pointed out that there were disability plates on the thing and you cannot transfer a title with those on.

And thus began the mad scramble: Friday afternoon. It’s after 4:00. The closest DMV was two cities away across rush hour traffic. The son pulled out a screwdriver (do men carry these, like, everywhere? Like a woman’s bottomless purse? But then wait, Richard does too in our glove compartments. Okay) and he got the plates off the van for me. After saying for two years that we should, I was at long last going to the DMV to have them switch the handicapped plates to the Prius and then the other one would be free to go.

Of course there was an accident on the freeway. C’mon, quit rubbernecking, people….

I got there before five. I actually got in that door.

Her weekend was just about to start and the facility was nearly empty. The DMV lady smiled and handed me a form to sign and a fistful of screwdrivers to take the plates off the Prius, with a, “They BOUGHT that?!” after I described the minivan. I wondered about my hand strength and she wished but said they weren’t allowed to help me. Well that makes sense, okay.

So I got out there and swapped the plates and the dour security guard let me back in and I made it and it was even still before five.

Where are the other plates?

Ooooooh (facepalm)… I apologized for my poor hearing, went back out there with just one screwdriver of theirs this time–they have to let me back in with that, right?–unscrewed the handicapped plates again and the security guard opened the door again and even cracked a smile this time. I thanked him.

I would have gotten the car washed if I’d known. I would have at least washed the plates of the van if I’d known. A few small crumbles of dirt and old rubber from the frames fell repeatedly from the sets of plates, and of course my Prius fob picked today to die: taking it apart to enter with the tiny physical key embedded in it is a fingernail-breaking, long hard process when you’re watching every second on the clock and I simply carried the screws around in my hand rather than trying to put them down inside a cupholder. Because of course today is the day I wore a skirt with no pockets. For the first time, it’s new. With a silk blouse. I was dressed a tad frumpy yesterday and I’d tried to make up for it today. Grease and driveway oils come out, right?

I got out of there at 5:17, the security guard opening that door one last time. They can rush you really well without an appointment when nobody else in their right mind shows up near 5:00 on a Friday afternoon.

They did not give me the van plates back. It was a PNO.

The height of rush hour home: just set the car at coast and brake as needed. Past the bridge construction…

The family came back. The van had no plates. You can legally drive a PNO for one day at point of sale to pick up new plates and registration, and our transfer of title will protect them should they be pulled over for no plates that day, and so they left the car here and will pay for it Monday. Monday I will go to the DMV myself with my sale of title form on the pink slip.

Cleaning out the car, I found one of my kids’ high school class schedules tucked in a compartment in the back. That car’s had so many good memories. And now, with a grandpa watching the mechanics on that thing, a new family will grow up with it for as long as they need to.

Nice people. And it feels like they were who it’s been sitting there waiting for all this time. I expect Monday to go smoothly.

Photo courtesy of my son from Saturday.

And on a different note. Wow, that was mid-July. Didn’t realize it had been so long.

Okay, so, this morning I got up thinking it would be a great day to go to Copenhagen Bakery in Burlingame: I could drop Richard off at work and go straight there.

With the next thought being a glance upwards at the skylight, thinking, are you kidding me?

It drizzled off and on all day yesterday and today started off with just a little of that–the roads are always oilslicked after an early-season rain here.

And yet the thought was both persistent and happy. Enough to make me pay attention to it and take stock.

Did either of us need the calories? Certainly not. Was I craving my favorites of theirs? Oh heck, always a little bit but nothing out of the ordinary, so, no, not really. Would I personally be just as happy if I didn’t go? Sure. It’s a trek. If I were going to Cottage Yarns in South San Francisco too, maybe I could combine the trips and justify both but that wasn’t in the plan either. (More on that tomorrow, probably.)

I said a prayer: is there something I don’t know about, some reason I should go? Again and again, I felt, You Should Go. Well alright then, if that is to be, and if there’s a reason for it, I certainly can’t know and I’m very good at being too human; please help me be my best self to clear the way open for whatever’s and whoever’s supposed to happen.

On impulse coming away from Richard’s office I found myself turning towards this freeway rather than that. Was I sure I knew how to get there that way? Not at all. I almost did a U-turn but found myself relentlessly going thataway. Huh, well, good luck then.

280 is a far prettier drive with much less traffic anyway. Less stressful.

There was a huge cloudburst that lasted about twenty seconds, then almost dry, then a lesser shorter cloudburst and from there on out it was only a few random drops. Not too bad.

I realized pretty quickly, as I wondered if that had been my exit, that this was going to be even more guesswork than I’d thought. Note that GPS is for people who can hear it clearly in a noisy car–I’m a little too conditioned towards not trying it. I ended up meandering a bit after taking an exit that was actually one too early, trying to find my way downhill towards town. Overcorrected on the sense of direction, backtracked, took my time sweet time and finally, I got there. I think I added at least fifteen minutes to the trip.

The manager from last time? She was nowhere in sight. The woman who’d messed up last time? I do believe that was her helping me. I was wearing the same sunhat, using the same cane, and we had a fun time going back and forth: if I was going to make a trek like and get lost like I did than I was going to get enough fun stuff to make it worth it all. Hazelnut mousse pastry? Yes please. Raspberry? I’ll have to try it.

She winced at that road trip description and I laughed it off with, “I got to explore!”

The chef’s surprises. They freeze well. There were actually four of my favorite filled almond meringue danishes left this time–I know they sell out early in the day every day. “Are those all there are?”

“Yes.”

“Mine,” and we both cracked up, and I thought, It WAS you! And you do have it this time. Cool. This was so much better an experience to leave her with.

Carrying that great sense of goodwill along on my way out, there was a man maybe ten years older than me seated at a tiny table, talking quietly into his cellphone and then staring into space and looking like the whole world was on his shoulders in a way that suddenly made my heart reach out to him. I could just picture my Richard looking like that when I was in the hospital, though I cannot know, here, what….

I found myself stopping a moment and glancing at my cane and then at his very nice, hand carved one that had seen some use but was still quite a work of art, making the visual connection, then nodding quietly with a smile, *Nice* cane!

A touch of pride, a sense that someone had noticed him in that moment when he’d so much needed not to be alone: he looked up into my eyes and he seemed to suddenly melt, letting go in some inner relief. I don’t quite know how to describe it but I felt it.

Another nod in goodbye and I was out into the sunlight heading quickly for my car. Grateful. Wondering.

So much I don’t know. But I’m so glad I went and that I got there when I did.