This song. Thank you, Sly.

The box in her hands was very big and awkward and it looked heavy. I said, Here, let me get that door for you, and ran a little ahead to the post office entrance and then made sure she went ahead of me with that; all I was sending off was a couple of hats. (Still working on the blue, the gauge was way different with a finer yarn but I wanted my cousin’s granddaughter to get to match her grandmother and it was time to get those off.)

Such an ordinary interaction on an ordinary day. It wasn’t till quite a bit later that I realized how fortunate we were and how quiet it is here: I didn’t have to try to bodily throw my privilege between us to try to save her from masked random men on the street claiming to be ICE, none of that, and I can’t imagine….

We could simply. have. a. nice. day. You know, be in America. With a shared smile at having met in the moment.

The car had to be smog-checked. The first time we ever got that notice I exclaimed, But it’s a brand new SULEV! (Super Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle.)

But it does still have a gas engine, however small.

I looked up the usual place and prepaid online.

The computer auto-filled my landline number onto the form and I didn’t notice in time. Which they auto-texted to to confirm my payment and appointment, and obviously that didn’t work.

Well that’s a nuisance, so I typed into my cellphone the time of payment and the order number so I would have that info to prove I was me and headed on over.

The young guy running the place by himself wasn’t sure he could make that work; he asked me, sounding a little nervous, had I printed it out?

I had not, I’m sorry. (I was thinking, since when does his generation expect a print-out? Too funny.)

He wasn’t sure he could make that half-off price work and was clearly a little afraid of how I might react.

I told him, Hey, I’m the one who didn’t catch that auto-fill in time. If I have to pay full price than I pay full price, no biggy, I just need to get it done. (Thinking, before the state deadline next week. Before minor surgery next week with anesthesia but no painkillers because I’m allergic. Before I have to deal with all that. I was just so glad that I’d finally kicked myself into getting this done.)

He was visibly relieved.

My heart went out to him. I wondered how many customers… It’s not his fault his bosses charge one price online and twice that in person if you skim and see and expect that but just show up without paying first.

From there he got the work done and went over the DMV’s paperwork I’d brought with me, making sure I would save the certificate that the car had passed inspection till the state sends their sticker–the whole time treating me like his favorite aunt. Like we were old friends.

I thanked him and we both came away with our day much better for those few minutes of making sure my old car doesn’t fart at the public.

Good friends

Great birthday party

Good night

Part two.

We got to see Janna and her husband. We walked into the presence of such an immense sense of love.

She was joyful, she was exhausted, and I hope at just under an hour we didn’t stay too long. I have more experience than most at how wonderful and tiring it is to see people even when you love them so much when you’re so ill and we were all trying to be mindful of that, though I’m not quite sure we were mindful enough. But man, it was good to see her and to meet her prince of a husband. (Her first one died years ago.) He is so good to her.

I had four more hats ready (Richard says five), including one begun in the airport, and two balls of yarn to ask if she’d like those colors next. She said sure. She had one on that I’d mailed earlier.

But she gently let me know that all of these were really more than she could wear.

Not knowing that I had thought of her beloved as I packed this thick warm greens-etc Mecha one and that earlier one and was thinking of her granddaughter and her two older sons and the son I’d knit the Christmas stocking for years ago: her mom had knit one with the name knitted in for each of her grandchildren–but he hadn’t been born yet when she died.

When Janna told me that of course I made him one.

I had never knitted such a thing before and I couldn’t find a pattern for one with the kind of cabling I wanted, so I just winged it. I can do socks, right?

Um. Sometimes letting the object be its own size swatch has its idiosyncrasies, not to mention Malabrigo Rios is not sock yarn.

So I asked her if he wishes he had one that weren’t so big and she exclaimed, He LOVES his big stocking! You can fit anything in it!

We all laughed.

He’s in his mid-20s now. We sat there a moment with the unspoken thought between us that his future children likely won’t know their grandmother, either.

An experimental med in ’03 snatched me back at the edge of life. If only. You never know.

I will have my work cut out for me. I’ll let him and his future love decide what size to aim for.

But meantime, any of her family who want to wear a Malabrigo hat in solidarity with her in this beautiful month of June, maybe when the hot sun dips below the mountains? I think with these last two coming along, if she wants, we’ve pretty much got them covered.

And I can always knit more.

Part One.

All my siblings came. Mom got feted, Dad’s stuff got divided between us, and as my older brother said afterwards, “I am amazed and grateful for how well everything went.” Everybody was mindful of everybody else and trying not to be too eager about any one thing: we didn’t own it before and if we didn’t own it after, what’s the difference, right? So. Your turn.

There was a painting I loved. The others noticed the two gouges in the paint before I did, two white canvas spots showing, about the size of the inside circle when you hold thumb to forefinger.

Bryan, who along with Anne has entered juried arts shows and done well, instantly offered, “I can fix that for you.”

Two days later my sister was holding it out for me to see.

Now, I’d been expecting to have to pay to ship it to Atlanta and then to our house and to wait for however long everything took.

But, but–where were the spots? You can’t even tell! Where were they? as I bent close to see.

Bryan happened to come in the room in the middle of that, so I said again, “You can’t even tell!”

He laughed. “That’s the point!”

I just couldn’t get over how very very perfect and untouched it looked.

He was staying at a cousin’s; we were at a hotel a half hour from there.

So it was with great delight this morning that I looked up at the TSA station where you retrieve your stuff and exclaimed across the conveyor belt, “BRYAN!”

He looked over, laughed, and we got one last big hug across that metal space before he raced off to his flight while they finished patting me down. (Holding my arms above my head while circular glass walls move rapidly the way they do, close to my face, makes me fall down. So, yeah.)

So, so glad we got to go.

One of the camera crew did a hatch-to-fledge four and a half minute compilation of the 2025 season so far, here.

Meantime, the three newly fledged females were immediately spotted yesterday; one was rescued from behind a glass balcony so she wouldn’t hurt herself trying to get out and was put in a box and taken to the roof of City Hall above the nest. Got her feathers sprayed so she wouldn’t panic-fly to get away from the humans as they set her down but rather wait a moment drying off while they disappeared. She’s fine.

The male, though, nobody knew where he was.

So one of the BOGs (boots on the ground during fledge watch) was looking today when she saw a homeless guy looking up. He told her there was a hawk that had a bunch of crows harassing it, so he’d been keeping watch to make sure it was okay–and there was our Chico!

When she explained that it was a peregrine falcon just learning to fly and that multitudes of people were going to be grateful to him for finding him and looking out for the little guy, you can imagine how that felt to someone who doesn’t usually find himself being looked up to.

They chatted a little and she found that the birds mattered to him, all of them, and he felt for the one being harassed and stood by him.

And so he became a hero to the falcon community.

Our little Chico got retrieved, went through being boxed and hauled upstairs like his sister the day before, and is now living happily ever after.

Meantime, chemo cap #6 got finished, #7 is started, and I have been invited to a sisters and female cousins lunch where I can get to give it to Janna in person. I can’t wait to see her.

A discussion in Sunday School and a question was asked: have you ever done something with the best of intentions that turned out badly?

One young woman raised her hand and came close to tears as she described how, while living overseas, she had encouraged a friend to come to church that week. The friend was a Mormon, her husband was not, though he came with her when she did come. But she had a serious chronic illness that made it difficult and she hadn’t in some time. She missed everybody and she was missed.

H. talked her into it. She was so looking forward to it that she made herself do it and she did, where she was surrounded by exclamations of joy at the sight of her.

But. The woman’s husband took H. aside and reamed her, telling her, You don’t understand: it took all of my wife’s energy for this whole day and probably this whole week to make it here. You don’t get it! You don’t get what it does to her physically!

H. had regretted the whole thing intensely ever since. How had she not seen. How could she have done that to her friend. And her husband, too, for that matter, poor guy.

I immediately raised my hand. I have been that very ill person with chronic disease, I told her. I know how face time with friends your illness has deprived you of, when you get to finally have it, can power you through for a long long time afterwards and you never forget how much it meant to get to see them. You did the right thing.

She looked across the room at me with what I can only describe as a sudden fierce disbelieving hope, wanting that to be true.

I said it again. You did the right thing.

As I thought of the time in ’03 when my doctor showed up to my hospital room every morning and every evening on his own time to be present with me while I was going through this and I could not let him blame himself when it wasn’t in any way his fault. I couldn’t let him down. I couldn’t do that to him, I had to live.

Yes we tried an experimental med and yes it saved my life–but that came after he already had by who he was.

And there was the friend and her daughters who came over to wash my hair over the kitchen sink when my PCC line for IV feeding still being in meant that if any water got into that incision it would channel an infection straight to my heart.

Yes finally finally finally having clean hair again after two weeks was wonderful, but their being present was everything.

Days after I got out of the hospital, so weak that I knew in my bones that if I caught a cold it would kill me and well before masks were a findable thing in the wild, one of my sons was giving a talk in church and the other was playing the organ and I was not going to miss that. I am their mom. I cheer on my kids. I insisted on being wheeled into church.

I managed to sit upright through the opening prayer and I think song but that and the shower beforehand to get ready and I simply laid down on the pew and snoozed through the rest of the whole thing whether I wanted to or not.

But I was there. To the very best of my ability, I got to be there for my kids and I got some in person time with dear friends.

And every one of those moments with other people, when there was nothing left but who we are and how we feel, helped get me through that long recovery process.

First H. went to her friend’s house to be with her.

Then she gave her the courage to try and to find in herself the willingness to take that risk of exhaustion for the love it would bring into the light.

Yes H. did the right thing, so much yes.

And had it proved the wrong time that week then her friend would have had a goal to focus on for her future, knowing that she mattered to her friends.

Finally finished the requested black cap and found a UFO that just needed the ends run in. That one’s Mecha, not Rios, so it’ll be nice and thick for June. Umm. It does get cool in the mountains there at night. And it was a fun hat. She told me yesterday that the only chemo caps she owns are the three she’s gotten from me. So off it goes.

I looked for a small box, struck out, went to the post office and decided to use one of their all-you-can-squish-in ones. It was definitely tight but it would do.

Maybe.

Trying to figure out their origami packaging, I was distracted by a short older guy I hadn’t even seen coming throwing a wad of trash hard at the other end of the table from me, and I thought, well that’s charming; making some employee have to clean up after you? The trash can is right there, dude. But I kept my mouth shut.

His face looked like, Do NOT mess with me. I have had it.

There were three clerks and a long line that did not move, and then #3 went on break. #2 went looking for someone’s stray package in the back. Clerk #1’s customer had a problem that took awhile. None of us were going anywhere anytime soon and #1 had from the time I walked in looked as angry as that guy.

Some minutes later, he suddenly appeared from the back (I’m thinking: he works here?!) and grabbed a package from next to her and threw it through the plastic-strips screen to the bin hidden behind. Hope there was nothing fragile in that.

Breathe. The only person whose behavior in this scene I could change was mine.

So I turned to the guy in a working man’s uniform behind me and asked, Are you in a hurry? You’re welcome to go ahead of me.

He was, actually, and quite grateful at the offer, even if it didn’t seem just then like it would really change a thing. We switched places.

There was one more person behind me: an older dad with a kid of about four with nothing to do. I repeated my offer. He turned me down. I offered him a finger puppet to keep his little guy amused, and it took him a moment but when I said Happy Birthday to make it clear I did not expect it back he decided why not.

Crocodile? He asked me, stating the obvious, I mean, we could quibble alligators vs caimans here but sometimes a finger puppet is just a finger puppet. ( –Oh wait, don’t let the staffs’ bad moods get to me.)

Yes.

The kid soon did what bored kids in strange places whose dads are staring at their phones do, which was to run his new pet up his dad’s leg and try to get his attention.

Clerk #2 returned. The line moved.

Finally I got called over to the one who’d looked so angry earlier. She wasn’t now. I asked for help figuring out that box, pleading bad eyesight re the tiny instructions, but she had a better idea and asked if she could put them in this padded envelope for me?

She didn’t hear me say Sure! so she repeated the question and I was amused at not being the deaf one for a moment there, but she just really thought this was a better idea so we went with it. (Maybe because it wouldn’t pop open if thrown hard, come to think of it.)

You make? She asked brightly, admiring the hats quickly and then looking up into my eyes.

Yes!

Cute! She exclaimed, looking at the address and clearly being glad for the person who was going to get to have not one but two hand knit hats! Made just for her!

She did the usual circling the tracking number on the receipt before handing it to me.

And then she waved me goodbye and wished me a nice day with the biggest, warmest, very real smile on her face, ready for the next person and utterly transformed, and I wasn’t expecting that at all, either.

With my train-wreck immune system, I slept twelve hours, got up for awhile, slept some more. That vaccination always does me in for the one day afterwards, but it’s worth it. I won’t get Covid again–and better yet, I won’t pass it on to anybody else. I don’t know if the current version circulating damages hearts like the original one did mine but now that we don’t have to go through that, I am so grateful to every person whose life’s work went into offering this gift to their fellow man.

I can give up a day for that.

He said see if you can find any appointments or does it have to be walk-in.

Appointments. On a holiday weekend. Five o’clock today was the only time available to do two people. I clicked yes.

Only then did I look at the clock and realize it was 4:48–forget dinner, we had to dash out the door now! and hope we hit every traffic light green. Which never happens.

But it did.  We are officially covid-proofed for now. It was also an excuse for ice cream because dessert is the most important thing you can eat after a vaccination: they do their medicine, we do ours.

A fried light switch out of a set of three outside the kitchen. A package delivery. Time to play electrician. He had as a teen done the wiring for the addition on his parents’ house, the work duly signed off on by the inspectors, so a simple light switch shouldn’t take very long.

Mutterings commenced.

That plate had a really terrible edge on the inside where nobody was supposed to ever see it: sharp and wavy. The wrong lights flashed on and off when he was sure he hadn’t even touched that wire. The insulated screwdriver hit the floor.

He looked at me and in a self-mocking tone pronounced, Tarnation.

Now there’s a Southern cuss word for you, I told him. Thinking further, I wondered if I’d ever heard a northerner Yankee type say such a thing (we lived in New Hampshire for four years.) I was pretty sure I had not.

He thought maybe yes they had.

The short, great linguistics debate of the evening (feel free to chime in–that way one of us will find out we were right.)

And now I have my kitchen lights back and everything works the way it’s supposed to and nobody can see the inside of that plate.

Meantime, my new zucchini stem had twins this morning. I have never heard of such a thing before.

At that picnic on Monday, a friend who’s an oncologist asked me point blank out of the blue, How’s your health?

I admitted I had an ultrasound coming up on Wednesday, but they’d done one previously and found nothing so the doctor didn’t think it was cancer but wanted to keep tabs on it.

He said something about his patients hating ultrasounds and I kinda shrugged it off. But not out of ignorance–rather, eh, I know what I’m in for.

Turns out it actually was easier than last year’s testing. Yay. And for getting one step closer to ending this two-year period. The hard part is the waiting to hear. I have plans for this next month of my life that I am going to do (Hi, Mom!) because I said so.

I mean, that always works, right?

(Update: I just signed in and there was the radiologist’s report. No mass seen, no abnormal thickening. Yay.)

Having your parents divorce while you’re starting to hit puberty can’t be easy. The kid’s had a rough time of it, the parents don’t have each other there for emotional backup as their oldest starts his teens, and I’ve been trying to figure out if there was anything I could possibly do but have come up empty for months now.

Because every thirteen year old boy wants to be best friends with a sixty-six-year old woman, right? Uhhhhh…

There was a potluck picnic in the park this evening. He and his little brother were heading to where the food was being set up when suddenly, to show off, he leaped up to the picnic table and danced across it, down to the bench, and back to the ground heading past me.

I caught his eye just long enough: “I was just thinking, another week or so and you’ll be taller than me. And then you did!”

That’s the first time I’ve seen him laugh in a good long time.

My friend Anne told me her story this evening and I asked if I could share it.

She and her husband had gone out for ice cream.

In her words, after asking me to pray for the elderly gentleman:

“We were waiting for someone to take our orders, and he gave up and walked out just as someone showed up. I went and got him, and paid for his milkshake. As we were leaving, and he was heading to his car, I told him to have a nice day.

That’s when he said his wife died yesterday. To say I was gutted is an understatement. I parked, got out of the car, gave him a hug and prayed for comfort and that good memories would counteract the grief he feels.”

To which I expressed that the fact that the employee had been out of sight to the point that he had given up while they happened to be right there feels to me like the choreography of G_d: had he been immediately taken care of, there would have been no conversation, no meeting of hearts, no sharing of pain nor offering of compassion nor even the simple gift of a milkshake on a day when he so needed to feel human connection. Enough to get him out the door to go buy, what? Ice cream? I can imagine him thinking, Why? What does that matter now?

But there was. It happened. There was.

She and her husband were part of the answer to the very prayer she’d sent up on the man’s behalf.

Some years ago I mentioned a woman in my lupus support group whose health and mental health were spiraling downward together. She was an immigrant and at that point had no support system here other than us. We all did our best to reach out to her but it was hard to feel successful.

One month, an unusual thing happened at the meeting: only three people showed up. Her, the group leader who is a nurse as well as a patient and a very gentle, quiet soul, and me.

Listening to S, it was a wonder that she had even made it there but that seemed a sign that some part of her still wanted to live.

In the quiet of the room she opened up just enough for us to see what she had finally decided to do and said I’m sure more than she meant to of how she was going to do it.

Which she could have just gone and done already and none of us would ever have known, but she hadn’t, which said to me that she didn’t really want to, she just saw no other way out but had wanted to see us and say goodbye to us first.

We did our best to just listen, to convey that we cared.

And then I raced home and grabbed the phone I could hear on, because my cellphone in those days was not it.

Riiiing.

I know, HIPPA and all that, but can you tell me if you *don’t* have a patient named–? I explained the situation.

The first doctor’s office staff, after some checking with colleagues for guidance on the situation: We don’t have a patient by that name.

Thank you very much! (Calls second office, repeats the question.)

(Checks with colleagues, too.) We can’t tell you that.

Alright, cool, she’s with your practice, I said, I thought so. So: IF you have a patient by this name, this is who I am and my phone number, this is who the group leader is with her name and phone number and she can verify that this is what this patient told us at our support group meeting a few minutes ago.

They thanked me and got me off the phone fast and were right on it.

Five minutes later the woman herself called me. She was furious.

DID YOU CALL THEM?!

Yes. I did.

WHY DID YOU CALL THEM!

Because: I knew you would be angry with me. You. Are. Worth. That. to me. You. Are. Worth. That.

There was a sound that I could only interpret as wanting to be angry but suddenly turning into what started to be crying but she hung up fast before I could hear more.

And then we didn’t know, and we didn’t know, and we could only pray and wonder, but the two of us never told the rest of the group anything more than that we were worried about her, and that was nothing new to them because they were, too.

Eighteen months later she surprised us by showing back up. She tired easily, but there was a resilience I hadn’t seen before. She didn’t mention the suicide attempt, just that it had been hard–really hard–but that she was doing a little better now. And she had learned that when you have autoimmunity affecting the stomach, your body doesn’t process food well at all and studies have shown that that can impair your mental function and cause depression. So they’d been working on all of that.

At the end of the meeting she walked out with me and once there was no one else around to see it, threw her arms around me and thanked me.

Our group went to Zoom with the pandemic and she was part of it for awhile and then eventually she wasn’t and we’ve all wondered and hoped things had held for her. She had come so far.

Our group leader’s phone rang this week.

Our friend’s family had moved to Canada when she was a child and then she’d come to the US.

I can’t imagine how it must have been under the current regime.

It was her. She wanted to touch base and let us know: she had moved back to Canada and had bought a place with her elderly mom and things were going very well.

Our leader marveled, She sounded so, so happy! I’ve never heard her so happy, it was so wonderful!

She was home. Country, family, everything–at long last she had come home.