Random thought of the day: smoked salmon on a crisp cracker, it occurred to me as I nibbled, is fish bacon.

I have figured out how I want the next project to look–I’ve just never done it before. Wish me luck, and silk is froggable should I need to start over.

And with thanks to Lene for the heads up:

Someone who tried something she’d never done before, on a grand scale. Sonia Soberats lost both her children to cancer in a short time while losing her sight to glaucoma. As Norman Cousins once wrote in great wisdom, the only way to cope with a major, life-upending illness is to do something creative.

She went completely blind–and then she took up photography. Amazing work. She dances with the light that she and only she can only picture.

Went with a friend to see a friend this evening to say hi.

To a new widow.

To an old friend. Twenty-five years ago, we were newly moved in and were struggling with the changes that had come with a California mortgage (I don’t even want to think what that would be like now). Where did we have any room to cut back?

We had three kids under five. She and her husband had raised their kids here with one still in school. She showed up completely unexpected one day, knocking on my door from halfway across town to share some fruit from her tree, a few veggies from her garden. She’d been thinking of me; would I like these? She was almost apologetic for the intrusion.

She had no idea that far beyond the fruit itself, the gesture, the thoughtfulness, the love for someone she didn’t even know well yet at the moment I felt so overwhelmed but had told nobody–I’ll remember it forever with great gratitude. It would all be okay now–the fear in the way and the tension it had caused was gone.

It’s been about a year since he passed; long enough that I’d been wondering if maybe she was feeling like everybody else had gone back to normal, everybody but her. When Catherine emailed and said, let’s go stop by, I was honored that she thought to take me too and glad of the excuse. Why did I need an excuse? Just go!

And so we did.

When our friend welcomed us in, I admired an old photo of her husband by the front door and marveled that their son (in his Facebook photos from across the country) looks now so much like his dad did back then. He was so young then. So was she.

We got to listen. We shared old stories together, some that were new to Catherine. We made our friendships all brand new all over again.

What had I been waiting for?! But maybe it was just the right time after all.

There will be more.

Heard elsewhere:

Sarah Palin called Senator Joe Lieberman’s office.

“I’m sorry, he’s not here, it’s Rosh Hoshanah.”

“Hey, Rosh, could you take a message for me?”

———-

Edited hours later to add the real post. You know how some days are all about winding yarn while your brain sifts through what project and idea to pursue next? Only, I’ve been doing that with fruit trees, winding my way through websites, learning everything I can while trying to decide what makes the most sense for our small lot. Avocado trees are poisonous to birds? Forget that. Wait–we get 880 chill hours? We do? (The number of hours of cold a tree needs in the winter in order to produce a good crop come spring.) That’s a lot more than I thought and gives me a lot more options.

Note that if you plant close to a light-colored house it will reflect warmth onto the tree and up the hours needed.

Wait–Lorings? 750 hours–Yamagami nursery in Cupertino has Lorings?! (Down the right side there.) Lorings are the peach trees of my childhood!

There was a commercial orchard just barely into West Virginia that grew them.

The farm hands would come through and pick everything ripe or that might ripen, leaving only the tiniest and greenest that could never sell like that. The trees would then put their all into those very few, and over a few weeks they would become huge–a pound, a pound and a half, drip-through-your-fingers juicy and with a flavor like no other. But getting to them was so much work that to the farmer it wasn’t worth hiring help again for.

Mom and Dad would call, and when the peaches were ready for gleaning we would go. It was a long haul from the DC suburbs but also one of the adventures of our childhoods.  Putting ladders here and here and here with Mom and Dad, we six kids got to climb up in the trees after those scattered few, so perfect peaches left behind, while getting an incredibly good per-pound price for our prizes; for the farmer, it was found money.

And also found friends. He loved that we so much loved what he did–and that we got to see his peaches not the way they ship best but fully how they’re supposed to be.

Meeting new neighbors down the street once with some of those incredible peaches the day we’d picked them answered their wondering as to whether anyone would notice or care that they’d moved in. Wow, *where* did you get these?!

It took us, what, Marian, an hour and a half? Hour three quarters each way to get there? But it was always worth it.

I can grow Lorings here in California! Who knew!

I’ve been staring at the screen, trying to figure out a good post, going and doing my treadmill time, coming back, nope, that didn’t do it. I just keep coming back to the mental image of the plum tree my kids gave me a few years ago–a stick with promise, something a little kid would be delighted to go play swords with–and what a beautiful, perfectly shaped leafy specimen it’s already grown into. (Wait–it’s four years old already? Next thing you know it’ll be heading off to college!)

It’s the simple things. I feel so blessed by so much and by so many.

(Edited Monday to add the photo.)

I had wanted to do this ever since the first time I heard him play: the gifted pianist I’ve seen a few times playing in the atrium at one of the Stanford clinics, creating a place of peace for all who come into that medical building whatever may bring them there.

Wait–you MADE this?!

I designed it, I answered him, as he looked back down at the piano hat in his hands in wonder. I told him the Malabrigo merino was superwash, but I’d put it in a pillowcase before putting it in the washing machine, and his expression was, Oh no, I’m not doing that to it, as he explained he would just handwash it with a bit of soap. With a look of, That’s okay, isn’t it?

Absolutely. Cool. He totally gets it. He was so thrilled. He was so not expecting that. I wasn’t really expecting it to be so appreciated, but he did and he gave me back more than I gave him. Whoever he is, he’s such a good soul.

The man over at the reception desk had his own big smile going on; he’s the one who, after I showed him last week what I was working on and why, told me what day the pianist would be back so I could do that. Clearly he had kept the secret. Clearly he was taking joy in his friend’s joy.

I had knitted it a tad loose, having once knit a piano hat too tight; fair isle work is something I just don’t do all that often and I was trying to keep the floats from turning it into a tourniquet. I wanted it to be able to stretch to fit someone who was bigger than I am.

I didn’t say anything about all that, but there he was, flipping it over to see what the inside looked like and going Oh! at the floats. I don’t know if it was a so-that’s-how-she-did-it, or if he’d seen knitting being done before. He put it on without turning up the ribbing so that it bagged just a bit, and admitted he used to have dreadlocks. I tell you, he was totally rocking that look and will however he may wear it.

I forgot to tell him, if the tag bugs you, it’s just me showing off, feel free to clip it–but don’t clip the yarn holding it on, that’s the cast-off end right at where I started to work it into the fabric. So I’m mentioning it here.

And then I listened a bit till someone else stopped to talk to him, and it was time to beat the start of rush hour. Went off to the post office and sent off a baby alpaca hat to someone facing a life-changing diagnosis and also the now-finished one to Representative Cleaver, with a note of thanks for his shout-out during the Democratic National Convention: he had noticed our group’s efforts to promote peacemaking in Congress, even though he hadn’t gotten one of those hats; I had noticed his recognition of what we were trying to do.

Some days are simply what yarn was created for.

Thanks to my cousin Jim passing the word on, I found out that my great-grandfather met Helen Keller. In front of the Mormon Tabernacle Organ that my son has played–so I know just how much sound that thing can put out in person: you wonder if the windows are all going to fall out when the organist really wants to pull out all the stops (which is where that phrase comes from).

Now, let me tell you a story about Heber J. Grant. Born in 1856. He was completely tone deaf. He was also a strong believer that anything he worked hard enough at, he could achieve, and so at one point in his life, he decided he wanted to learn to sing. I mean really sing: he got a pianist friend to work with him, telling him when he had the note right or not and learning by how it felt in his throat because his ears just had no clue. Memorizing, practicing, because after all, music was an important part of the church services. He got to where he had a repertoire of three hymns that he was assured he was doing well.

And then they announced he was going to sing a solo in church.

The pianist played the intro. He joined in.

The congregation suppressed twitters all around–the oops moment of being caught off guard and reacting in spite of themselves.

He soldiered on, got through it, sat down, and leaned to the pianist, “Didn’t I sing that right?”

“Yes, you did,” she whispered back. “I played the wrong introduction. I’m so sorry!”

Rhythm, pitch–he’d had no idea.

His youngest daughter was my grandmother with perfect pitch.

Sitting in the front row at that Tabernacle building is where, at an annual, long-scheduled Grant family reunion that was held the weekend of Gram’s passing at 96 (I think she let go then so that we could see more relatives in the extended family), I heard for the first time her father’s voice. It had been remastered from a very old recording for that reunion and all of us out-of-towners would have missed it had the funeral been held at any other time.

Singing.  My tone-deaf great-grandfather was singing one of those songs again in his great old age. It sounded like an old man’s voice, but he only hit a few notes wrong. I would not have known he couldn’t hear better.

Wow. Just, wow. Helen Keller held his hand and didn’t let go. He guided her to that organ console in front of all those pipes. Alexander Schreiner belted out that hymn for all he was worth and they got to hear it as they could, together.

—–

Edited Monday to add: I finished that post, went off to bed, and the obvious suddenly hit me: Helen Keller had learned to speak like my great-grandfather had learned to sing. By how it felt.

Got to Kings Mountain this morning, talked to Mel and mostly Kris this time, her turn. Brought them chocolate hazelnut torte–and you should have seen the look on her face when I affirmed that it was flour-free and celiac-friendly. YES! (I got it right this time.)

One of the customers stepping into their booth area–I exclaimed Oh HI! and she did a doubletake and then Ohmygoodness!

It was Michelle’s old sixth grade teacher. The one who had believed in her, pushed on her, and, Michelle told me when I got home, had changed everything. Changed her study habits, made her realize which direction she wanted to go in as her middle school friends were making choices good and bad, made it so she ended up where she did, graduate degree and all, it was Mrs. Garcia who had changed everything–and right then, it was clear Michelle wished she’d gone with me.

The Kunihiros had, for the first time, made yarn bowls. I didn’t buy one because Holly gifted me with a red one from another potter awhile ago, but I got to see a couple of women buying the ones today and got to ask them, Oh, are you a knitter?

That’s a sentence that will make you a friend on the spot. They loved it and we talked yarn a moment.

The Kunihiros have a few sheep now, and Kris and I talked breeds and wool and alpacas a bit.

As I was getting ready to leave, Kris suddenly had a thought: would I like some water?

I didn’t want to deprive them…

Mel, walking over to their cooler and lifting the lid to show me the bottles: We have 24!

Well then. And then I admitted that, with no colon, I am under orders to drink 8 oz every two waking hours forever or my kidneys will fail, and that I had taken my husband’s car, which is easier to maneuver and park up there, but had forgotten to put water in it. I always carry some with me–except…and so I  was very very grateful for the offer.

It had just suddenly seemed what she should do.

And a good time was definitely had by all.

Then this evening, there was our neighborhood’s annual block party. Helene was there, and I was telling a few of the parents of teenagers in one little group that she was the woman who had gotten my daughter’s phone number out of her while she was still lucid, lying in the street, and had called me: riding her bike to school at 13, my oldest had been racing to catch up to her brother, flipped her bike, landed head first, broke her helmet and then broke her shoulder as she rolled.

And that’s how we got to know Helene.  We thanked our kids for actually wearing their helmets after they were out of our sight. Last I heard, the elementary our kids went to still has hers on display: this is why we wear these. (Those parents tonight wanted to give their kids a story about helmets they would listen to.)

Helene was gratified at being the hero again, all these years later, and gave me a hug.

Once a year. Kings Mountain and right here at home. We see each other once a year and stop, and take the time, and be together, and talk.

We should do this more often.

It’s Kings Mountain Art Fair weekend and I’d been looking forward to seeing Mel and Kris.

Only his name was on their artist list. It’s always been both their names, and I noticed that.

I got there just after four: enough time to visit before the 5:00 close (and after the crowds would have gone way down), hopefully not too much sun. It is amazing how deep and how everywhere the shade is in a redwood forest.

Mel exclaimed in delight when he looked up and saw me. I did too in surprise when I realized that was one of their now-grown sons with him: “OHMYGOODNESS! You aren’t little anymore!”

They laughed. His son glowed, just absolutely glowed, when I told him how beautiful their work is. I know he helps with their production and I’m glad he got to see the appreciation in person. And he remembered me! He wasn’t very old last time I saw him.

Kris wasn’t there.

Cancer last year–and they’re sure it’s totally beaten now, she’s okay, she’ll be here Monday.

!?! I’d had no idea. I just knew that I absolutely had to go to see them, no matter the sun, no matter anything. Monday, Crohn’s flare willing (it’s minor so far), I’ll be there.

Phyl and Lee wanted us to see their photos from their recent diving trip to Bali. We love Lee’s  underwater photography; we’d been looking forward to it.

And so they had us over tonight. (Again, yes.)

Walking in from the parking lot, there was something odd in that tree… I walked over the grass to it and looked up.

Some young child had thrown his yellow Tonka truck up in there.

It wasn’t that tall a tree. Canes can be handy sometimes, and I ducked out of the way as it came down and left it waiting at the trunk for its owner to find it in the morning (I hope!)

As we later thanked them for the evening, I reminded them that the last time we’d seen their fish pictures after one of their diving trips, I was in the hospital shortly after, totally tripping out on morphine with bright Indonesian fishyfish swimming through my hallucinations all night, keeping me entertained.

We laughed. And, let’s not.

(Note on the kestrel: I have been told by a birder friend that my sweeping out where a mouse had set up shop on the patio is probably what attracted the kestrel; they tend to eat rodents more than small birds.)

———

She has that classic first-grader look with that missing front tooth.

Her mommy was in the freshman dorms with my daughter Sam.

Her daddy went to the med school that just happened to be where Sam’s lab was while she was doing her PhD–so Sam got to see her old dorm friend again while they were there. Cool.

And then they moved here. Small world.

Our friends Phyl and Lee invited a whole whack of people over this afternoon and evening to celebrate the end of summer at their condo’s pool and pool house. Pot luck, barbecue, swim if you want, come!

The sun was low, the fog was rolling in, the breeze was getting chilly, things were winding down, and–let’s call her Jane for now–Jane’s folks were laughing at themselves for what seemed cold to them now after two years here after having lived in Vermont for awhile.

Next thing, her daddy was walking with her to their car as we were coming up behind.

There was a big wide puddle on the concrete next to the pool where splashing and shivery dripping had happened. They were steering around it. Total waste of a good set of flipflops.

“California kids don’t get that you have to splash in puddles, puddles are for splashing in!” Drought year–when had any of those kids tonight last seen water on the ground? I totally jumped in, feet and cane and all, soaking the hem of my skirt; they laughed happily.

But she didn’t quite drag her daddy’s hand back over there to go do that too.

That gleam in her eye said, next time, though. There will be more puddles. Next time.

I’m going to say one last thing on the topic of a woman’s right to make her own decision. There’s more to this. Our local Jackie Speier stood up in the House last year, angry, and described what she personally had had to go through: she had lost a baby and had had to go through “that procedure,” a D&C.

I know that she and her husband had long struggled with fertility issues, that that baby was dearly wanted. She did have I think two kids afterwards–and then her husband was killed in a car accident while they were little.

What I did not know until that speech hit the paper was that the men trying to push all the personhood and anti-Planned Parenthood bills were also trying to make it so that new doctors would not be taught how to do D&Cs because those are used in abortions, and were even wanting to criminalize the procedure itself.

I want to scream every time I think about that, Do you know what that means?!

When I miscarried my first pregnancy at almost four months and the fetus was dead, the doctor who did the D&C told me that I had to have that done in order to protect me from scarring, from having leftover tissue that could cause infections, that if it were not done I might never be able to have children. I had that D&C; I went on to have two daughters and two sons.

Do we outlaw all guns everywhere because some are used to kill living people? Did a bullet ever help a body heal?

———

Okay, enough of that. So. I took my baby dress project to Purlescence tonight, the one I’m working on to match little Eden Alison’s hat. Except, I was stumped. All these years of knitting and I just haven’t done baby clothes–the first sweater I made Parker when he was a few months old fit his three-year-old cousin.

So I asked Pamela, who knits for her little grandchildren all the time, and Danette, who has a toddler. The bottom hem seemed to be coming out too big. We talked fit and the whys and hows of it. (I know I linked to that chart the other day but I needed knitters around me to tell me in person.)

That did it. I sat down and got going, and I am really pleased now with how it’s coming out. Like I so wanted to be all along.

I was at the dentist’s. Having been there before, I took a bit of Jasmin with me, the ones on the left in that picture, just in case.

The air conditioning was going as if the day were hot when, actually, it was mid-70’s outside.  The hygienist asked the dentist and he admitted too and it seems they were both just shy of shivering.

And then he turned to me for verification or perhaps to take good care of his patient. “Are you cold too?”

I shrugged a no with, “I’ve got on wool socks! Handknit by my friend!”

They laughed and wished they had friends and socks like that. Go Jasmin!

And perhaps in part because one of my sisters lives there now, I liked this story: a knitter on the New York subway.

Sunday was the hat. “Now we can have the baby!”

And Monday, but only just barely, right on cue, Andrew came at last.  He’ll be in the hospital on antibiotics till Friday but things are looking good.

Carolyn is expecting.

Carolyn was due.

Carolyn is overdue, and any woman who’s ever been there is probably putting a hand on her own back in sympathy about now.

I have been trying to get myself to sit down and knit a hat for her son for about a month now. There was that wedding in the way, but after that I had no excuses. I saw her at church last week and thought, well, blew that chance of getting it to her before the delivery.

But I knew that there would be a happy announcement made–and there had been none yet.

I got a note from her: her mother was in town to help and she was a knitter and wanted to know where the best yarn shops around might be?

Deadlines cure procrastinations. This morning I pulled another Malabrigo Rios out of my stash: superwash merino for a tired mom about to have a toddler and a newborn. Forty stitches, a few rows, a checking of size on the Bev’s Country Cottage site, a total rip, a start over, 50 stitches, size US 5 needles of 1×1 ribbing, and looking at how long that was taking me, I ditched the idea of ribbing all the way up. I switched to US 8s because rib stitches come out bigger than stockinette ones (and stockinette knits up at twice the speed) and zoomed through a plain swath that showed off the colorway. Five spirals of decreases and a little pigtail of crocheted chain stitch at the end.

Got it done in time. Just barely. And it was so cute–what had taken me so long to discover what that yarn could be?

Went off to church, where I connected with Carolyn, met her sister and her mom, and apologized: This was all my fault. The baby had been waiting for me to finish his hat. Now at last he can come.

They cracked up. They loved it. Her mom exclaimed over the knitting and tweaked the little pigtail–bouncy bounce! Carolyn waved it at her husband, going, Now we can finally have the baby!

Her mom mentioned in an aside to me that she wasn’t going any distances right now, yarnstorewise. I told her I had stash I’d be happy to share. There’s no way a new grandma who knits is going without yarn to shower the little ones with, not around me she’s not.

(Edited later to add) because how could I not: my niece Emily just had her baby. And this is what she just told me on FB:

So, aunt Alison, I don’t know if Eric posted this or not, but we named our baby Eden Alison, the Alison after you. I have always admired the positive outlook you have on life, and hope to emulate that.

Gobsmacked does not begin to tell it. I read that and exclaimed Oh WOW!!! so out loud that I had to immediately explain to Richard, sitting next to me, why. Wow. Hope y’all don’t mind my bragging here. Welcome to the world, Eden Alison!

I’ve got me more knitting to catch up on!

One of the Stanford satellite clinics has a grand piano in the lobby–actually, two clinics do that I know of, but anyway, most of the times I’ve been to the one, there’s been someone playing.

And the guy’s good. Really good. No sheet music, any style you want, any age any tune, he’s got it. I have no idea if he’s a young doctor on break (dresses in a suit, no white coat) or how he came to be there, but he’s a master musician.

And here’s the thing: it’s like Joshua Bell in the subway station.

Okay, wait–I just went looking for the video of that to give you the link, and on impulse decided to click on the snopes article verifying it. Not only did it happen, but it tells that the same experiment had been tried 77 years earlier–by a man playing the exact same Stradivarius. Who played two of the exact same pieces during the same amount of time. While also having been put up to it as a social experiment by a metro newspaper, in a subway station, at rush hour.

Who knew.  Bell didn’t. Wow.

The Stanford pianist chatted a bit with me between songs once about music, but other than that I haven’t interrupted him. He always has a smile, always nods in acknowledgement of those going by whether they notice it or not, always lights up when someone stops a moment rather than just passing through to one of the hallways spoking off.

And yet. I’ve seen people sitting on the couches curving in the inner and outer sides of a circle there, some clearly listening to him but almost as if they were hiding it, some reading, all but one that I’ve ever seen turned away so as not to be facing him. Trying not to invade his space, perhaps.

And nobody. Not one. Ever clapped.

Until I did.

The guy looked surprised, abashed, and very very gratified. And then another patient joined in.

I have no idea if I’ll ever see him again. I do know I’ve seen him playing there three times now: clearly he enjoys being able to give of himself like that, always choosing music that lifts the heart, music to do good by every person coming in in need of healing–including, each in their own way, the medical staff.

I went stash diving today. Part of me is second-guessing myself, wondering if the Zarzamora colorway in Malabrigo Rios really is just the one, but it’s very soft and it’s the one I’ve got out of all the stash I looked at that seemed the most right. I will finish this hat, then, and if it doesn’t feel perfect, I’ll make another.

But I just didn’t want to wait. Some projects need to be pounced on the moment they come up; I really like how this is coming out and I really like the thought of being able to give a little art back.

Hoping he’s there next time… I have an errand to run past there before then. I can pop in and try.