There was a black squirrel doing a Salvador Dali/Wicked Witch of the West performance piece; I’m melting. Melting!

I refilled the water out there and went back to knitting up very warm fibers, grateful for air conditioning.

Ninety-nine degrees at 6:00 and sitting in the car waiting for Michelle’s commuter train to pull in, I wondered: who opened the door and let all the northern California out?

I hadn’t seen any hawks, neither the male nor the female nor any grandhawks yet this year, for about a month. And then suddenly in two days I have four times now, the adults.

The patient’s doctor was on vacation; the person covering decided not to wait for him but to get the results and to get the results to the patient.  Dermatology had wanted three months for an appointment to do the biopsy and the patient’s doctor had decided not to wait for them. The patient was too young to have melanoma and the lesion didn’t look like what melanoma is typically supposed to look like; he had decided not to wait till it did nor till the patient got reasonably older. The surgery center wanted to wait several weeks to do the operation; the person covering said NO you do my patient NOW.

The biopsy results came Wednesday. Melanoma.

The surgery was today, Friday, with no time to think out what one might need to do to prepare for the post-op period, just GO.

Aggressive but very shallow and declared stage one, still. They do believe they got it all.

And while we were talking to the not-too-groggy patient, the mama Cooper’s hawk caught dinner and prepared the meal (no blood and guts within sight, very tidy) right in front of us, laying out her picnic on our back lawn as we talked. A down feather got caught in her beak for several minutes till she finally managed after several tries to pull it off with her talons–the proverbial spinach between the teeth while people are watching.

My husband and I described to our loved one this gorgeous raptor capturing a share of our day. Somehow, when we need one, they always show up.

When the patient, far from us, needed it, friends became family and I will love them forever for it; they very much showed up over there.

When the patient needed that doctor to follow their gut intuition regardless, that doctor completely showed up for us all.

There’s a doctor out there who deserves a whole whack of knitting from me.

Two highschoolers at church, a young woman and a young man, interviewed my husband and me a few weeks ago for a project they were working on; they seated us together and then asked each of us our memories of various events in our lives.

There was a get-together tonight at the home of one of those kids, and I happened to be talking to the dad of the other. I’d wanted for awhile to tell both sets of parents what I’d seen that day in their children–the light in their eyes. I’d never had a real conversation in private with either kid before that day, but I tell you: they were *nice* people. I was very proud of them.

The dad beamed, and as the conversation went on, he admitted that, still, for all that, his two kids fought with each other. It drove him crazy how much they fought!

I laughed and tried to reassure him of the normalcy of all that. Is there a parent out there whose kids never once fought? Kids learn as they grow how to get along with people who may disagree with them in the safety of a family setting, given comfort (no matter how much they may resist it) by the fact that if they overstep, there are limits and those limits will be enforced. And also–that someone else’s point of view is as important as their own.

I was once at the wedding of a young man whose little sister was 11 to his 29 if I remember right, and they were teasing and needling each other while their mom rolled her eyes. Siblings!

Part of being human.

And since we are only human. As part of that growing up, all kids need their basic inner goodness reflected back at them: every kid needs an adult who is not their parent thinking the world of them and expecting only the best out of them because they only have to see the best.

And I have to tell you, having a teenager think the world of you back just totally rocks.

Heading out for another busy day with more relatives but I wanted to stop and say: looking out the window, there is new snow on the mountains right above us. Some of the peaks that were spring-green when I got here.

It’s Memorial Day.

Toto, I don’t think we’re in California anymore.

My car had major work done on it last Friday. It’s old, the family minivan with its age spots, the kids now off to university; it’s still here in part because our out-of-pocket medical expenses the last two years were more than my husband’s Prius had been.

My daughter and I had an errand we were going to run to Oakland and then San Carlos on the way home, some happy gallivanting with a little bit of bakery bribery to celebrate her being home.

And every time we thought about getting off our duffs and going and actually doing all that the last two days…somehow, Monday, it just didn’t feel like today was the day. Eh, Californians don’t know how to drive in the rain, let’s give it a pass. Nor Tuesday. Hey–let’s see if I can see Shadow take off on two wings and a prayer, I really do want to see him go. I sat tight and wound 2300 yards of a Colourmart.com cone into a hank, something that didn’t require looking, eyes glued to the unfolding falcon scene in the afternoon while still doing something useful.

But I really did need to get to the post office, so at least I finally got that done after the fledging. I then ran a quick errand to Trader Joe’s in the opposite direction.  I didn’t hear it the first few miles…

But which is why my car went straight back into the shop. They immediately took responsibility and told me they are not charging me: the power steering pump apparently cracked while they were working on other things and they didn’t notice–they were just glad the fluid had lasted long enough to get it back in there for me to say hey, what’s this new and rapidly growing noise? They told me on the phone this morning that it had completely drained out in their driveway and how glad they were that everything was okay.

Now imagine us on the freeway with all the freeway sounds drowning it out at first and then no place to pull over and suddenly no steering. We might well have been in the middle of the bridge over the Bay.

Someone was looking out for us. Not to mention all the people in all the cars that would have been around us.

San Jose holds a competition every year across their elementary schools to name the peregrine falcon hatchlings around banding time; after the fledgings, the winners get to attend a ceremony with the Mayor and have their names in the newspaper. It is one of those delightfully small-town parts of Silicon Valley.

And so it is that one young child is going to be standing there receiving an honor for having named Unita.

On the peregrine forum, one member wondered out loud if we should even be giving them names, saying, they are wild things, they are not pets; I’m sure he wondered what this was all going to be like for the poor little kid.

This was my response.

When the children are searching for what to name the falcons, they are
considering and discussing not just words and labels but the meanings of
those words and what they might carry and convey well into the future on
the wings of these magnificent birds. They learn about the nature of
language.

When one of our falcons dies, they have a chance, rare for many young
children in our society, to consider the meanings of all that life is.
They learn about the nature of Nature--and that the joys come to
outweigh the sorrows as they watch the living continue on.

And I would add, they learn the compassion that grows up from the ashes of the grief.

There were two eyases who successfully fledged from San Francisco’s nest today–and one had been given the name Phoenix.

To life!

Wait, what? It can’t be that late. It was light outside only just a few minutes ago!

(p.s. I want the dark wood one, fourth picture down. I’d need a second story for it, but eh, details.)

(p.p.s. Since I posted that they replaced the photos with links to the photos–sorry about that!)

I had a tree service person here twenty-odd years ago, and given that so much of the Californian vegetation was so exotic and so new to me, when he was done with the job at hand I pulled him around the yard and had him name everything in sight for me. I knew I would never remember it all, but at least some of it would stick.

He was delighted at being able to be a teacher in the moment to someone interested in everything that his life’s work revolved around.

We had an elm? I thought all those were dead!

No, this was a Chinese elm. They’re not affected by Dutch Elm disease.

Oh cool!

Once a year I participate in the UCSF study of lupus long-term outcomes; this year’s  didn’t involve traveling to San Francisco, I only had to spend an hour on the phone answering questions. Easy enough.

They always insist on giving me a $25 gift card as thanks. I always try to tell them not to and that I’m certainly not in it for any kind of payment; they always say it’s already a done deal, sorry, take it.

And so an Amazon card arrived in the mail. I’d already forgotten about it and it took me a moment to put context to the envelope. Ahhh. Yes.

David Sibley is quoted on Amazon saying that after all these years studying birds, well, you do see a lot of trees in the process. And trees hold still while you’re trying to sketch them, and they seemed the logical next subject somehow…

Eight-three cents on my credit card to bring up the difference (a few cents cheaper in tonight’s listing), and “The Sibley Guide to Trees” showed up on my doorstep yesterday, two pounds four ounces’ worth of them right there in person.

How many books are that potentially useful for your whole life? Did you know there was such a thing as an ape’s-earring tree?

———-

p.s. Did you see the little three-year-old bridesmaid in the picture, a millisecond before the first royal kiss, holding her hands hard over her ears with a face clearly demanding at the cheering crowd, “It’s too loud! Make it stop!”

Second p.s. The resident female Cooper’s swooped at something clearly on the roof above me as I looked out across the patio from inside, and I suddenly got a notion of what it must be like to be on the receiving end of that speed. Wow. (Speaking of which, I added a link in yesterday’s post to Eric’s photo of Clara strafing Glenn as he climbed back up City Hall; don’t miss it.)

And third p.s. The squirrels eating the calcium-rich fire brick? They’ve not only started again on it for this year, but they’ve carved off two big chunks. One ran up a tree with one, looking for all the world like it had a large pastry in its paws as it happily nibbled away.

And… One squirrel has been gnawing away at the metal barbecue grill. Iron deficiency, maybe? Sharpening its teeth for the hawk? (It wishes!)

Maybe we need a forest animals book next.

A chance conversation today led to my finally spelling out the thought behind my standard phrase of, it all works out.

Meaning, not just that something was meant to be, but more specifically that despite all our human efforts vs our failings, our sacrifices vs our screw-ups, God can make good use of it all when our genuine hope is to do right by each another. And sometimes He even makes use of the worst in us (about halfway down there)–pretty humbling stuff, that.

I got stymied and stopped on a project about a year ago. I wondered what on earth was wrong with me when I’d put so much effort into designing it; getting it to feel right shouldn’t be so hard.

And today I knew why.  I’m so glad things worked out the way they did!  (This female house finch let me come right up to it today, holding still for me as it studied the yard at long length like I’d studied those stitches; I managed somehow not to scare it off even in opening the door and going back inside.)

I’ve put the knitting down for the night now and am sitting here marveling at… More in a few days.

I hadn’t seen June’s daughter Mariel in awhile, and she had her hair done up somewhat like her mom’s used to be; I did a doubletake when we saw each other. It was as if I were walking in and seeing (almost) the June I met 24 years ago. I saw someone else a few minutes later looking like they were having the same reaction.

She marveled afterwards as memories were shared at how she’d laughed… But of course she had, we all had. It was our June they were talking about. There was Hank, who’d had eight kids while June had only had one; “You have too many grandkids and I don’t have enough. I’m taking yours!”

And so June would have one over for a day with toys and attention one-on-one. The kids loved it. June loved it. They loved each other.

And I’d had no idea I had competition for my chocolate decadence cake. I’ve been making mine from its original iteration and beyond since 1990. And she never told me?

Hats were worn. Two of the women who’d helped June feel special with her new scarf that I blogged about? Theirs were twins, classic pillboxes with black netting and a great big black bow.

And to my delight, the woman sitting behind me during the service was my kids’ old middle-school art teacher. She asked after them all and I showed off pictures of my daughter-in-law and my son Richard holding Parker. She knew Kim’s parents and grandparents and was thrilled at the small-worldism that Kim had met and married her old student.

Her late mom, Virginia, an accomplished organist, used to tease him: if he goofed playing in church, she would tell him, “Great improvisation, Richard!”

So maybe that keyboard hat I doodled and improvised and came up with was just the right one to run into Virginia’s daughter with. It’s all good.

I’m putting in a picture of Parker; June loved babies and she was a friend to his great grandparents and all four of us grandparents.

There was an earthquake today, the 105th anniversary of the great San Francisco quake that ripped the entire San Andreas fault and was felt from Oregon to Los Angeles to Nevada, but this was only a 3.7 and I completely missed it. A baby quake. I had to laugh when I heard about it; that’s supposed to happen tomorrow, not today–tomorrow’s June’s memorial service and we had one during Al’s funeral. Can’t let Al beat her at this waving goodbye with the chandeliers stuff.

It took me the longest time to find this post–I couldn’t remember what pseudonym I’d used for her.  Jo.  I stole her photo with her new hairstyle from her memorial page.  For all the time I knew her before that, she wore it in a high bouffant which, in her later years, showed off her leopard-print hearing aids better.

An email went out today: June had always loved to wear a nice hat, and wouldn’t it be cool if we women all showed up wearing hats in her honor. Oh honey you bet.

June Darby, the first woman to get an MBA at Stanford, passed away two weeks ago, just shy of her 90th birthday. She is missed. And I am printing out that old post to give to her daughter, thinking of that bouffant white hair and that old, classic, muscle-car Mustang of hers and how she laughed and laughed at the doubletakes of the young men pulling up alongside her at the light who suddenly didn’t want to drag race after all.

A day of extremes.

It’s my daughter Sam’s birthday. We had a good time talking on the phone and I am very proud of the fine woman she is.

I’ve been pretty sure we had a family of towhees nesting in the azalea bushes outside the front door; they’ve grown in pretty dense, making a good cover for ground birds. I’ve seen an adult dart in or out a number of times, possibly the same one that came in the house once.

And so I was going out to my car to run an errand in the late afternoon when coming around the corner I suddenly stopped as a small bird suddenly stopped, looking big-eyed up at me.

Wait–it’s a–but towhees don’t come that small.  Oh wait!

Wow. Cute!

It was probably on its first walk out of the azaleas. And I was probably the first non-parent creature it had ever seen. I must have looked incredibly big. No wonder it stopped and stared.  Grandma! What big eyes I have! But then it darted under my car, and I found myself getting down to see if it had moved enough that it would be safe for me to drive out of there. I don’t think it was old enough to fly quite yet.

All was well. I ran my errand.

On my way home, a cop car suddenly went flying past me, lights and sirens. A speeder ahead? But no, he wasn’t pulling anyone over, he was in a hurry, not reckless but definitely not lollygagging.

And I soon found out why: the commuter train that runs alongside the road I was on was stopped. Oh no please no.

Caught in the backup, I eventually managed to turn left and cut through the neighborhoods, not wanting to rubberneck, so much not wanting to see.

But I did see that there were a lot of emergency vehicles. I hoped that meant there was hope.

A retirement-age couple from out of town simply in an unfamiliar place. One froze in fear, one lived. My heart so goes out to them.

My neighbor had been there too and he saw far more than I did. By randomness we crossed paths and he was grateful for the chance to tell and to grieve and that I knew enough of what had happened to be there for him. I’ve never seen him so vulnerable. Love your dear ones.

I decided to take up my friend Diana’s longstanding offer to attend her knitting group, needing to escape; I’d never gone because the distance was just too much. But sometimes— Bag the miles. Just go.

I got there late and stood behind Diana, whose back was to the entrance, and grinned till one of her friends finally told her to turn around.

She did–and screamed! And leaped out of her chair and threw her arms around me! We hadn’t seen each other since Stitches and the Stitches before that. About time! About time. She was SO thrilled to see me, so happy I’d come.

I can’t tell you how much good she did me. And Sylvia too, an old friend who helped make space for me between the two of them.

And I read Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s blog post today. If ever you need a healing post, that one wins, it’s lovely. My thanks to all who pitched in to knit for that new baby and her family.

I want all my family right here right now being hugged by me. Richard is here. I’ll start with him.

My friend Jennifer taught a lesson in church today and in preparing for it, she typed out her remarks and references, then later handed a copy to each hearing-impaired person so they could follow along and not be left out. Giving context for the parts not quite heard. It’s a wonderful, thoughtful thing to do.

And so before she started she handed me a copy as people were coming into the room.

A woman came in and sat down next to me a moment, someone who’s new.  She looked at me wistfully and told me how badly she wanted to hear what Jennifer had to say, but that her daughter had (I didn’t hear what exactly) going on and she was going to have to leave. She was clearly disappointed, while wanting to do the right thing and support her daughter.

“For charity is the pure love of Christ.” Much more than giving of money or clothes but actually feeling and acting upon that which is best and most divine in us. Loving one another with all that we are. A lesson to be energized by, for sure.

The woman is someone I recently knit for, and she also just wanted to spend a moment with me before she had to leave.

It was very clear what I could do to make her feel better in that moment: I handed her those lesson plans and explained how I came to have them. Her face lit up, she thanked me, and then she was gone.

A few moments later, now that all were settled in, Jennifer stood up again and started–and from across the room looked over at me and seemed confused a moment (I thought, or maybe she was beginning to wonder if, somehow, maybe…?) at my empty lap. No papers in my hand either.

She interrupted herself to say she didn’t know why, but she’d printed out an extra copy of those lesson sheets. By chance was there anyone here who might need them?

And I got blessed, not just with her original thoughtfulness and effort, but with the chance to tell her what she’d done when she didn’t know why she was doing it.

(I mentioned the other day that the Elephant Ear had a trunk that reminded me of snakeskins. I didn’t realize till I saw the photo that there was a knocked-over amaryllis pot (yours, Lene) behind it.)

Angela Tennant’s generosity inspired several hours of knitting-to-go here this afternoon. Note that Angela didn’t get an email notifying her of her win, no time to think what the right thing to do might be, she got a phone call out of the blue from the CEO of XRX and she just instantly offered the gift of the famous afghan to Sue, straight from the heart.  There is a Jewish proverb that says he who saves one person saves the whole world. Yes!

I’d needed that bit of bliss as fortification before the fray.

I’d started before my flu bout and my inner child was whining, Aren’t we *there* yet?

So. Turbotax wanted to know how many weeks of the year my daycare operated under the name “book royalty.” Whoa, back up, what wrong click was that? Daycare? You insist it’s in a rental? I should state the oil revenue from it? Riiight. Okay, have to hit just the right pop-up box here and not there–got it, at last! Book it, Dano.

And now my printer is wishing me many happy returns of the day.  (I’m DONE!!!) I finally don’t have to feel like that pointy-faced squirrel I’ve named Ratnose.  It kept jumping at the feeder from the redwood awning pole (and it was chewing on the pole, too–this will not do), so a few days ago I covered its leaping-off point with aluminum foil and, on second thought, sprayed it with Pam.

I picked up my needles and kept an eye out.

E-YOW! Sliiiiiiide *whoosh!*

Hey, that was fun, can we do it again?

And today there were four healthy eyases eating up a storm. Clara the mother peregrine seemed to be methodically feeding mostly one, then mostly the second and on through till all were falling over sleepy. Then she scraped up the gravel to create a berm for extra warmth on one side, the weather having turned cold, scooted them carefully underneath her wings, and took a rest, too.

I had a conversation tonight with a friend whom I’ve known since junior high, who now lives in the town where we lived during our first job after grad school. She said something about taking her dog to go swim in the local lake.

Lake?

A road I’d driven a thousand times was named after that lake, but I couldn’t remember an actual lake.

She thought I was pulling a junior high stunt on her. So I described my old route to pretty much anywhere from our house in New Hampshire.

Then I went to go do my treadmill time for the evening, and it hit me. I HAD turned left rather than right and driven the other direction on that road–once. I didn’t get very far.  I don’t think the whole thing was paved going that way, and what pavement there was was something you could only find in New England-type weather: there was a yellow sign early on warning “Frost heaves.”

This is back when we were just starting our family. I puzzled over how frost could have morning sickness.

And then I saw the huge boulder in the road. Not on the road–in the road, coming up out of the pavement right smack dab there in my way, bursting out from underneath, taller than the undercarriage of my car. It was at a blind spot where there was barely room for two cars to pass even if that thing hadn’t been there, and highly dangerous.

And so I always drove the long way around to get to the other end of town. I never saw the lake from that road.

Wait again–it came back to me. My friend Dottie Peyser had had that lake in her backyard, near the end of that long route around; her place was such a gorgeous spot of the earth. She ran a smocking guild once a week out of her home, and in those baby days I smocked then like I knit now; she was older than my folks and we were great friends. And what a view she and her husband Bill had out back!

I saw Dottie knitting once at our meeting and teased her about it and she said something to the effect of, well but she was a knitter too, and once you’re a knitter you never get over yarn. You always come back to it.

She was right, of course.

I wrote to them after we moved here, checking to see how they were doing. The post office returned it for insufficient address. I wrote on the envelope, by now already fairly marked up: Dear California postmaster. This is going to an old part of a small town, where *there are no street numbers* assigned. The mailman there knows everybody and their house by name and by sight. Please deliver.

They did.

Dottie passed away; Bill had a  heart attack and called me to tell me he’d survived it, and that she was gone. He wanted to know how his semi-adopted grandchildren (ours) were doing.

That was 24 years ago. And somewhere, I still have a picture of my oldest, at three, grinning hugely with their teacup poodle in her lap and her arms around it.

A chance mention by someone from junior high about her dog. It brought so many good memories back after I took a moment to reflect on the treadmill.

And it also got me thinking. I never knew that road went along the other side of the water.  How many things do I miss seeing? Even if I can’t do sun, even if it has to be close to sundown, I need to get out in nature all I can. Walk in the redwoods. Splash in the cold edge of the ocean. Make it so I never, ever forget a lake again.