Okay, so all it needs is a little apple pie on the side to complete the Americana of it. Artistry, creativity, and a goodly amount of spunk in taking his idea and running with it…

Glenn Donnellan, a violinist for the National Symphony, created this backstage at the Kennedy Center, borrowing drills and tools from the stagehands working there.  Go enjoy, but forgive your dog if it howls along.

I was talking to someone tonight, and she wrote me that she’d laughed at my “Oh honey. You betcha,” telling me my roots were showing–that nobody native to the West Coast talks like that.

Oh honey. You betcha I’m from Maryland.

I mentioned to her the story of a few years back of some uptight Yankee twit who’d charged the sweet old black lady in the U.S. Senate’s lunchroom with sexual harassment: she was always saying, Thank you, honey, or, See you later, sugar.  He thought she was coming on to him.

As if.

What I didn’t mention was the reason that news story had stuck in my craw so, aside from the obvious cultural disconnect and self-centeredness of the man. It was a little more personal than that.

And so after puttering around with the strawberries in the kitchen for awhile, I thought I’d come back to the computer and explain exactly why that was so.  I want the grandkids, whom I grew up with, of the man I’m about to write about, and then their future grandkids to know what he did. I imagine it’s a story they haven’t heard.

My grandmother was the wife of a US Senator who served for 24 years.  When she arrived in DC, as she later wrote in her autobiography, “Here we were told in no uncertain terms what was required of all wives of new members of Congress.  Calling requirements had been modified, it was true; but we were expected, once a year, to leave cards at the White House, and at the homes of the Vice President, The Speaker of the House, members of the Cabinet and Supreme Court, the chairmen of our husband’s committees, and all members of our state delegations whose husbands outranked our husbands. Still quite a list!” as compared to the days when new House wives had to visit every ranking House member’s home.  There were still strict requirements as to how many cards to leave vs. how many women were in the household, how and under what circumstances to carefully fold the edge of the card down properly…  Arriving by horse and buggy was no longer required, at least, but it was a near thing.

Living in a place where segregation was the law of the land and casually expected was a shock to my western-born grandmother.

As Grampa grew in seniority and rank over the years (and defied ranking members of his party and voted for the Civil Rights Voting Act–hard to believe now how fiercely he was blasted for it, but he was very proud of that vote), Gram eventually became president of the Congressional Wives Club.

And then came the day this story is about.  There was a big to-do held in the Senate lunchroom honoring various people, and when it was over, Gram (protocol, shmotocol) went back into the kitchen to thank the chef for pulling out all the stops.  The food, the presentation–everything had been just exquisite.

While they were chatting, somehow Gram happened to mention that J. Willard Marriott had been there.  The founder of the chain that bears his last name.

The chef was upset.  “Why didn’t anybody tell me J. Willard was here!?” she exclaimed indignantly.  “These congressmen. They all think they’re such hotshots.  J. Willard!  If only I’d known!  I would REALLY have put on a show!”

Then she proceeded to tell my grandmother that as a young woman she’d been suddenly deserted by her husband, left with a small child and no income and no skills and basically thrown out on the street.  (How literally, I’m not sure.)  J. Willard Marriott had randomly encountered her one day and hadn’t cared what color or accent she came with; moved by her plight, he offered her both a job and the training for it.   He had personally taken great care of her, just a random woman out there on a random day, and had helped her back on her feet and had gotten her established in her new career–and look where she was now!

“Oh, Mrs. Bennett, if only I’d known!”

And if only he’d known it was her, he would have been back there too, throwing his arms around her and rejoicing in her hard work and success.

A quick note first: I got a call from Don today from the emergency room; he’d broken three bones in his foot.  Ouch!  I’m wishing healing his way.

After I posted yesterday, a new bird showed up. Bonus points to anybody who whistles the song the post title comes from (sorry about the earworming).  I was stunned–in 22 years in California, I have never once seen a chickadee. Anywhere.  Ever.  I assumed they simply didn’t live here.

But there one was, right there on my feeder, testifying to the fact that in life if you want something to happen, sometimes you have to create the opportunities by which it can.

Speaking of which.  Last night my husband was still at work due to deadlines and international time zone issues, while Michelle, who’d planned to take his car, was off having dinner with friends.  Marian and I were about to head out to San Jose City Hall for her to get to see the falcons and meet the folks I’d be giving Margo Lynn’s fingerless gloves to when it suddenly dawned on us that, oh, wait.  What’s wrong with this picture.

And we cracked up at the same moment.  No car!  (Duh…)

While I was typing this, a female ladderback woodpecker looking like this one showed up on my olive tree. It wasn’t interested in the feeder; I guess it simply felt welcomed by the presence of the seven finches and titmice on the feeder.  It was gorgeous and big and I hadn’t seen one of those since we’d had to cut down the ash trees.  Wow.  All I had to do was welcome its neighbors and it felt right at home too.  I wonder what will show up next!

Before Marian’s flight this afternoon, we did get down to San Jose after all, but there were no falcons soaring in sight at that time of day.  We toured the textile museum–and if you can, GO! The Jack’s Falling Water Quilt is worth the trip all by itself.  For anybody who’s ever been to Watkins Glen in upstate New York, picture a rocky waterfall like that one transfigured into a watercolored quilt with cascades of blue dropletted silk falling around the picture, dappled leaves above the falls, the movement of the water in the pool below and a deep green strip that you almost don’t see at first but then notice as it gives depth and life and summer to the water .

I so wish I could create something like that.  And this Friday admission is free. Go!

Meantime, Don, get better! Your homebirds are waiting for you.

Conversation at dinner: Marian was talking about when they first bought their house in the Seattle area.

She stepped outside one evening and encountered a neighbor standing by his curb staring to the southeast. Had she heard?  Had she seen this?

Heard what?

Uh, about Mt. St. Helens? You know, the volcano?

The what?!  So Marian looked over thataway and you could see the plume in the distance.  Whoa.  She’d had no idea there was anything other than Mt Rainier, which she could see, anywhere nearby. There was a fine layer of ash on everything the next morning.

Richard buried his head in his hands in mock dismay over his dinner, teasing us: “One sister who can’t hear the fire alarm” (no hearing aids in, the building being evacuated, and me totally oblivious on the day he was referring to) “and one sister who doesn’t know there’s a volcano in the neighborhood,” shaking his head.

I guess she hadn’t heard hers go off either.

Sisters.  Whaddyagonnado.

I just put a container of plum sauce in my fridge.  My next-door neighbor knocked on our door earlier today with a large bowl full of plums from her tree. It was aging, she told me, and not producing as many as it used to, but she knew I loved to make jam from it and there was more than they could use.

When we bought this house, Fred had been the gardener here and for her for many years and we were asked if we might keep him on. We couldn’t afford a single extra thing, I told the sellers honestly–but what I didn’t say was, even if we could and did, then it would feel to me like it was more his yard than mine at a time I was trying to adjust my brain to feeling that this really was our place now and that the house we’d built in New Hampshire was not anymore.  Moving is hard enough.

Fred had really gotten into the art of grafting at one point in his life when a client had asked him to help them move part of their favorite fruit tree to one at their new home.  It worked! Cool!  From there, he grafted a few other things–and from what I understand, he didn’t always ask first.  Since he also worked for our next-door neighbors and they had a plum tree, the ornamental plum in our yard could use a little spiffing up.  After all: he needed to trim the one over there, and the elderly Japanese couple living here didn’t need a whole tree’s worth of fruit to worry about, so, hey!  The solution!

I don’t think they knew it was coming.  But that is how the ornamental plum with deep burgundy leaves in what later became our back yard had one large green branch off to the side that was loaded with fruit. Just enough.

I have to tell you, it was one really odd-looking tree.

It’s even odder looking now, the trunk distorted and lumpy; the producing branch, which lasted while our kids were little, died off quite awhile ago.

So my kids planted me my own plum tree for Mother’s Day last year, as I’ve mentioned, and I absolutely love it.

But having A. knock on the door with plums from her tree, the one Fred had lifted a branch from for our house so very many years ago, brought back many pleasant memories of a gentle soul.  I did get to know him over time by his working at her house for our first ten or so years here, while his health held. He loved his work and friends and kept at it into old age.

There’s the memory of the time I waved hi at him when I saw him trimming our olive from across the fence–it had gotten pretty overgrown at top and had gone from being carefully bonsai’d to looking like the branches had mohawks, and it bugged him.  I was grateful; he, though, was embarrassed at being caught and scrambled quickly back down the ladder on the other side, while I was going, no, thank you!  He was a sweetie.

I do miss him.  Maybe someday I’ll learn how to graft in a different variety plum onto my Santa Rosa to extend its season in his honor.  Or an apricot.  Jester trees are the way to go.

You know how when you point a camera at a kid they give you a goofy face?  All I had to do was tell Marian I was going to take her picture and she gave me a goofy face. And I missed it.

The plumber agreed to come tomorrow, having an all-day job today–which he then finished early, called, rushed over, and rescued us.  Yay!

And life is good.

Our neighbor across the fence once asked me if we’d lived in this neighborhood in ’55 when…

And I told her I hadn’t been born yet in ’55, much to her chagrin, judging by her reaction; my hair was grayer than hers, and I guess she’d just assumed…

But our house was.  Which is why today after I’d bleached and cleaned all three bathrooms (we added the third to keep our then-about-to-be-teenagers from killing each other) yet again after the second go-round on the plumbing we thought we’d finally fixed, I was not entirely Little Miss Sunshine today when the shower pans announced yet a third time that they really really needed a Zofran equivalent in their system.

I have my sister flying in from Washington State on Monday afternoon. We were going to wash the already-clean linens on the guest room bed, just to make sure they weren’t dusty.  Right now I would settle for being able to tell her she can use the bathrooms safely.

I will have a plane to meet.

And a plumber who should be making good on his short-term warranty, who came out last month, who doesn’t work weekends, and I’m too cheap to call someone else and we’re still trying to fix it ourselves.  It keeps starting to be okay and then–not.  So someone has to be home to meet the plumber Monday, assuming we’re still at it, and at round three, I think the squirrels are slapping their thighs and telling human jokes on us.  (They lost rounds two and three on the birdfeeder so far and could use the comic relief in the face of their dire deprivation.)

Happy almost-Father’s Day!  (Toilet snakes are a manly art.  No, no, I insist, Dear, go right ahead.)

(Edited to add:  So I did what any reasonable knitter would do: I blocked the seacell/silk shawl on that guest bed while I still could, keeping the rinsing water in the sink to the most minimum possible in doing so.)

So tonight I improvised with the garage band.  Besides, all great ideas in Silicon Valley are supposed to start at garages anyway.  I drove to downtown San Jose again, this time having been coached in the use of Richard’s camera, which is much better than mine, and joined the Fourth Street Garage fledgewatchers in the open air of the top floor.  Introductions all around.  “Oh, *you’re* the one who wrote the lyrics!”  And I was going, so you must be the Eric of the photos, and you must be, and…

The peregrines flew right overhead several times, and with Eric’s help I got to see pictures of some things I’d just missed by being a few minutes too late. I can’t wait to see them posted online.

But could I take my own?  I did remember to take the lens cap off–yeah, after about two minutes (smacking forehead).  But even so, I just wasn’t fledging with that camera yet; I told Eric my husband was going to have to come take his own.  I’d quickly realized I could look down at the thing and inwardly fuss at my own incompetence, or up, to see the peregrines in their last little bit before they settled down for the night. I chose the peregrines. Sometimes life demands that you simply pay attention, now.

There were two on the louver, then a third landing with not quite the grace of its parents, but definitely getting there.  A fourth stood watch on the ledge above, and then a parent soared in but then hid halfway down on the far side of the building from the little squawkers. They’d eaten enough for one night.

Eric told me some of the history of the nestings at City Hall, pointed out where Kya had been rescued, described where Clara’s favorite tree was–and I was delighted, because when I’d been in the library last week, I’d seen what had to have been her going right through there to that tree, but whizzing by so fast she left my eyes almost in the dust.

The other reason I went tonight was to drop off some lace scarves as a thank you for some of the people who’ve done so much work to delight and teach and share with so many.

Listening to Eric and laughing over the teenage antics of the young’uns, I was thinking, you know, I do need to branch out on this lace scarf thing for my little carry-around projects in my purse.  Gotta add something less gender specific.  The FO pile could use a fingerless glove project or two added in for cold hands holding heavy equipment outside on that top level, and it does get brisk.

He told me there was a music fair downtown last summer and that one of last year’s juveniles, at a time when its siblings had dispersed, hung around it squawking overhead loud enough to be heard over it all: hum a few bars and he’d happily sing it for you.

I can throw in some lyrics for the little tiercel.  But then, as Glenn the biologist can tell you, he’s already got his own bands.

Kyle (here and here, I love his story of what he did) and his young family are moving away, and it’s hard to see them go. I gave them my cousin Grant’s name, someone they’ll likely meet at church, to help them feel at home right away in a strange city by being able to make connections right off.

Meantime, today, other old friends who’d moved away four years ago were back again and told us they were now in the area for good: they are a couple who had gone through much to adopt two children internationally while they were here before, with everybody here cheering them on, doing fundraisers to help with the expenses, sharing worries over the medical issues of one of the little ones… Their new children became ours, too.

The younger one, having not seen me since he was a small toddler, took one look at me this morning and threw his arms around me.  I tell you. I could get used to being needed like that.

They just missed the Bay Area too much to stay away.

If only all good friends who fly away could share that migratory pattern and return. (Yes, yes, Karen, I know, you’re still waiting for me to move home to Maryland.  But I do come back to visit!)

(Added note 8 pm: Don is back in the hospital. Tests are coming up.)

I’m going to move the p.s. up here so it doesn’t distract. Right after my last and most serious accident, for those who may someday need to know this, a doctor told me to keep moving, gently and while consciously relaxing, all day. Do not take a nap.  Do not allow the muscles to tense up. Keep moving. Keep relaxing.

He was right. I was hit hard enough to have a head injury for life, but there was very little whiplash effect to the rest of me, which quite surprised me.

Okay, on with the post.

Afton sent me an email about mitzvahs, and the story that instantly came to mind after reading hers of something someone had done for her was this one.  I saw this man for maybe 60 seconds out of my entire life:

“Mrs. Hyde–you got rear-ended AGAIN?”

When the guy at the dealer’s bodyshop recognizes your voice…  And this was before my big accident, where my car was totalled from behind by a speeder and thrown into another one. So.

I made an appointment for an estimate and set out. Coming off the freeway at Stevens Creek, there was a homeless couple holding up cardboard signs. My light was red; I had a moment.

Back then, we kept MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) in our car all the time.  This was not long after the 7.1 Loma Prieta aka The Pretty Big One. We’d bought two cases as emergency earthquake food supplies and kept some in the car. You never know where you’ll be.

I rolled down my window and reached back to the pocket behind the passenger seat, and as I did so, the whiplashing I’d gotten suddenly distorted my face as I tried not to groan. I got the MREs, I don’t remember how many, and held them out to the man, who by then had come near my car for his handout.

As it went from my hand to his there was something absolutely electrical that passed between us.  It took me a breath to comprehend: he had seen the pain in my face, had seen me going through that willingly for him in order to take care of him, and in that moment it felt that God Himself was using that simple means to convey straight to the man’s heart that he was Loved in this world.

And to his credit, he was able to receive that.

I will never forget him. That great healing went both ways. He had made it worth what I was having to go through.  He had allowed it to be turned into a moment of pure Grace.  And I knew I, in turn, had to forgive the man who’d eyeballed me and then deliberately rammed my car in a moment of road rage.

It was lifechanging.

What are your mitzvah stories?

I’ve gone from a calm yeah, yeah, whatever–hey, no blood through the stoma, which they were glad to hear, so how bad can it be, to wanting to type a screaming NO NO NO NO NO!!! to semi-calm again.  Yes, we did go to Urgent Care, the deciding factor being that there’s no question they would have access to my electronic medical records there; the peer pressure via the blog was very helpful in getting me out the door, and thank you.

I did not know there was such a thing as drinkable lidocaine with maalox. I told the doctor I preferred chocolate.  He chuckled.  He came back awhile later and asked if it helped; it did. I got the impression he almost hoped it didn’t, that he wanted to be wrong.  Looks like upper GI inflammation.  That area would be your stomach, and…  What do they treat your Crohn’s with?

…oh.

He allowed as how he could do a full workup with a CT scan, but it could wait till tomorrow with the GI doctors taking over. Oh, right, sorry, Tuesday.

We got home.  The phone rang. My friends Valerie and Al: his mother was visiting, they wanted to go to Santa Cruz but she wasn’t up to the walk, would it be possible to borrow my wheelchair?

Hey, not only a wheelchair.  When they got here, I apologized for the ratty-looking air cushion that we hadn’t replaced because of the unspeakable price tag, so please, no keys in the pockets, it’s punctureable.  But the chair alone would make her sore after a half hour or so, and with the cushion she’d feel wonderful however long they took and wherever they might go.

I took a risk and let my cushion I can’t afford to replace go to make an elderly woman I’d never met before today more comfortable in her day, and it totally made mine.

Of all the times she might have visited, of all the days they might have decided to drive over the hill to the beach at Santa Cruz, I needed it to be today, which they could never have known.  And so they did.  I can just hear the wheels going bumpitybumpitybumpity down the boardwalk from here.

(p.s. Today is my son Richard and his wife Kim’s first anniversary, and I can’t tell you how grateful and honored I feel to have Kim in the family. Happy anniversary!)

In the “everything happens for a reason” department…

I wanted to get that birdfeeder set up that I got for Mother’s Day; we needed a large screw to put into the end of the porch overhang so that I could have it right outside my window here as I sit at the computer. Richard promises not to bump his head on it. And we needed a small metal trashcan to keep the seed in outside.

Every time we made plans to go to the hardware store this past week, which is not even a mile from our house, somehow it just didn’t happen. Till last night.

It was near to closing time and the store was pretty quiet.  We were going up and down the far aisles after we found the small trashcan: chewproof metal with a small hole already in the center of the lid so the seed can air out.  Item one done.

As we looked, there was a man with his own cart looking for something or other; we did the usual not-really-paying-attention-to-each-other as we passed.

I stopped.  Richard continued forward with our cart, but I backed up. I went over to the guy, and told him, “I like your T-shirt.” That stopped him as he did the sudden surprised reaction of thinking wait, which one am I wearing?  Oh, right.  Stanford Blood Center written across the front.

I told him, “Seven people donated blood in January and saved my life.”

He looked in my eyes in wonder and gratitude, then got a faraway look and his eyes got misty.  I added, “Thank you,” and turned at the end of the aisle and away.

Re the mammogram last week: I told the technician I had one request.

What’s that?

That we don’t have an earthquake while I’m in this thing.

She chuckled, telling me she wasn’t in charge of that one–and then she told me she’d been down south of here when their Big One hit.  A little later, she actually was doing a mammogram on someone when an aftershock hit. She instantly released the woman from the machine, and her patient stood there a few minutes, just shaking.

Then, the technician told me, she put her shirt back on, walked emphatically out that door and never came back!

We laughed as we allowed as how we probably wouldn’t much want to either.

My results came back:  normal. Worth the risk of the earthquake–go get yours done too if you’re due.

I debated quite awhile yesterday whether to tell that story; E. is wonderful, but I knew it was a hard one to read.  Far harder to have lived the beginning of it, as she can well tell you, and the pain can never end; it’s just that love eventually refuses to be drowned out in the cacophony.

Her daughters have now given her adorable baby grandsons.  A.’s name continues on, and a toddler’s smile and small arms reaching upwards to be picked up by a thrilled new grandmother…  Thank goodness for the little ones.

First, happy Mother’s Day to my Mom, a superbly kind woman who deserves the very best every day and always.

Next, a story…

When my oldest went off for her freshman year of college nine years ago, one of her classmates went off to a campus in California.

From where, two days later, his parents got the call no parent should ever have to endure. A frat. A hazing.  Alcohol.  And their son was gone, just like that.

There was a huge outpouring of the community here at his memorial service, filling the local Children’s Theater where A. had performed, growing up.

There was nothing I could do in the face of a loss I could not begin to comprehend, this child who had survived leukemia as a toddler when so few did, this young man who’d volunteered with childhood cancer patients at the Ronald McDonald House to give hope to their parents as a survivor, this child who was supposed to LIVE!

Doing nothing was simply not fathomable.

So a lace stole came to be, in dark navy, soft kid mohair the color of midnight when the stars are faint–yet there. Black seemed too much; I wanted to hold out the promise of a lightening to come, someday and terribly far off but no less real, while acknowledging first the depth of the darkness. I wanted to give his mother a hug to wrap around herself when it was just too hard to take. Which was every single day.  And I knew it.

And then I prayed to know when to take it to the boy’s mother, E., whom I knew but not well.  I didn’t feel an answer to my questioning; the thing sat there for several months. It bugged me.

Then came the day when, as I had done many a time before, I said that prayer asking again, feeling like I was nagging God or something, when the answer came as a sudden emphatic feeling of NOW!

Oh! It was Mother’s Day and we were just about to sit down to lunch–could it wait till later?

But the feeling of Now! was so emphatic that I dropped everything on the spot, apologizing to my family for ditching them this day of all days, and ran with it halfway across town.

A.’s father was outside and told me E. was taking a nap, but he would give the wrapped present to her.   …Meaning that E. wasn’t put on the spot having to appear grateful while trying not to burst into tears; she was able to absorb my note and my gift in private, and somehow, later, that seemed to me to be just as well. I hadn’t done it to stand there to be thanked.  I would say now that the timing worked out perfectly, even though it didn’t seem so at first glance.

Later in the year, Rachel Remen gave a booksigning and I bought a copy of her “My Grandfather’s Blessings” for E.  I explained to Dr. Remen briefly who it was for–there’s a story in there of a mom who’d gone through a similar loss, and I wanted my friend to know there was someone else out there who had gone through this and could understand, far better than I, for all my good intentions.  I told Dr. Remen, “And now I have to pray to know…” and she, looking in my eyes and I in hers, said “when!” in unison.

Again I prayed. Again the answer came to me, at last, on Mother’s Day.  And so I took it over, inscribed to comfort her from the author herself.

After that, I got a clue.  I knew when to go.  I showed up every Mother’s Day on E.’s doorstep. An amaryllis in bloom, the impossibly late last daffodil from my garden, a certain new book of which I was so proud, always something.

My younger daughter mentioned about my illness and hospitalization and her worries on Facebook this past winter, and E.’s daughter read it and told her mom. Which is how E. showed up in my hospital room, bringing me flowers, a visit, and a great deal of comfort that I never would have expected.  She is dear to me.  It meant much.

But she said something that distressed me: she told me I didn’t have to bring her anything on Mother’s Day anymore. But! But!  Although, at the time, it didn’t entirely look like I’d be seeing any more Mother’s Days anyway.

I was on the phone with my son today when my doorbell rang.

It was E. standing there. Bringing ME flowers. And not only flowers, but a blooming plant to put in my yard to remember and think of her and enjoy. She had no idea whatsoever that I’d been wanting a hydrangea anyway in a somewhat bare spot in the yard there–it just happened to be what she felt I might like when she saw it. And I do. Oh, I do!

The light in the colors just bursts through.