A couple of days ago, I followed a link to a link to a link when I was trying to rest my hands from knitting for a bit but avoiding picking up a book because then I’d never put it down, and I stumbled across a blog that spoke to me. The writer was a nurse whose house was falling apart and it felt to her like everything else was too. That day’s post was a cri de coeur. The blog was private, and I felt like an intruder for reading it.

Now, nurses hold a close spot in my heart to begin with. I owe a lot to quite a few of them. I could tell you story after story after story of moments they’ve made all the difference in the world to this patient. And so I did what I do, wishing I could help–I went through my stash, thinking, what do you knit for a total stranger you’ve never laid eyes on before? If she’ll let me? White’s pretty safe. Boring to knit after awhile, perhaps, but safe. And I had the best white yarn I know of, that Blue Sky stuff, leftover from the Wanda’s Shawl I knitted my sister for Christmas. (I always buy more than I need, even on my own pattern. You can always use leftovers. You can never replace the hours you spent knitting a project that turned out not to have enough yarn to finish. It’s almost a religion for me. Buy extra.)

I have had just a few times when I’ve been motivated to knit something and then circumstances became such that the person who sparked it (who never knew) never got it; someone else needed it more. I plan, but in the end I just go with the flow of what feels right.

So I sat down and knitted that scarf through the day till it was done. I know who I definitely want it to go to. I posted it yesterday in the context of Louisiana memories, thinking that if that nurse reads it, she’ll understand why. I put a comment on her blog, and if she wants to follow it, she’ll find this, and she’ll have my email address (I think–if not, it’s in my sidebar here.) If not, then, into the FO stash it goes, waiting its turn for serendipity to show up.

But I’m really hoping she reads this. I read her post with memories of when we remodelled 11 years ago, when our previously old-but-sound roof now had 17 buckets and bowls under it after the contractor left. Rain coming through an electric socket over here and a light socket over there–fried that overhead light, too–that was scary, and the contractor did, at least, take responsibility for and fix those. In the end, we had to replace our roof, and since the water, gas, and electrical lines ran across the roof now (the house was built with them under the concrete slab–bad idea in earthquake country), we had to rip them out and have a do-over. At least we could. We were lucky, financially, and we knew it.

A scarf isn’t going to hold the rain off her head–it’s kind of laughable. But…it’s what I know how to do from here. It’s a gesture of we’re all in this life thing together.

And maybe I’ll hear from her so I can send it. I hope so. More importantly, maybe she’ll know that others are pulling for her, whether she lets me know who she is or not.

Totally stealing the concept from Stephanie and Lene. From William Carlos Williams, a pediatrician whose poetry was my favorite in college, written, if I remember correctly, about a six-year-old oncology patient of his:

The Red Wheelbarrow

Trying not to violate copyright, I offer the link. I used to think of this poem when my children, especially when they were little, would fixate on some one particular thing and how important it became to them for a passing time. My youngest, at about 18 months, was given a little red plastic hammer by a friend of mine that for ten days afterwards was in his hands round the clock, asleep or awake. If you tried to remove it from his sleeping clutch, he would wake up. “Mine!” and he would groggily reach for it back and roll over with it tucked safely half under him. With three older siblings, he learned that word early on.

When he was awake, he was constantly, constantly tap-tapping it on every surface he toddled past, listening to the sound that that one would make. Now that one. The wall. The fridge. Mom’s leg. Assessing the interaction between it and everything he could reach. Same hammer, but such different effects. It completely absorbed his world day after day, and I liked to think he was training his ear for future musicianship.

I think he did.

“so much depends

upon

the red wheel

barrow… “

Him. I’ve got me a good one.

Meantime. I just dropped a package off at the post office, and as usual drove to the one at Bayshore: there are always shore birds to see along the way there, so much more peaceful of a drive than through city streets to the one in the opposite direction. I took my camera along, though I knew that was probably wishful thinking.

There were four snowy egrets in the marshlands, but off a bit in the distance: too far from anywhere I could reasonably pull over just then to try to get a closer shot. I continued on.

On my way back, coming over a rise in the road, there, suddenly, was one right there. A snowy egret. On the sidewalk. Strolling along like a long-legged model on a catwalk, right there in all its glorious white plumage and black stockings. A couple of office workers from a nearby building were walking towards it on their break, deep in conversation and seemingly oblivious to what was walking away from them just ahead, going at about the same pace. People are funny. So was the egret: it turned its head and followed me with one bright eye as I drove past it, with me knowing that by the time I’d be able to get to where I might park the car, those walkers would probably have scared it off into the sky. My camera didn’t get to see it–but I did.

There was one time I went to the post office in the opposite direction from home for whatever reason. Now, I am by no means a tall person, but I’m married to one, and our kids take after their father much more than me in that department. So I’ve heard all the lame comments time after time, the “do you play basketball,” the “how’s the weather up there.”

Standing in line for a clerk that day, a man came in behind me. I glanced up, then tried to give him his space, knowing he didn’t need to hear one more stranger chiming in on the obvious. But after a few moments, I couldn’t help but chuckle slightly, and to my quiet delight, he started gradually chuckling too, as if he were in on the joke. Which I think he was.

Then two sentences were spoken out loud:

“My son’s 6’9″.”

“That IS tall!” he affirmed, from about half a foot higher up than that.

I did not ask him how on earth he found a car he could fit into, or buy clothes, or all these things that we’ve found hard enough to do*. It was enough. Someone was in on the secret world of very tall people, even someone who once went looking for a copy of Randy Newman’s “Short people got no reason to live” song for her husband–Happy Valentine’s Day, honey.

And I think of that man for a moment with a smile, every now and then, as I turn the car the other direction, letting the tall snowy egrets and the petite redwing blackbirds vie for my inner attention, along with the occasional pelican.

————-

(*A Prius. The new ones, anyway; the first one we got, a 2001, the hubby eventually cracked the dashboard by being scrunched up so tight in it, even though it fit him better than most of the cars on the market at the time. The new one fits him much better.)

One other thing about Monday: I put a small Nordstrom’s bag (it was what I could find, and hey, the one at Stanford Mall sells the best chocolate truffles in town–go to the top floor to their refrigerator case, over near Customer Service. Oh. Okay. Back to the narrative) inside my knitting bag with the three scarves inside it and went off to my doctor’s appointment, intending to stop by Urgent Care afterwards.

On my way out, a woman about my age passed me. A few moments later, as I waited for the elevator, she was approaching me again, coming from the opposite hallway, reading signs, and it caught my attention–I thought, how did you get past me? So I asked her, “You look lost. Can I help you?”

“Yes!” she exclaimed. “Do you know where Urgent Care is?”

I pointed out the window next to us, “It’s on the ground floor right there.”

Oh, okay. So she got in the elevator with me, and when it opened on the ground floor, she didn’t get out. I prompted her, “This is the floor. Would you like me to walk you there?”

No, no, that was okay, she could find it now, thanks.

And I merrily got in my car and drove out of the parking structure. And then it hit me. DUH!!! *I* was supposed to go to Urgent Care! How had I forgotten those scarves! All those cues from talking to that woman and I didn’t remember. Dumb dumb dumb. So I pulled the car back around, went back down again, parked the car again, got back out again, went upstairs again, and walked over to Urgent Care at last myself, feeling more than a little bit silly.

It wasn’t till I was writing the post about the very elderly woman I encountered there that it hit me: if I had gone directly as I had planned, if I hadn’t forgotten, I would definitely have been out of there by the time she showed up. I’m so glad it didn’t happen that way.
And when I asked her if she would like an arm, and she answered with delight, “Why, yes!” in that instant it became no longer a heart problem so much as a joyful way for two people to unexpectedly get to meet each other and come together in the moment. There was so much love radiating from her. And so many people in that room who simply didn’t see, as I chuckled inwardly that it was a good thing that I used my cane on the left and she did on the right, so that we matched up together okay without tripping over each other’s canes as I helped her to her seat.

I don’t know whose great-grandmother she is, but they are very lucky to have her.

(The former post title didn’t quite do it, I decided to change it.)

I did stop by Urgent Care, and I told the receptionist there what I was up to. I was a little hesitant to just leave the things when I didn’t know the name of the nurse I’d knitted for and I wasn’t entirely sure I’d gotten the X-ray technician’s name right. I’m sure the other people that work there are perfectly wonderful, but I wanted them to go to the people I’d made them for. So I explained. About Dr. Rachel Remen’s writing that another doctor had told her that if they make a difference to the patients, “The patients never tell you,” so I had decided, well, I’m going to! Bring out the knitting needles!

The receptionist was totally thrilled for them. It was fun to watch her. She checked the records to see whom it had been three weeks ago, told me that that nurse was there on duty right then, and called for him in quite a bit of excitement.

Meantime, a very elderly and very tiny woman came up, alone, while I was standing there waiting, and started talking to her. She didn’t want to be a bother or be out of turn… And the receptionist asked her, “You’re having chest pains? I’ll get you a nurse right away.”

I thought, oh good, he’s probably already about on his way out. But I watched her face cloud over for just a moment at the question of chest pains, and I instantly understood where she was coming from: how wonderful it felt to be around happy people, seeing that big smile that had already been on the receptionist’s face. But how much she needed to be taken care of NOW, while not wanting to complain. I looked at her, knowing in my bones, You need a wheelchair!

I offered her my arm to help her to a seat. She gladly took it. (I thought emphatically at myself, bod, don’t stumble on me now. It behaved.) She was trying to go to the main waiting area, which was pretty full with no seats open nearby; I steered her gently to the little alcove next to it that had a chair right there. As I helped her settle down into it, I smiled and told her, “They’ll take good care of you here. I’ve been a cardiac patient here. They do a good job here.”

She smiled warmly and thanked me gratefully. She reminded me so much of my grandmother when she was in her 90’s.

And I was glad to know which nurse was on duty this afternoon.

I did get a chance to give him his scarf in person. He was surprised and thrilled and finally asked me, “Now, what was your name again?…” Three weeks ago, he did such a good job of being there for me. It felt wonderful to be able to be there for him, too.

And the unexpected gift, for me, of being able to bring a moment of comfort to that elderly woman so that she wouldn’t be alone either. We’re all in this life thing together.

(for the nurse)

And a two

(for the X-ray technician)

And a three

(for the doctor)

reasons to go back to Urgent Care when there’s no medical need to. The men’s are Misti Baby Alpaca Royale, the doctor’s Handmaiden’s Camelspin 70/30 silk/baby camel, handdyed.

Close-up on the nurse’s needle–being baby alpaca rather than wool, which would have had much more spring to it, the motif relaxed out a lot when I rinsed it and laid it out to dry, so it’s less obvious what it is.  Which is fine with me.  That nurse’s needle was essential to my current well-being, and I wanted to design him something that conveyed his work in his scarf.

I separated the X’s for the technician’s by four rows of garter to give each X separate prominence, but it nevertheless all flowed together in a cohesive whole. I quite like that. It fits.

The doctor’s was the leftover yarn, done in as open a pattern as possible to try to stretch those 26 g as far as they would go, from the project I made my son’s fiancee for Christmas. Camelspin is really nice yarn, and when I saw that small leftover ball, it was one of those moments of, yes! That’s the right yarn! Purlescence didn’t have more in stock of that colorway just then, so I had to make do.

Off for a routine appointment today; I’m going to stop by Urgent Care on my way out and try not to get in their way. Wish me luck.

(Photo: my Bigfoot pattern, done as a scarf with three repeats across of the stitch pattern given in “Wrapped in Comfort,” Kidsilk Haze, size 4.5 mm needles.)

Such a weird reaction to a common cold. Autoimmunity is always an interesting variety show, and so, I found myself in sudden pain last night and in the eye doctor’s this morning. Lupus inflammation leading to a tear in the cornea, drops for three weeks.

I had never seen that doctor before. She was gentle, she was thorough, she asked questions, she gave me lots of details and she asked for any questions from me after giving me enough information so that I had some idea of what to ask. This is the eye that went blind on the left half for three weeks a few years ago; I don’t trust it to behave. (Stomp my feet, demand, “But I’m too DEAF to go blind!”) But in her competent hands, I came away with a sense of grateful relief. It’ll be okay? I see.

It’s not just the technical competence of a good doctor, although that’s essential, it’s the caring that conveys the strength I need to let all this stuff just be background noise so that I can tune it out.

Back to my merino wool and 4mm needles. I can already see it more clearly than I could last night.

(Got it now.)

We were among the bunch of Nina’s friends who took her out to dinner Saturday night to celebrate her birthday, which is today. She grinned at me at one point, and said, “You need John! John’s your best hyacinth hunter.”

It was about a dozen years ago that I was out looking for a birthday gift for her, and I happened to come across some hyacinths blooming in pots. I didn’t know why they seemed just the thing, and I wondered whether they were blooming in more my colors than hers, whether buying one would be a donvier–pronounced DON-vee-ay, a gift you give someone else because it’s what you want for yourself, not because it’s what they want–but still. They appealed strongly to me and I chose one. It was just a little thing, but it smelled so heavenly; you couldn’t carry it in your hands without having it make the day a bit brighter.

Now picture me ringing Nina’s doorbell, her opening the door, and then her standing there speechless. Nina is not the speechless type. But she was dumbstruck.

Finally, she exclaimed, “How did you know!”

Know what? What was she talking about?

“My grandmother!”

It turned out, her grandmother had given her hyacinths for her birthday every year as she was growing up in New York City. It was a tradition between them. Her grandmother had passed away, and here I was showing up on her doorstep on her birthday with…hyacinths.

And you know that after that day I could never, ever give her anything else, even if I have to do a bit of hunting around to find some. I don’t have a picture up yet, because I always feel better as the day goes on and it’s still a tad early for me to get out and about to go buy some. But I will. I just wanted to jump in first and say–happy birthday, Nina!

Another toddler story while I’m at it.

A half dozen or so years ago, circumstances were such that my teenage daughter was pushing me around in a manual wheelchair at Costco. At one point, something caught her eye and she gave me a bit of a push forward and parked me mid-aisle to go look at it.

At the same time, a dad pushing a cart with his little boy in it did the same thing and stepped over to the opposite side of the aisle. And so I found myself on a Saturday afternoon suddenly looking up at this toddler who might have been barely two, with his seatbelt on, a big boy now who didn’t need an infant seat anymore.

I smiled and waved hi.

There was this look of absolute bewilderment on the kid’s face, and you could totally read his mind as he stared:

There’s a grownup! In a stroller! Being pushed by…a KID!

Blew his mind. It took him a moment to decide whether it was okay to wave back: wave, oh, right, I remember waving, um, okay. And so he gave me this very funny half-wave with this expression of, I GUESS I should.

And then there was the time I used Costco’s motorized chair, and at the far end of the store, it suddenly stopped dead. The battery indicator read fully charged, but hey, try to tell it that. My hubby went to go grab the manager, and when the guy came over, he took in the scene and told us, “The problem is it’s thrown the dead man switch. You’re too lightweight. It doesn’t think anyone’s there. Put your purse in your lap, maybe a ten pound bag of rice or something so it knows there’s someone actually sitting there.”

That’s me. Always messing with their minds.

Went to church with a mask on my face for my protection and for other people’s. I wasn’t the only one coughing, and being hypervigilant to what that can do to those of us there on chemo, I wondered why it’s such an unusual thing to do in our culture.

It’s the little kids that make that mask hard, though. You can smile with your eyes to the adults, and they get it–although I watched several people in a row clearly having to come to terms inwardly on the spot at the sight–but the toddlers stare. They don’t know if you’re trying to play hide-and-seek–but then where’s the seek part? Why the blue thing? And can they have one too? So I did pull mine up and down for just a minute or so with one 15-month-old. At first, her reaction was an ecstatic look of, Yes! You ARE playing by the rules! Then, when I left it on, she just wasn’t sure she approved. Do it again. Prove you know how to play this game.

I didn’t.

The thought suddenly occurs, I hope she didn’t go home and play with covering her face with random things to try to figure out what all that was about.

My friend Pam gifted me with a surprise: a pair of fingerless gloves with my Rabbit Tracks pattern knitted into the backs of the hands. In a yarn with a colorway named “Red-tailed hawk.”

I was sitting in this very seat, working at the computer one day a few months ago, when a red-tailed hawk flew into the tree outside my window here. I stood and watched it for several minutes; when it spread its wings and tail feathers wide and flew off, it was absolutely breathtaking.

My friend Robert, who lives in the mountains nearby and is the weaver of my medicine blanket, rescued a red-tailed hawk about a year and a half ago, injured by the side of the road. He took it home and nursed it slowly back to health over several months. He sent me an occasional email along the way, telling of the progress she was making, of how he’d won over her trust and she would come to him. He described the thick leather gauntlets he wore to protect him from her claws as she would climb up his arm towards his shoulder to get closer.

Then came the day he decided she seemed ready to return to the wild; he thought her wing was probably strong enough now. He took her outside, on his heavy leather glove, and waited for her to fly off.

This was a new thing. She had to decide to stay with him or go. She did not immediately take off, but when she did, she flew to a tall tree close by (proving to him she could fly that far again)–where she perched and regarded him for half an hour, as he waited to see, as he couldn’t take his eyes off this beautiful bird he’d put heart and soul into caring for.

He described it all to me. Then, at last, she lifted her wings and took off into the sky.

I still have this cough bugging me. I still have a fair amount of nausea, and my weight’s down six pounds from the beginning of last week. It’s a little too easy to feel crummy.

And then I got a package in the mail yesterday, red-tailed hawk fingerless gloves to keep my hands and heart warm. The beautiful and unexpected gift of Pam’s time, thoughts, and yarn lifts my spirits high.

Lara, it turned out, is one of those people that you meet and instantly adore.

My nephew Elliott called last year at the start of spring break, saying he was thinking of jumping in the car, driving the 800 miles from BYU, and playing tourist with a friend of his: San Francisco, the redwoods… Would we have space for them if they came?

Would we! Watch me jumping up and down! Yes!! It was while I was getting the house ready that one of my kids, who also goes to BYU, mentioned casually, You do know that his friend is likely going to be Lara? That he’s got a girlfriend?

Oh. Okay. He didn’t mention that little fact. Two rooms… (Hey. We’re all good little Mormons.)

And so we had a far too short but absolutely delightful visit. I asked Elliott at one point how they’d met, and he said they were old college friends; he mentioned some to-do where he was supposed to bring a date, and he didn’t have a date, and he just thought, eh, I’ll invite Lara, why not. He had never thought of her as a potential date before–but when he agreed to the thought, “I was just..so…HAPPY.” He kind of shook his head a little at the memory of it, with this big and slightly bewildered smile on his face.

Have you ever had the experience where you see a couple and you instantly know they were meant for each other? But I was careful not to say anything too presumptuous sounding, because it wasn’t my decision to make.

Months later, I got another call I loved: they were engaged, and he wanted me to know that their visit here was what got them each thinking of their old friend as, actually, the person they couldn’t imagine not spending the rest of their lives with.

Lara is from Fairbanks. The date was set for last week. Um… They looked at it, and realized that for almost everyone that would want to be in attendance, it would be a destination wedding because of the remoteness of where she grew up, and–who in their right mind heads to Alaska in January?

And so they went for the opposite idea. They kept it very small (although, with a large reception to follow in Salt Lake City). For the actual wedding at the Mormon Temple, I know on his side, there were his parents, his three living grandparents, and his brother playing photographer.

In Hawaii.

My sister Carolyn, his mother, forwarded me some of her older son’s pictures and gave me permission to put them here. The first is one that Joel snapped not knowing why he was getting the expressions on their faces he was, but he caught it just immediately before the surprise big wave on the calm day swamped him and then them. The second is after the wave.

And a good time was had by all. Happy forever, Elliott and Lara, I love you dearly. And I am SO glad you came!

Yesterday was, abruptly and unexpectedly, a blender-hair day. I got to see this guy https://spindyeknit.com/2007/02/nurse/ and this guy. https://spindyeknit.com/2007/02/people-placed-along-way/

I guess I overdid it going to Karen’s, and I apologize to everyone there whom I inadvertently exposed. I woke up yesterday morning too sick to sit up, much less stand; it was everything I could do not to pass out. But eventually I had to try, because I wasn’t staying there. Going from the bedroom to the car, I grabbed my knitting…and then threw up, repeatedly.

“You’re NOT going to be knitting!” said my husband, firmly.

Yeah, I know. But it was my insurance policy: if I didn’t take it, I’d end up being admitted to the hospital. If I did take it, they would send me home from Urgent Care.

Five hours and one IV later, a little liquid, a little Zofran, they did send me home, but none of us was quite sure that was the right idea. I did, however, get taken care of by that same male nurse, who didn’t at first recognize me from my bout of pneumonia awhile back–I’d had a mask on the whole time both times–but who again looked so gently in my eyes that I knew I would heal. Which, yesterday, was not feeling like a sure thing. The x-ray tech was also as kind and as gentle a soul as you could ask for. It helped, I think possibly even more than the IV did.

Today’s a little better. I’ve managed to stay upright this long so far.

I am changing her name here.

The whole way along, Jo hasn’t been entirely sure about this whole aging thing. Californians are supposed to stay young forever.

Picture a woman with white bouffant hair, holding tight to the high style of her youth, and a well-preserved old Mustang muscle car that she’d babied for decades as well as any hobbyist. She used to laugh at young men who would roar up alongside her at red lights and start to offer to drag race when the light turned, till they got a good look at the person in the driver’s seat. A woman! An OLD woman! As the first female to get an MBA from her university in the 40’s, she enjoyed lobbing other peoples’ expectations back at them like that. I think she was into her 80’s before the hair deflated, after she’d had a stroke, and her beloved car was totalled by her ex-husband, whom she had stayed friends with and who had borrowed it.

She goes to my church. Her stroke turned her into an instant little old lady, and she was not happy about that. There was a Sunday morning when I asked her how she was doing, and she, from her wheelchair, declared, “Heavenly Father forgot about me!” She didn’t care much for this dependency thing, not one bit!

From there she seemed less and less often lucid; sometimes she didn’t recognize me anymore, despite our having moved here in ’87. But she still had good days, just, none recently, when I made my decision.

I didn’t know how she would respond to my knitting for her, but I decided to do it anyway. I took some baby alpaca in white, white being about as generic a color as you could ask for, one that wouldn’t freak out the caretaker if her patient played dress-up with too-wild and crazy abandon; I knitted Jo up a bit of a scarf. Not too long, since she’s seated these days, you don’t want it catching in the wheels, and besides, she might not notice if it did. But oh so very soft.

I took it to church. I put that scarf around her neck and kind of patted it in place on her shoulders, telling her I’d made it for her and what the yarn was made out of. (Ever the fiber artist here.)

She’d been feeling down for some weeks, and that day, she was just plain out of it. She reached one hand absent-mindedly upwards towards mine, but she didn’t seem to have a clue what was going on. Some of her elderly friends swarmed her as I stepped out of their way, exclaiming over her, exclaiming over her new bit of adornment, telling her what it was and how wonderful it was. Jo’s face went from blank to mildly bewildered.

The next Sunday, there was Jo. She was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She was with it. She greeted me cheerfully. She totally knew who she was and where she was, she was her old self again, and she was ready to challenge anybody to a drag race in her wheelchair, scarf flying.

It was startling to me how changed she was and how much of a difference a simple gesture had made in reminding her that she really was thought about, honest!

I thought of all that today, about a year later, as she sat parked in her chair waiting for her ride home to pull up near the door. She waved hi and laughed. I didn’t put her on the spot by asking her my name or hers; she recognized my face and was glad, and that was reward enough.

I looked at the sky before we left to drive our oldest and her husband to the airport this morning. Note that this photo was taken at twenty minutes before noon: see the truck in the picture yet? And yet, today’s storm was far less, I kept thinking as we drove.

Several years ago, one of our children lost her sheet music the day before her high school concert where she was to perform a solo. No time for letting the mail bring an order. The only place in the whole Bay Area that sold that music, as far as I could find, was in Berkeley–across the San Francisco Bay and 50 miles up the most congested highway in Northern California. The sky looked very dark that morning: my husband urged me, worried, Go early. The kid was pretty upset at herself for losing her music and fairly frantic that it be replaced. I thought, only for love…

We had this ’88 Honda Accord, the sort of well-aged car you own when you don’t ever want to have a scenario where your kid with the new license comes home after crashing the car and you blurt out something stupid that makes them think you care more about the car than them. It had a mildly bashed bumper before we even got it. I felt it was a good antidote to the intense materialism of the area we live in, and that that was a good thing when you’re trying to teach your teenagers what’s important in life. Embarrassing the heck out of them had its definite points. I mean, what teenage boy is going to drag race to impress his friends in…that? Right.

So. The skies started pouring before I even got to the Dumbarton Bridge, (the day was later given 100 Year Flood status) and I could barely make out the truck in the next lane over. It was some of the heaviest windblown rain I had ever driven through, and I kept going, This is California? East Coast, sure, but California!?

And then, when I was most of the way there, my windshield wiper got the hiccups. One side started going slower. Spastic. Erratic. I held my breath, not sure I could even find my way to the side along the soundwall, and if I did, I’d be a sitting duck in the breakdown lane. I tried turning the wipers off, but that was just too blind in that horrendous rain, I had to have at least one side I could see out of; I was leaning way over to look out the passenger half. And then the one wiper caught on the other and they both came to a heartstopping halt. Fini.

What happened from there was the scariest drive of my life. The blinkers the other drivers couldn’t see. Trying to get off the highway. Trying to find someone to help me fix this. Knowing how far I was from home. This was just before I bought my first cell phone (I got one soon after!) It was several miles before I found a garage off the freeway.

And when I did, the guy at the gas station said, Here. Pull into the bay here, get yourself out of the rain. Let’s see what we can do for you, lady. There–and he found the loose screw on the wiper, tightened it up, and said, There you go. Have a safe drive home, lady.

The whole thing took him less than two minutes from when I’d pulled in, fighting tears, and he waved away any payment and my fervent thanks. I filled my car. That, at least, I could do in return. Two years later, I filled my car there again, on the way home from Stitches West back when it was held in Oakland, making a point of telling whoever was on duty that day why I went well out of my way to go to their station.

Because I wanted to take that good man’s graciousness and bless the next worker at that station with the story of it. Let them know that when they help a traveller out, it is not forgotten. It is remembered with great gratitude. And that can even be good for business. For years!

p.s. The band teacher had a spare copy of the music.