I debated quite awhile about writing about that boiling pot, and I didn’t want it associated with Dr. R’s afghan at all, matching pattern notwithstanding. But I did confess to that splash because it felt like there was a universal experience in there, that it was not all about me. Last night, I was tossing and turning, thinking about it.

It involves something I haven’t mentioned on the blog: that a few days before our trip to Salt Lake City three weeks ago, I found myself suddenly at my cardiologist’s. There’s got to be a word for when your heart’s arrhythmia knocks the air out of you so hard you cough, you can’t help it, it’s a reflex. Over and over and over. It took me a few days to get past the receptionist and the sub nurse, and when I finally did, I got told I should have gone to Urgent Care that first day when it was bad. Oh. Well, I’d seemed okay to me.

That little flareup is much better, and the cardiologist isn’t worried. Still, the thing was on my mind when I was trying to lift that overfilled and overly heavy pot with my daughter’s afghan in it, and the distraction might well have contributed to the splashing.

The thought I keep coming back to is this: we put our hearts on the line for our children from the second we see their tiny faces for the first time. Sometimes (writing as the mother of four people who have recently gone through teenagerhood) they don’t get it.  If they don’t get What They Want Right This Second they don’t see it as us as doing What They Really Need, especially when it’s Vitamin N–the word no.  But we know.  Sometimes we wait for the day when they have their own children–not as revenge, but simply because there are some things that can only be learned through one’s own personal experience: like how much a human being can love another human being, from that moment and for every moment of the rest of their lives. We would do anything in our physical or emotional power to make things right for them.  To make things work out for their good.

My daughter had hoped for an afghan the color of her brother’s (pictured above) and I was going to do everything I could to make that happen so she would be able to cuddle up in it and know that her mom loves her. Not that she doesn’t. But we never, ever stop teaching our children that we do.

And it feels lovely to be able to tell them yes.

I seem to be in writing mode today…

My daughter was cleaning out her closet, came across this, and asked me if I recognized it.

The I-pod of my teenagerhood. Not only a radio–with FM too, which conveyed an air of sophistication above the teenybopper AM market–but a cassette deck player. Not 8-track, but cassettes! The word “boombox” I don’t think had even been invented yet, but hey, this was really cool–even Sandy down the street liked it. Instant time warp, as my daughter held it up and we brushed the dust off. Did I want to keep it?

Nope.  Out.

Doctor R, if you see this, yes, this is the same pattern as your afghan. After I gave you yours, I knitted it again a few months later to keep close the memory of your face as you reached into the bag, stunned, thrilled, speechless, feeling the softness of the baby alpaca and cashmere and finally exclaiming, “Did it take you very long?” And I answered, “About an hour an inch.” Never has the acceptance of a knitted gift from me meant so much to me as what you gave me in those moments.

It was 72 inches long. He had given me every one of those hours by saving my life a few weeks previously. I was sharing some of my newly-gifted time back with him to convey the depths of my gratitude at his caring: there was never a knitting project more deserved.

Now, for the day-to-day part of this post: at least one of the dye manufacturers says helpfully in their literature that although the dye is more colorfast if you simmer it, you can easily dye in the washing machine; that way, the machine can do the heavy lifting of the water. I’m sure they thought that if they made it sound easy, more people would buy their dyes.

Yeah well. I tried doing it that way once about five years ago. Don’t. Worse, I tried it with their cotton dyes. Had it been an acid dye for wool, those just wash right out of cotton anything, but no such luck. Picture the machine in the spin cycle: now picture every little crevice a droplet of colored water could get flung to, and trying to obliterate every last bit from the inside and outside surfaces of the tub. Which is why I have a set of pink pillowcases with blue blobs on them and a freckled tencel jumper: I was so sure I’d succeeded (including running the thing with water only in it). Later, while I was in the hospital for ten days, my family brought me my own pillow and we used those pillowcases–if they somehow disappeared into the hospital’s laundry or trash, nobody was going to cry.

Afterwards, I went thankfully back to normal life, and, as part of that ordinariness, to using a dedicated dyepot like a good little girl.

That second afghan I made in this pattern was for my daughter, who later decided that she’d rather have it dyed burgundy than the natural light brown baby alpaca I’d knitted it up in. Okay. Hmm. Dr. R’s, I’d dyed in two batches, one to each fiber, to get a heathered effect when I knitted them up together. I didn’t have a pot big enough for this one.

The one bathtub in this house is old and crackled, and I didn’t want to risk dyeing the cracks, so I set a large plastic tub in there, filled it full of water too hot to touch, put the afghan in, took the afghan out, stirred the dye in, and put the afghan carefully back in. If I’d put the afghan into the dyebath dry, most of the dye would have schlurped up into whatever part hit the surface first, regardless of any amount of stirring; it needed to be wet for the dye to distribute properly. And I wanted the afghan hot so it wouldn’t cool the dyebath down when I put it in.

But that still just wasn’t enough heat to set the dye, I found. It wasn’t taking up. So I poured a goodly amount of the dyebath into my biggest dyepot and put it on the stove to simmer. I figured the dye was already well distributed by first using that big tub, where it had room to be stirred; I just needed the extra heat.

By the time the thing was ready to come off the stove, nobody else was around. It was New Year’s Eve, the kids were off. It was way heavier than any dye pot I have ever dealt with. I went to lift it, and it didn’t lift. I had this moment of, hey! If I say lift, lift! I can do anything if I try hard enough!

Thank goodness for the thick cotton sweater I was wearing when the boiling water hit.

I was going by my usual premise that it’s always better to start with a smaller amount of dye when you’re not sure; you can always add more later. But this time, I’m not going to. It’s beautiful; it’s much closer to the color of Dr. R’s than the deep shade I was aiming for.

Cool.

I get to spare you the picture because there is none. At the time, it would have been, don’t you dare photograph this! Now, I kind of wish we had, because I assure you there will never be another chance.

For several years, I had my hair dyed professionally: I figured I knew nothing of what was inside those boxes at Target and I wasn’t going to be one of those people whose hair glowed a vivid purple halo in the sunlight–I was going to do it right. Someone had asked me if I was the mother of the bride when my oldest was 13 and I was 36. Yikes.

The stylist liked to play with my hair after she was done, just for fun. One time, it happened to be New Year’s Eve, and I mentioned we were going to a party that evening. Well, hey!

When she grabbed a can of hairspray, I wondered; earth mother is so much more my style, but whatever. I can be adventurous. She started combing my hair straight upwards, lacquering every little strand. She emptied the can, while I tried to breathe. She grabbed another, and I think she emptied that one, too.

I went from there to pick up my drycleaning to get the dress I was going to be wearing to the party. I’d been going to that drycleaner for years. The woman there stared at me as I walked in, and it took her a moment to realize that having her jaw hanging open probably wasn’t leaving the best impression. She thought to shut it. But her eyes couldn’t leave that space floating just above my head, and I felt them following me back out the door. I tried to think, don’t I look smashing?

I got home and went straight to the mirror. This was around the time when Trump was called The Donald by his first wife Ivana, and she had this huge bouffant hairdo. Which somehow was now sitting transplanted onto my head.

I declared to my husband, “Only the truly rich need to pay to look this bad.” With an eye on the time and the start of that party, I ran into the shower and scrubbed that hairspray out and turned back into plain Alison, the glass slippers kicked off and the pumpkin carriage collapsing in the compost bin. Before the clock struck midnight’s celebrations.

Last night, Kim, our daughter-in-law-to-be, flew into town, and today’s our son-in-law’s birthday, so we celebrated both by taking the whole crew out to dinner.

To the restaurant where Sue works. The Sue whose story leads off my “Wrapped in Comfort” book. And she was there.

Our kids were 11 and 32 months and turning five the first time we went there, with the youngest not yet on the way. Now the youngest is away for his two-year Mormon mission, the oldest two have found the loves of their lives, and we got to show off the three Sue knew then and what they have turned into over the years. And I got to thank her in person for her white amaryllis, which is still blooming three weeks later (I took this photo a few minutes ago), and tell her it has a third flower stalk coming up.

She came over, hugged me, and at one point told me a funny story about a onetime grumpy customer, and then went back over to a table she was serving–I thought about it… There was an older woman at a table near us who was looking fairly grumpy herself. She didn’t see me; there was no eye contact involved. I simply found myself saying a prayer for her, whoever she might be, as she and her family got up from their table, done. I was silently thinking, Lady, you have just had a fine meal and a dinner out with your loved ones, the day after Christmas. The peace of the season to you from my heart–God be with you. And I asked God to come.

To my delight I saw her turn back to the man I assume was her husband, her face and demeanor relaxing, and then she actually smiled! Success!

I love doing that. I love being unseen and quietly saying a prayer for someone. I love seeing them becoming more happy. It certainly doesn’t always work, but it does surprisingly often, and when it does, it is so wonderful. People don’t always have to actually see you smiling for you to offer them one of yours.

And then I turned my attention back to my own loved ones and enjoyed our fine evening together. And got one more hug from Sue before we headed out the door at the end.

My in-laws’ gift to me was this brochure saying a sheep had been donated in my name to Heifer International. I am intensely grateful–I can’t possibly think of any material gift I could have enjoyed more, and Heifer International is one of the best charities out there in terms of using donated funds for the actual purposes the money is raised for.

Tracy Kidder’s book, “Mountains Beyond Mountains” about Paul Farmer, a Harvard doctor who set up a health clinic and school in Haiti, is part of why my in-laws’ choice is so meaningful to me. Farmer is the type of man who, at one point in the narrative, drives through a riot and pulls a man he watched being injured into his car to take him to his clinic for treatment, ignoring the thugs on both sides of the fight and both sides of the car. Someone is hurt. Not to help is unthinkable.

At one point in Farmer’s story, an armed soldier bursts into the compound he’d built, making threats and demanding, So what are you going to do about it?

And Farmer smiles gently and calmly answers, “Treat you and your family when you’re sick.”

That stops the soldier in his tracks. Totally disarms him. He leaves. No more soldiers come.

We can change the world by giving of who we are: Farmer is fortunate in that he can be there in a place like that in person, knowing he is making a difference.  (And he has the courage to do so, which I frankly do not.) For the rest of us, Heifer International is one of those entities that will do so for us. Thank you, Mom and DadH!

Giving thanks…

For the memory of a Great Blue Heron lifting majestically into the air in slow motion, right in front of a friend of mine and I as we got out of the car at the C&O Canal; for parents who taught us a reverence for the natural world.

For the gift of having had parents who raised their children with a love of music, and the piano, flute, violin and guitar lessons by which we learned both how to produce our own music and the discipline from living through that long process.

For the light of the Love in the world.

For the wonder that arrives with each new baby, God’s reminder to love wholeheartedly.

For family gathered around in celebration of what our own babies have grown into. (Awright you guys, who cut into the next row instead of taking the one on the end?)

This is for every harried parent of a small child, trying to survive the last-minute shopping thing:

I had four kids in just under six years, and I well remember what it was like when I had to drag them all out to some mundane thing such as grocery shopping or trying to keep them on their best behavior in, say, an interminable DMV line before online anything existed. Christmas shopping! I remember how quick other adults were to scowl at them and me. How much it meant to me when someone smiled: often, it would be a middle-aged woman, remembering the days. An actual compliment from a stranger could carry me for weeks.

That 40-something (I still get to say that) woman is me now. There are perks to this motherhood thing. I was in a big box retailer one time a few years ago, and coming out of checkout, there was a bench for customers and a young dad sitting on it.

He was holding his little girl with long black curls, who was maybe 16 months old? Old enough to walk, too young to really talk but old enough to understand enough to surprise her parents from time to time. Mine did.

She was at that stage of exhaustion where some kids get to, of flailing in a no-holds-barred screaming tantrum, arching her back hard to try to throw herself on the ground, knowing her daddy wouldn’t let her fall anyway and heedless of any consequences. She wanted her mommy and she wanted to go home and she wanted dinner and she wanted bed and she wanted it NOW.

Somehow, as I approached them, I managed to make eye contact with her. Focusing on her, totally ignoring her father. I think that part was crucial to what happened next–she noticed. Still, this was unusual: just like adults, when little ones are upset, they don’t want to look you in the eye. But something caught hers and she saw me as I slowed down, thinking, what an adorable child! I stopped just far enough away not to be too close, and affirmed happily to her, as if I’d just run into an old friend, “Yeah. I’ve had days like that.”

She stopped immediately. She looked at me, suddenly silent, eyes wide. I was smiling back. She eased down in slow motion into her daddy’s lap, put her thumb slowly up to her mouth, and looked up quite shyly at me but with a little smile now too. She was SO cute. My own smile got bigger.

And then it was her daddy’s turn; just before I left I gave him a quick glance, a smile and a nod. He was looking up at me, too, by then, with this, “Oh thank you. THANK you!” in his face. His daughter watched me leave the store, waving bye-bye just before I stepped outside out of their sight.

The whole scene took so few seconds out of my busy day to let happen. But I will never forget those two. They brought out the best in me, and I am grateful.

Let’s see how fast I can type before I give the computer over for the day to the kid with the take-home final.

I was going to take a photo for the blog of the suitcases lined up, and perhaps another as more get added in as my children arrive. Um, one problem with that idea: the suitcase didn’t come off the plane last night. Oops.

Before my younger daughter left for the airport yesterday, I described the captain I’d had and said, “If you get a chance, tell my pilot your mom said thank you,” and I described him. And thought afterwards, he will always be “my pilot” to me, whoever and wherever he is.

She got to the airport late, barely made the plane, the cockpit door was shut, and, as is more the norm these days, it stayed shut at the end. Ah, well; so. What was that about, Mom?

She had just flown on Jetblue. Flight 291. And tonight, so will my older son after he finishes his finals at BYU. So she was late and her suitcase didn’t get loaded on? It’ll probably come with his flight, since they only have one a day; I might get a crack at that photo after all.

But we got to come home last night from the airport with our child, and I have a heightened sense of appreciation for that small, everyday fact.

P.S. Update: Kristine had her baby! http://lilacknitting.blogspot.com/ to welcome Miss Lucy into the world–she’s beautiful!

There’s a cliche that knitting blogs need a cat for a prop, and to help out, our daughter flew in last night with photos of our grandcats. Here’s Eve above, and Anya checking out the hot cocoa to make sure it’s warm enough to balance out the snow they had going on outside.

The phone rang about a half hour ago, and my husband took off.

When my folks announced they were selling the house in Maryland they’d lived in for 45 years or so and moving to downtown Salt Lake City, my first reaction was, huh? But seeing their beautiful new home this past week, I could see how perfect a move it has been for them. And this is the view out their new windows (click on it for best effect). Very nice.

It surprised me that, although it snowed a bit I think every day we were there, it didn’t feel that much colder than here in California. I’m used to it being a bit chilly and wearing two layers of wool around the house, but then, we have big picture windows too, and cold winter fog rolling over our own mountains nearby.

Which means there is a family standing outside, shivering as the firemen have been doing their best.

Red Cross dispatcher, hoping one of the volunteers was available to respond, asking for Richard. House fire. Would he go?

From the warmth of our home, how could he not?

Going back a few days again. Thursday night, Mom and Dad dropped us off in front of the skycap at the airport and wished me happy birthday again (it was my 49th) and hugged us goodbye. The guy was weighing someone’s oversized skis, but he told us he couldn’t take our bags, we had to check those in inside. I guess because ours were the standard sizes? I didn’t hear why. Okay, whatever. He let me sit inside his little heated booth while we waited for a wheelchair for me: airports and I aren’t on walking terms. It was snowingly cold out there, and I was grateful for his kindness.

Then as we were gathering our things up and putting our shoes back on at security, my cousin Amy, whom I had not seen for seven years, happened to step into view right there right then, on her way to being picked up by her daughter. AMY! Hugs and thrills at seeing each other. Out of all the places in the whole airport, and perfect timing, too… Hey, Lisa Souza, I gave her the Pacific scarf I made whose picture you put on your lisaknit.com website–it was perfect for her.

And then, as we waited at our gate, the plane we were to get on in a moment landed, its passengers disembarked, and two friends of ours, Christina and Kathryn, stepped off it together. Quite the surprise and delight all around. It is so mindblowing and so wonderful when you run into someone you know while travelling: out of all the physical space in the whole planet they could be occupying, and there they and you somehow are. And to have it happen twice in a half hour!

Now, when you fly Jetblue, you pick your seats when you book the flight, and when I did, all the seats close to the front were taken, as were most of the rest. We were assigned to be over the wing. But you can change your booking to an open spot online anytime up to check-in, and I guess someone did, or else they cancelled their tickets, because when we checked in those bags inside as the skycap told us we had to, the clerk looked at Richard’s 6’8″ height and my wheelchair and asked if we would like to be moved up to row 3 where there was more legroom and it would be easier for me. Well *yeah*!

And so it was that we were not over the wing after all. And so it was that I was seated where I could see out. And so it was that I was seated on the side where I would see that second jet–and did. And so it was that the writer on that flight, at least the one I know about, wrote about what that pilot did, and, today, printed it out and mailed it to Jetblue customer service to honor a good man’s heroic actions, hoping they would pass it on to him. And acknowledged to him on the scene what he so much needed to have be said that night.

I don’t know who cancelled their 3 E and F seats, but whoever you are, my thanks to you, too.

Sometimes all you can do is stand back and be wowed by the careful choreography of a quiet God doing good in the background.

I warned you. Okay, here goes.

Tonight we flew home from Salt Lake, and I have all these things to say about an absolutely wonderful trip and wonderful people and how glad I am that we got to go. I’ll get to it. But I have to get this out of my system first.

We were flying over the San Francisco Bay on our way towards landing tonight. Looking out the window, I saw flashing lights in the dark–in the middle of the Bay? Red. White. That made no sense. I was trying to remember, from all the times we’ve driven those two bridges we were flying past, what those could possibly be–except, we didn’t go past them. They kept being simply there. Weird. They got a little closer and a little clearer, a ghost and a shadow at first and then clearly and plain to see right there, a SECOND JET flying directly alongside us and underneath–we were seconds from impact. If not before landing, then we were going to land right on top of them. We were going to the same runway at the same time. Just at the point that I thought emphatically, God, You have to do something because this isn’t going to work, our pilot rammed our plane straight up and out of the way. My stars. I don’t know where air traffic control was, but I can tell you emphatically that it was not at our airport looking in our direction, that’s for sure.

Watching the airport passing below us was both a comfort and a now-what-are-we-going-to-do. We circled out over the ocean–with the pilot, I am sure, going, I hope you’re watching me THIS time, dudes!, and me wishing I had paid the least bit of attention to the over-water emergency instructions–and we headed back over the mountains, then the Bay, and gradually in for a landing again. I’m sure my eyes weren’t the only ones on my side of the plane absolutely glued to the windows. The Bay was mercifully clear and black as night the way it was meant to be this time. I’m also sure the people on the other side of the aisle had utterly no idea. The woman sitting directly behind me and I exclaimed over that other plane as we were getting up out of our seats at the end.

Sometimes, when you fly, the captain will greet the disembarking passengers with a ‘have a nice day,’ or a, ‘thank you for flying our airline.’ That seems to happen a whole lot less often than it used to, in these high-security days, at least in my experience. But our captain opened his door as soon as the first moment to do so presented itself, sprang out, and grimly nodded at each person getting off, greeting them without a trace of a smile, though his pleasantries showed that he was trying to for our sakes.

I was thinking that he looked about to give someone a huge piece of his angry mind, and richly deserved–but it suddenly struck me that he seemed to need someone else to know what we’d all just gone through. How close it had been. Not to be a bunch of oblivious travellers. And he needed to see the actual people he’d just gone through this for, for us to have faces. He needed someone to know what he’d done for us, some way of relieving the pressure of his emotions by giving some degree of voice to them before he exploded to the guilty entities.

I wanted to say “Thank you for saving our lives”: I am one who believes in directly acknowledging the heart of the matter. It’s part of who I am. Still, that seemed a little more than I quite thought I could say…but…

With the amount and weight of our overhead carry-ons, we waited for a break in the passengers, and there was suddenly a long one, so I had a moment to speak without getting in anyone’s way. I said as I got up to the captain, “That first approach was a little freaky with that other plane there–thank you.”

He looked me in the eye, hesitated, and simply quietly wished me a happy holiday in response. I looked straight back at him, and answered, “Thank you for making it so we’ll have one!”

The moment he and I both needed. It had been acknowledged. He knew I knew. He had done his job well when others had not, and he had delivered us to the ground safely. He is a hero. I do not know his name, but I will never forget him. To the pilot of Jetblue Flight 291, THANK YOU.

Okay, that’s not a post title you see every day, but it fits. We were visiting old friends last night who moved from our town to a beautiful home up against the mountainside in Utah four years ago; we were catching up, and on our way back out, there was a car stopped at a red light in a long stretch of empty road. Mark and Kelly can probably envision just where I’m talking about; there’s only the one light. Except, that other driver had pulled off into what would be, in California, the bike lane, and we wondered why–until we pulled up alongside him.

At the Monterey Aquarium, there’s a freestanding round tank in the walkthrough that is filled with brilliantly silver sardines. They flow along together in a circle, with a few mavericks hemming and hawing along the edges of the school, poking curiously in other directions, lagging behind, dashing to catch up, small children at play, it always seems to me. But if something disturbs the group–if a visitor taps on the window or peers in too close–there is a splash of randomness as some turn to the left, some to the right, and then somehow they all give a leap forward close together, a flip of the tails in perfect focus and a flash of silver as they swim in their new direction. After a calm-again moment, the ones who want to look around a bit more find their ways to the edges again.

Last night I was suddenly understanding why my husband had remarked recently that my camera was inadequate: there was no way it could capture that night picture I so much wished for. A few yards from where we were pulling up to a stop for that red light, there were seven or eight magnificent elk standing in the light snow, the peak of the mountain behind framing them. I have never seen elk in the wild before. It was breathtaking.

The light turned; as our car started up again, I mentally apologized to the fellow in that other car in that bike lane next to us, who had had, it had looked to me there in the dark, a large camera in his hands. At our sound and motion, the elks did exactly what those sardines do: they turned, some to the right, some to the left, and in so turning around they all somehow came closer together, and then they leaped forward as one. Not in a great hurry, and they slowed down as we pulled away, just, this is What They Do. Part of being an elk.

I came away with a sense of awe at the interconnectedness of the patterns, earth and sea. And of what the natural world offers to teach us of the strength of pulling together for each other.

I know, I know, you’ve heard the phrase before: “for those who’ve read my book…” you get to meet someone just a bit more.

I got an email last night from Nathania at Purlescence, saying someone had brought in a gift for me, would I like to come pick it up? So this afternoon John and I went over there, wondering what this was going to be about; walking in their door, I exclaimed to her, “Your amaryllis is gorgeous!” thinking, cool, they’re decorating the store with my favorite flowers! Or maybe someone had brought it in as a pre-baby present–Nathania’s only got a few weeks left before she and Kevin get to hold their Christmas baby.

“That’s your gift. Do you know a Sue B?”

I was boulevers’e. Well YEAH!!! That’s the Sue whose story starts my book off, the waitress we love so much who can tell you what our preschooler used to order for dinner twenty years ago!

There was a thank you for her baby alpaca lace scarf in handwriting that Steve Jobs ought to take note of and preserve as a font. What she didn’t know, was, her gift made it so John got to come into the shop and have all these people he knew there congratulate him on his mission and wish him well, a chance for them all to say goodbye to each other for two years. The timing was absolutely perfect, and they totally made his day there as well as the flowers themselves.

So now I get to take Sue’s gift and share it with everybody here. (Sorry I took them away from you, Nathania, I’ll make it up to you, I promise…) These are gorgeous, Sue, and I love that you did this–thank you!