The doorbell rang.

It was the listing agent for Shirley’s house, wanting to know if the lights had been turned off last night; they were supposed to be.

Sadly, no, but we appreciated his efforts to get the word out, and–what’s this?!

He had gone to the local very good French bakery and had brought us a bag of pastries to try to ease the pain. They definitely lived up to the place’s reputation.

Best of all though is that after all the messages back and forth we got to actually meet and take the measure of each other and came away glad for it.

He had grown up friends with Shirley’s son. I thought, you really DO know the neighborhood. Cool.

He asked that I text him any time the lights were on and he would come and take care of it. He laughed when I said I hoped that wasn’t a long commute, which wasn’t quite an answer but I didn’t press him on it.

And as he probably hoped, I came away thinking that if I ever want to list my house, now I have the agent for it. Except that we’re not going anywhere, but thanks.

There is, in fact, a single big bulb still on right now of the five of them that shine directly in our windows, and there appears to be a mirror behind it for extra fun. But someone tried (they were all on during the day) and that is so much better than it’s been that I’m just going to let him take a well-deserved rest.

We were offering finger puppets to the parents of every toddler coming on board the flight for home. It had been much delayed, they were on Texas time, and we knew those kids were going to be tired. Their folks could use all the support they could get.

A woman holding a box full of exquisite, perfectly matched white flowers watched the family boarding just in front of her getting one and something in her smile had me offering her one, too. Her choice.

Oh cool! She quite liked the little gray cat.

She and her very new husband were coming from their own wedding and looking absolutely radiant.

We settled in our seats, Southwest flight 1489 took off, and I was alternating between book and needles; having done an awful lot of knitting that weekend, I was trying to take it easy on my hands. When the crew served apple juice I used the little cup with its ice to hold against tender muscles.

About an hour in it dawned on me: I was knitting an infinity scarf in a colorway Malabrigo had named Anniversario. A blessing of an infinity of anniversaries together to come. How had I not seen this instantly.

There were about three hours left in the flight and I had maybe a little over half a cowl at that point. I considered, a little doubtfully at first.

I could do this. If I didn’t stop at all, after having already knit for two hours in the airport, then yes, I think I could. G_d, if You want me to, I’m going to need Your help because my hands otherwise aren’t up to it.

And so the marathon began, with a prayer for the outcome to be whatever He wanted (including stopping if I needed to to protect me.) I was leaving it in His hands while trying to thank Him with mine. We had gotten to our family’s wedding after all the Friday stuff. We had shared in so much happiness. And here was a chance to bless another new marriage with a story they could tell their grandchildren someday, of love from the whole wide world on their day.

I found to my half-surprise that my wrists had stopped twinging. I did stop every now and then and stretched my fingers and wrists but then I got right back to it. I timed how long it was taking me to do a repeat and when I would need to stop in order to be able to cast off and work the ends in before we landed.

I did it. At sixteen repeats it was long enough. I was quite happy with it. I did it! I even still had time to read just a bit.

Then the trick was to find her again, and I knew if I didn’t then it would happily go to someone else. But also that I’d be a little disappointed, maybe even a lot more than a little.

Baggage claim. Maybe they’d gone straight out the door. I didn’t see them. With my face blindness I probably wouldn’t know anyway unless she smiled–facial expressions are easy for this damaged brain to do still, and also, if, hopefully if, she was still holding those flowers, that would make it easy.

Those suitcases were very slow to start coming out. It was nearly 1:30 a.m. Texas time.

Suddenly there she was again with her box of blossoms, right next to us.

I told her what I’d done. She was blown away. What it was and how to take care of it. I explained that the lace would lie flat and show off its pattern the moment she rinsed it. She would have to finish that one last step I could not do there (oh, and snip those ends, they’re already woven in.)

An infinity of anniversaries to come. To life!

The postscript is that somehow my hands are fine today. But they had earned the day’s rest and maybe tomorrow’s too (like I could stay away from my afghan project that long) to help stay sure of that.

So we were boarding our flight to Texas for our nephew’s wedding.

The ground crew was consulting with the flight crew. The outside of the plane, they said, was…scratched.

The flight attendant’s initial reaction was, What do you mean, scratched?

The rest of the passengers came on. We sat. We went nowhere. We waited.

I don’t know if it took 45 minutes to make the decision or if that was to check if they had places to put all these people going to three different cities along the way, but they called ours first: “There are nine of you going to Dallas. Please collect your bags and exit the plane.”

And thus began our trip to Vegas, Albuquerque (Hi Maura!) and at last Texas, twelve+ hours airport to airport. At least we didn’t have to move from plane to plane after the initial change, and since those flights were jam packed the guy who sat on our row stayed on our row the whole time and we were all the best of friends by the time we finally got off. To the point that at one point I handed him my Rachel Remen book, “My Grandfather’s Blessings,” turned to page 263, When It Works, and said to the dad of teenagers, Three pages. I think you’ll like this story.

He dutifully read it, closed the book, and went, Wow. That was intense. I think I need a copy of this book.

I offered him mine, but it was my reading material so he turned down the offer but he made careful note of the author; I told him she’d gone to bed in her college dorm at 16 and had woken up six months later from her coma and that was her first instance of Crohn’s disease. She’d gone on to be an incredible doctor. Her grandfather had been a rabbi in Russia who had had nightmares of a black wing snuffing out the lights in all the synagogues in eastern Europe and had gathered his congregation and fled to America just ahead of the Russian pograms and then Hitler.

This good man from Texas had just gotten a glimpse into the heart of a good Jewish woman who had willed a baby boy who had been brought to the ER moments too late to come back. To live. To experience this life.

And thus the moment in her medical internship when the attendings brought the parents in to say goodbye to their son after they’d had to call him–and the little boy, now in Rachel’s arms, IVs and EKG leads and all, had cried and reached towards his mommy.

I called the realtor this morning and thanked him for the gloriously dark night last night.

I just looked: there is a light left on, but it is muted as if on the far side of the house and with no direct line of sight between bulb and us. That’s so much better than how things were that I’m not going to complain.

Karma reminds me of the time when we woke up at the usual hour in the morning to a message on our answering machine from next door: Sandy was pleading in vain with us to wake up and turn that thing off somehow.

One of the charms of our late ’99 Chrysler minivan was that about every 18 months its alarm would totally randomly start blaring, and when it did it would keep on going till you–get in the screaming car that first time, run through the owner’s manual, go why??, scramble back out, put the key in the driver’s and only the driver’s side door, twist it the wrong way, hold, let go, quick do it again–and at last blessed silence.

Of which there was none that night for Sandy, her visiting son and daughter-in-law, and their young triplets who were all having to get up at 3 a.m. to catch their flight to Thailand.

I’ve written about the day there that they were going to go to the beach, but somehow it just all fell apart and they didn’t go…And then how Sandy was gone a month past when she was expected back and everybody was worried. Had anyone heard? No.

She had decided an older white woman driving one of the relief trucks into stricken rebel territory wouldn’t be shot at by anybody’s soldiers during the aftermath of the tsunami they had just just missed being swept away in at Phuket.

The annual neighborhood block party died in the pandemic, and then the people who ran it either passed or fell into dementia; they were parents of college-age kids when we moved here thirty-seven years ago.

It occurred to me that it had been before the pandemic, too, that I’d last shown up on her doorstep with a batch of fresh-baked I forget what by way of saying hi. I did see her about a year ago coming towards my block with a walker.

I had to start somewhere. I googled their names. Still there, looked like, both of them; oh good, because you never know, I mean, she’s someone who once asked me, Do you remember in this neighborhood in 1952 when… And I grinned and went, I wasn’t born yet.

For that matter, neither was my house. It was apparently among the builder’s last.

Monday the city crews came by to trim the trees at the power lines and suddenly there was even less to block the effect, essentially nothing now. That was the final push–I had to do something.

I didn’t have her phone number. I couldn’t expect her to answer the door if walking was that hard a year ago.

I did have her email. I thought so! I sent her off a note asking after their health (and deleting the detail about their gardener cutting their 10′ hedge by 4′ such that the debris fell on my side for us to clean up, plus the peach tree damage–nah, forget it.) But, as gently as I could work it in there, I said I had a favor to ask her.

She and Dan had done us such a great favor all these years that we hadn’t even known how wonderful it was: they had blinds that they pulled down every night that covered the floor-to-ceiling windows.

(I didn’t say because I knew she knew, we can’t do that because our roof line is angled.)

Since the back of their house faces straight into our bedroom with its high transom window, this was wonderful. But for the past few nights (two solid weeks!) those blinds haven’t been used but (all!) the lights in the house were being left on 24/7.

I didn’t say I didn’t think I’d gotten more than two or three hours of sleep at a stretch in what was starting into a third week. I didn’t say, I can’t wear an eye mask because I just spent two months fighting off a staph infection around my eye. I didn’t say and that’s why I got so worn down I caught that blasted stomach flu. She didn’t need to hear any of that. I had all this that had been building up but it wasn’t her fault nor her problem. I remembered one of Richard’s grandmothers who in dementia got day and night backwards, and had wondered if that was what was going on; they’ve got to be pushing 90.

I was so glad at the email that came back to me the next day, though the news was hard: Dan had died last year. She had moved to an assisted living place–she wanted me to know that it was one where she was independent and taking care of herself–and her house was on the market.

(Ahhhh… The realtors….)

I expressed a heartfelt condolence at her loss; Dan was a good man, I really liked him. I wished her all the best in her new circumstances.

She was so glad to hear from me.

I can only imagine how different and difficult all those changes must be for her; I knew she’d wanted to stay in her house. I’ve spent all day thinking I need to go visit her, if she wants.

And then. It seems to be really hard to find who the listing agent is for a house, so I sent a message via Zillow to the one at the first Google entry that came up, throwing it out there in hopes it would be passed on.

Turns out it was the right guy.

I emailed my dilemma. It’s like a spotlight straight into where we’re trying to sleep, bouncing off the white walls. I didn’t know if the blinds were still there, but either way, could the lights please be turned off at night? I was getting slightly desperate for a good night’s rest.

I mentioned how I’d baked goodies for Shirley and Dan and how I looked forward to meeting the new neighbors. I did not want him to think he was dealing with a neighborhood of cranks but a more welcoming group than that, y’know?

He got right back to me in the morning but with my hair still wet and my ears out I missed the call. I called him back and he missed the call.

But it is just past sunset and at long long long last those full-moon-shaped 1950’s-NASA’s-aspirations-inspired hanging lights with my friends’ mid-century-soft bulbs replaced with those !%#*&!!! fiercely regretted super bright ones are all off. That one and that one and that one and that one and that one and the ones out of direct sight down the hall, too.

We got our total eclipse after all.

I just hope I didn’t give the stomach bug I didn’t know I was going to come down with last night to the mom and kids I gave those finger puppets to on Friday, although I did have a mask on and I only touched them for maybe ten seconds. Hoping.

Ultrasound last fall, biopsies last month, ultrasound again today. So much fun.

As I waited for the exam a quite elderly couple came in, she with a cane far too tall for her and pushing him in a wheelchair.

I had my glasses off for close-up work but he got my attention and I put them back on. He was miming knitting, a good circle around his imaginary needle, doing a great job of it–and then when he caught my eye he pointed his thumb at his wife talking to the receptionist.

Ah. Cool! I smiled, and he beamed.

They called me just as she was sitting down but at least he got to tell her he’d spotted another knitter. He was so happy about it!

Looking at the black and white screen, I asked the tech (because why not), Is it a boy or a girl? She laughed.

When I came back out of there, it was nearly 5:00. There was a mom with two boys who looked like they were identical twins, about four or five. They had an energy that had me remembering the days, though they stayed in their seats and behaved but they did not want to look at screens, they wanted to tell her and each other all about their day with every limb making happy exclamation marks to the words.

I looked down, saw a lion in my purse that I’d restocked just yesterday and instantly had the thought that no that’s not it. Huh. Okay, try again: and out came a black and white panda and a black and white puppy. Similar, but individual and you can tell them apart so they’d know which was whose. Perfect.

Happy Birthday! I said to the mom as I offered them to her.

The look on that tired mom’s face and its transformation in that moment. This is why I do this.

What she couldn’t know is that she made it worth my going through that exam. It was clearly the right day to be there.

Bring flowers, Rusty said. Plants. Daffodils are .99c at Trader Joe’s. Anything. Let’s make the chapel celebrate our risen Lord!

And so we did. And stood and sang the Hallellujah chorus. To life! 

There is someone I seldom see and whom I’d like to be better friends with, but where my hearing has gotten in the way as much as anything and we just haven’t made much of a connection.

She is a woman of faith but not of our particular flavor of it, although her husband is.

So I was surprised and delighted to find she’d been asked to give a Palm Sunday reading from scripture of the passion of the Christ to us. And she’d said yes.

She found herself stopping mid-verse a moment to wipe a tear quickly out of the way, and I think I did, too.

After the meeting she happened to be just on the other side of a door I was walking through. I stopped when I saw her, unable to find the right words to convey the power of what she’d offered us all, and simply said, Thank you, as we held each other’s eyes in our own.

Everything felt transformed right then and there for the better. She had no words, just joy, and finally gave a pat on my arm, nodding.

Love. It is all there truly is.

I checked their patient portal again and the radiologist still hasn’t entered anything.

On the other hand, neither did the phone ring today with anyone wanting to tell me bad news personally, so that’s good. See how patient I’m being?

And on a lighter note, Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post noted that Fox News had prayers for sale.

(Now, in my church, poems are wonderful but a prayer is a heartfelt conversation between you and God, not something you might recite out of a book, and the work of being an actual Christian is in putting oneself aside and trying to hear/feel/fathom/choose/enter verb of your choice/ the guidance of the actual Divine for the good that it leads to. But I digress.)

So with capitalism sponsoring religion, Petri offered up a few of her own, and I’ll borrow a few of her lines here because she is just so good at this:

Our Father Who –sponsored by 23&Me

Art in Heaven–sponsored by Etsy

(and then eventually you get to)

On earth as it is in heaven –sponsored by Boeing

and

Forgive us our debts –sponsored by, I don’t even have to tell you because you’re already laughing and E. Jean Carroll gets first dibs.

Yeah…

I always figure if a doctor is running late it’s because someone really needed their time and got it and I’m all for that.

Still, I teased her: I finished my knitting project. I’ve never done that before. I had to read my phone like normal people!

She chuckled.

You were out on maternity leave. Your little one must be–kindergarten?

She loved that I remembered: He’s in first grade.

So is one of my grandsons!

Okay, so with that bit of reconnecting after that long gap we sat down and talked bone densities.

I had been wondering why I needed to wait months for a new-patient visit when I hardly considered myself such, but in fact she spent an hour being very thorough, checking every possible med for possible interactions with my new meds since the last time I saw her, every trajectory on this osteoporosis history.

Turns out that what they’ve learned since I had Prolia infusions eleven years ago is that if you stop taking it the bones regress to where you were before you started. Oh. There was good reason to stop it at the time, but now it’s time to try something new, so we are.

I fell Sunday (fairly spectacularly, with multiple people running for me and half the crowded room suddenly frozen–I was not trying to be that good at it) and twice more last night. She was wondering if I remembered her saying to always try to catch yourself in a fall because hand bones heal much faster than hips and I told her, I remembered that and I was really good, I did exactly that! I broke my finger in two places the next day!

I didn’t need to be quite that compliant, like, this was not an encouragement to go throwing myself around.

I know…

Sudden side note to myself: now, while I’m thinking about it, I need to quick go figure out a new carry-around project and put it in my purse because it is out of knitting and there’s that mammogram in the morning.

Anybody else play Hellowordl to warm up for Wordl? Y’know, where there’s no once-a-day limit? Great word retrieval brain exercise.

I also find it a pun incubator. As in:

Equip: to send a joke to a comedian online.

But then you get to the real Wordl, and today’s bot helpfully suggested I could have chosen its word for my next guess.

It stumped me. That is the last place I expect to see a word I’ve never heard of. My heavy Merriam Webster on the floor was raising its hand excitedly, going, *I* know, *I* know!

Talus. (Flipflipflip.) Refers to where the slope of a hill suggests gold underneath. (What the hey, Wordl?) Current usage is more, the rock debris at the bottom of a cliff and especially a slope caused by such, and definition two, the bone that bears the weight of the body and with the other leg bone forms the ankle joint. Or just call it the entire ankle.

Wait. Seems to me if you’re talking anatomy, which seems a pretty specific and medical category, you don’t want to be throwing meanings at the wall to see where they stick or go splat.

(Equip. That one’s for you, Dad, I can hear you laughing up there from here.)

Well that was fast. Mammogram Thursday morning first thing. All I had to do was ask–and then show up then, of course.

One of the women in the carpool last night said something and I did a double take and went, Wait–did YOU have breast cancer, too?!

Yes, last year.

She told me how her doctor had told her she was officially old enough not to have to have mammograms anymore and her response had been, Why don’t we have one last one for old time’s sake. Which made me kind of laugh, because that isn’t a test one associates with fondness nor nostalgia.

But that is why they caught it quite early.

I thought she’d just been watching church by Zoom. I thought she’d just gotten a shorter haircut than usual. I had had no idea.

I’m going, I’m going!

My cellphone rang. I was in my knitting group Zoom and ignored it, noticing though that it went on and on. I finally silenced it–noticing a tenth of a second too late whose name was showing. The landline immediately rang. I picked it up and said, Hi, Phyl!

She was heading out to watch a women’s broadcast at the church the next town over and suddenly had the thought that she should offer me a ride since I don’t drive at night. I did a quick goodbye to my fellow Zoomies, who were almost done anyway, and waited for her car.

I realized only after the meeting had started that the less-local people had not thought to enable the captions on the video part of the meeting because why would they ever need to, nor was there a Zoom link for it. But they did have the sound turned way high.

Booming, echoing, painfully loud radio static in that room. It made me wonder how anybody with normal ears could make any sense out of that.

The evening was rescued by the two friends who had carpooled with me. It was the generosity, the conversations in the car, the time spent in person that made me glad after all that I’d gone.

The one thing that if only, if only I could have changed, was the news they gave me that a mutual friend went to the doctor a few weeks ago about the increasingly bad back pain she was having for no reason that she knew of–but it turned to be widely metastasized breast cancer. She is now in palliative care. She’s younger than I am. I just cannot imagine the him without the her in that couple, but it’s coming.

I will schedule my overdue mammogram first thing in the morning.

Last night was, at long last, the final dose of antibiotics.

It had been two months since this whole eyebrow/the tumor is benign/raging infection thing started; all this time I’ve been avoiding the potential exposure of–who knows what, since it’s not like they’re cutting eyebrows, but don’t ask about logic.

I ran for the haircut I’d been waiting for for so long.

I’m a child of the ’60s and ’70s, I like long hair. But I lost a chunk of mine to skin cancer years ago and it gets awfully thin on the right past a certain point, while what’s left tends to get caught in things when it gets too long. Like the car door when you shut it. I fear the KitchenAid mixer after a relative described her teacher’s long hair getting caught and ripped out by the beaters on hers, and when your hands are gooped in batter is a lousy time to go oh right and try to put it back in a braid.

An old friend who hadn’t seen me in awhile marveled last week, “Your hair is so long!”

And now (sorry/not sorry) it’s not. Just below the shoulders and we’re good. And it is.