There was a long string of kvetching back and forth on Nextdoor.com today over people parking in front of other people’s houses. It got pretty silly (and I wasn’t about to step into that.) C’mon people.

Back in the day, there was a kid across the street with a jacked-up monster truck. Bright red, huge tires, bumpers at window height (illegal now.) Couldn’t miss it. And for whatever reason he always liked to park it in front of our house and not his.

The fact that they couldn’t make any sense out of that I think is why it bugged my kids. Although I certainly rolled my eyes over it myself. It is safe to say it dominated the view out our front window.

So one day that truck was there and clearly the guy had had a good time because you could hardly tell what the paint color was for the layers of mud. How it got splashed that high I did not know.

One of my kids really felt that particular day that this was an injustice too far.

And then suddenly all the Sunday School lessons about serving rather than finding fault came back to me and I had the answer to that: hey, let’s have a conspiracy! Here, I told them, help me fill the bucket. Soap. Sponges. Do it fast before he comes back out. You with me?

They really got into this. YES!

I helped carry the water; they dashed out there and got right to it and made it their project. They started on the side facing our house where they wouldn’t be seen from his. Was it okay to climb that bumper to wash that window? They decided it was. They were giggling by now and having the time of their lives when Sandy next door, who had really been bugged by the guy’s parking habits herself, opened her door in surprise and asked, What are you doing??

Washing! Truck! was the answer. (With that kid agonizing to me afterwards, I sounded so stupid but I didn’t know what to say fast enough and that’s just what came out!)

Ooookay, and she went back inside.

There were still a few soapy/muddy smears here and there when they decided that that was as much as they were going to be able to get away with without getting caught and came in snort-giggling and smiling and anticipating. There was a lot of hanging around the window by the front door to see. And then, deliciously, the guy (18-20 years old or so) came out to get in his truck just like they’d hoped, and–

–wait.

He walked around it, completely befuddled. Who? How? What?? Huh. Well, okay, and without saying anything to anybody because there was nobody outside to say it to anyway, got in and drove off.

Memory says he parked it in front of his own house after that; I’ll have to ask my kids.

Well, I did think the display on the oven actually looked kind of pretty: kind of a cross between Christmas lights and tech graffiti with every single error code showing at once.

But all we have of it now is its picture. Found the right breaker, tried it, came back in the kitchen, exclaimed, YES!!! and baked a raspberry cake in celebration.

A birthday cake from afar in honor of my mom’s and grandson’s and cousin’s birthsday Wednesday along with five friends that I know of. Happy Birthday, Mom and Parker! And everybody else!

There’s a big storm rolling in. Maybe we should stand flashlights around it instead of candles in it for when the skies blow the lights out again. I kid, I kid… But only halfway.

Woke up to a storm and a 5:00 a.m. power failure. No hot cocoa for you!

I finished a hat project and promptly put it on my head because it was getting pretty cold.

Michelle headed out to pick up some takeout for lunch and just before she got home the lights flipped back on. Yay. Quick, do all the things. First was to zap ourselves that hot cocoa. Everything seemed to be working fine, no power surge effect or anything.

I had just enough time to start a load of laundry when it went out again for another two hours or so.

My double oven is now giving us garlands of light for the full holiday spirit–every zero and every error message all at once.

Bosch can only tell us to turn the breaker off for thirty seconds. (And hope.) It should be as simple as that.

We’d had a chilly day and somehow nobody felt like standing in the cold rain to try that out yet.

I really do need to find some kind of battery operable heater thing for our morning mugs. But man, it feels good to have the power back.

It finally happened.

With my no-balance I’d dropped it too many times. I have two similar canes, one in the car, one in the house, and the car one split in a crack just where the tips of my fingers go with a sharpness that could draw blood.

Which means I spent far too much time today looking for a replacement, and frankly, after 23 years it was time for an upgrade anyway.

You can get anything. A raw stick, an intricately carved outright obscenity (I thought the truck-mudflap-girl ones were bad till I saw–never mind.) And you can get works of downright art.

But, but… Yo, people, a dragon for the top is fun but you put spikes all over the top of its head–and its snout, too? You do know people put their hand on that part? Or even lean their upper-body weight? I mean, what?

You could buy a coiling snake from Africa, mamba or cobra your choice, with its little tongue flicking out at whoever you’re talking to. Because what little kid wouldn’t want to be eye level with that. You could make, literally, an off-the-cuff statement on your religion or gleeful lack thereof. You can have hidden tiny wine glasses and pretend you’re a famous French artist of a hundred years ago who was into that.

Now back when I was new at this, the local medical supply place had one that was made from a vine that had grown around a branch and the two (or was it three) twisting layers and varying textures had been stained different colors and it was absolutely gorgeous. And priced accordingly. By the time I decided I was going to be using this long enough to justify that as part of my permanent, daily wardrobe, it was long gone and I never saw anything quite like it and now the shop is gone, too.

But what I have learned, is: the short derby handle I once bought? (Styled like a horizontal question mark.) No. It fell all the time. I had to have a hand on it all the time, I couldn’t ever let it go, it owned me. It was designed to be comfortable to the hand that would rest on it but but but despite my best efforts at tucking it safely for just a moment between me and the register, I don’t like throwing large objects at random people around me. The idea of a tool making me more dependent on other people because I can do less for myself because of it just didn’t work for me.

A friend surprised me with one she’d bought at the gift shop at one of the Smithsonian Museums in DC. It was great fun. It had a giraffe and zebras and what-all-else with an Ankh symbol at the top but man, it weighed a ton on a difficult shoulder.

The lower zebra broke its back legs off.

I found this pair of shepherd’s crooks. They didn’t have combinations of woods but they had a bit of twist to them and the length was a bit crooked, too. I liked them. The shipping cost slightly more than they did. You can throw the crook over your arm when you need to and it stays there and it’s become just part of what I do with my body now without thinking: the canes are an extension of me.

It’s really hard to find a shepherd’s crook type out there.

I found one. I found it on Etsy and I found it on Amazon, and the difference was $14 and a willingness to cut to fit–but also, Amazon is easier to return it to if there’s a problem.

But man. There was this one that was three different colors of wood twisting around each other and I would have yelled, SOLD! at the sight of it. It’s gorgeous.

But it has a derby handle, although at least a longer one. They painted one of those three woods to look like a snake and made sure to point out in the listing that that’s what it was. Even if it didn’t have a tongue flicking out at anyone.

$129 isn’t bad at all for all that work but it won’t be that one. I’ll keep my eye on what they put out there next. Meantime, for the basics, Amazon says Saturday.

So to celebrate my birthday, the DMV took my picture.

Then they took it again.

Which immediately took me way back to the Maryland DMV that I went to with my newly-married name: that was the time that cured me for life of pushing my slipping glasses back up at the bridge with my forefinger, because what the camera saw was my finger up my nose. The cameraman shook his head and told me, You don’t want to look at that for the next ten years, lady, and insisted on a do-over.

Who knew DMV guys could be nice.

They tested my vision. I passed.

The forms-and-vision guy was bored out of his mind and a little annoyed at having to deal with some old (officially! Today!) person who had a hard time hearing him; he was like, get’em in get’em out next come on next.

Charming he wasn’t.

I’ll show him (glancing down in my purse.) Yeah that’s about the one he deserves. A bright green alligator with yellow spikes. A reptile. Rows of teeth.

(One of my sons on the phone later: you didn’t.)

Me: I did, and the thing is that when I handed the guy that finger puppet and told him Merry Christmas (a slip–I usually say Happy Birthday for universality but the season got to me. So sue me) his face entirely lit up. He was so delighted!

It is fair to say that I was more surprised than he was. He showed me, for sure.

Later, a friend dropped by and not wanting to bother Richard at work and not wanting to be in the sun, we sat in my car laughing and having a great time catching up and feeling like teenagers hanging out while the real teenagers next door came and went and probably wondered what on earth was up over there.

My sister–my oldest sister!–called and told me she’d streaked her hair purple when she turned 65 and I told her I wished she’d told me that sooner or that I’d thought of that and the DMV could have preserved it forever. What a missed opportunity!

It was the best day. I think I should turn 65 next year, too.

Balsam Hill was a start-up when one of my daughter’s close friends went to work for them after college, and that’s how we heard of them. It was some time before we finally splurged and bought one of their fake trees, but getting an allergy-free Christmas finally won me over. No handsaws, no ropes, no ridiculously small Prius sporting an unstable mullet driving down the side of the mountain from the tree farm. No explosion of bugs coming out of popping pine cones in the nice warm house. (That one year…!!)

Long needles, I said. No stingy branches. No stabbiness when you reach for a present. I wanted it lush. I wanted me a Scotch pine. I loved that they worked so hard to make their trees look real; it was their whole reason for being.

Richard’s only take was that it had to be taller than him.

The seven and a half footer we got is almost not taller than him in his fedora.

We’ve had it a goodly while now, and I remember thinking last year that it was finally starting to show its age–I couldn’t get this one branch to move into this one space and I kind of filled it up with ornaments and tried not to let it bug me.

Maybe, I thought, (not that we were going to justify the expense) we should get one of those models that you roll out from the closet, pull the bag off the top, flip it over, put the tippy-top on: pfft, done. Ours is five pieces you drag out there with lights needing connecting vertically. Lifting and putting the big bottom parts together is hard for both our backs these days.

And when I say big. The first January that we tried to wrestle the entire tree back into the bag it had come in, I called the company and said, It is not physically possible. I don’t know how you guys got that Scotch Pine in there but we cannot.

They said, That’s our fullest widest tree, we understand. (The high school friend later said, The people in the warehouse found that we can’t get them back in, either.) Then they sent me a whole new size large storage bag, free, to help us with that. Fixed. Great customer service.

So. Yesterday was rough news, tomorrow’s a celebration, why not get ready for that celebration: You want to put the tree up tonight? he asked me. Let’s.

Still working on those upper lights when I snapped the photo; he was programming his timer.

I found myself murmuring again and again, It’s so beautiful. Look at this. Such a nice tree. After all these years it still looks so good.

I can see that my sense of appreciation has sharpened, clearly. Always a good thing.

Years ago, one of my kids had an eye emergency and I was told they had no openings for six weeks.

The appalled pediatrician told me, You go to that department you put your baby on their counter and you tell them you’re not leaving till they fit your kid in. Now.

I did and they did.

So.

The good and bad news is the receptionist earlier this year moved my appointment forward by a day, which meant the insurance company bounced it; it had to be rescheduled, and three months out was the best they could do. I was able to get a simple vision test last month and the new glasses I badly needed but the actual eye checkup had to wait. To today.

The good news is that had that goof not happened, what they saw today might not have so apparent in September and adding nine more months to that could have been catastrophic.

The bad news is that the retina specialist can’t see me till the end of January.

The good news is that I now have that appointment. And a second one, because,

the bad news is that two weeks ago I found a lump above the other eye socket, the one that had a squamous-celled growth removed.

The good news is that I’ve lived 37 perfectly good years since then with no cancer from it, and this is probably nothing.

My dad was told that if he’d seen a retina specialist right away (and not flown across the Atlantic Ocean first!) they could have saved his eye. He went straight from the airport to the doctor and was sent straight to the hospital.

But he lost it. I refuse to. Mine’s not an emergency yet–but I won’t wait for an appointment if it becomes one.

I know how to sit on a counter.

Typing this out is my equivalent of having a good cry, because yelling, NO!!! in the car on the way home to try to tell it all who was the boss of it just didn’t quite do it. (Having now tested the theory I’d heard of whether such shenanigans are helpful, I’d have to say that for me, no, not really.)

I will forever be grateful for the empathy of our Dr. S of thirty years, who was closer to tears than he might have thought was professional as I left, but I saw it. It helped more than he could have known. We were in this together, even if he won’t be the one managing this.

And life goes on.

No return address. It was a beautiful little square black box in perfect condition despite having been in an envelope.

We did a mutual, Huh? The other must have ordered it. We were sure of it. Some discussion along those lines ensued, till I opened that little riff on Apple-style packing and burst out laughing. Yes, actually, yes I had ordered that.

$5.94 for a new oven thermometer. Who knew it would arrive in a little black dress?

The potholder looms of my childhood were made of metal: sturdy and with a definite heft to them. Once you had one you had one.

When my kids were growing up, the concept had been watered down to flimsy, cheap plastic looms that broke and thin synthetic loops that made your potholder gap and then they would scorch or even melt–which defeats the point of having the kids not only create it but be able to be proud of seeing their work being put to good use for years to come. I never was able to find the old metal type; they just weren’t out there.

Harrisville Designs (yes the woolen mill) has revived them. Which makes sense; they sell weaving looms, so, hey, start them young!

Their custom loops are thick braided cotton. They’ve improved the pegs to help keep the loops on while the weaving is happening, and they offer patterns to show what those loops could become.

In case anyone’s looking.

Could you pick up my prescription?

Sure.

(Runs to the pharmacy, Trader Joe’s is across the street, we’re low on milk, need our hot cocoa in the morning, okay, quick trip.)

As I was coming to the checkout lines a dad with a very young toddler in a stroller was about to cross my path. It was not quite dinnertime and too late for a nap, she was not home and not fed and she suddenly arched her back, threw her arms up and legs out and let out a yell. She didn’t have the words yet but man, she had the volume. I think everybody in the store heard her.

I stopped my cart. Sir?

He took a deep breath, ready for the–lecture, scold, whatever was coming, as I did a sudden dive into the purse.

(Thank you knitters in Peru!)

His face transformed.

I smiled and continued over towards a clerk because it wasn’t about me, I wanted them to have a good time having an outing.

I looked back from there to see him pointing at me and then looking back at her and her waving bye-bye/thank you/look at me being cute the way little ones do. She was giggling. Wow, what a difference.

As I was loading my car they strolled past with their groceries and a small finger puppet on a small hand down there waved bye bye again.

(p.s. And yes, she got a lion. They can practice their roars together!)

Our friend Jim was back in town (flashback here from when his young son fell 30′ off a ski lift–and lived and recovered) and he was playing the organ in a concert at the creche exhibit.

Two of the pieces were composed by Mary Finlayson, including her All Will Be Right. It is one of my favorite Christmas songs. A children’s chorus performed it. It was perfect.

My parents, who lived in Maryland at the time, went on a trip to Israel when Mom retired and that’s where they met Mary and Norris, who were taking the same tour. Just adding that aside for my mom here.

Mary had been an avid knitter but with aging had felt she just couldn’t manage it anymore, and she asked me once if I’d like her old Barbara Walker stitch treasuries. I of course had my own, but my oldest had started knitting and she would love. We’re a half hour’s drive away and I offered to come pick them up; she instead wanted to bring them to me.

The morning she called to ask if this was a good day to come on by, I… I knew enough about infirmities to think, if you’re having a good enough day to feel up to doing that then this is going to be the day to do that. I didn’t tell her.

But when she arrived, she felt it. And so I explained: we had gotten the call that morning that my mother-in-law in Texas had just died.

(Michelle was with us and the three of us had just

how does one confine the infinite into the smallness of human-created words

we just needed

to Be.

Together. Close. In stillness.)

In the heart of the sacredness of the love we felt surrounded by. Mom Hyde had been through so much with her cancer and now it felt like she wanted us to feel the joy on the other side of all that.

In ringing the startlingly ordinary doorbell and stepping into the room with us, Mary brought her own love and of herself in the effort she had made to bring those books and to help a new generation create more love with their hands and somehow Mary, by her grace and her empathy, made that morning complete in a way I don’t quite know how to explain. But it was good that she had come. I will never forget it.

A dozen years later, she and Norris were sitting behind us tonight as Jim played, and they are going for Rosalynn and Jimmy’s record. Family surrounded them. She was praised and thanked by the various performers coming up and joining Jim, and then at the end when the audience was clapping hard for him, he walked down from the podium to be level with Mary, holding his hand out her way with every step and inviting the audience to turn their clapping to her.

And did we ever. Standing up for it was a bit much for her so we all followed her lead and stayed sitting, too, but applause we could do. Such a good woman who has put so much love into the world, and her husband is right up there with her.

She and Norris were in tears. So were their kids and grandkids (I think there were some great grands in the mix), and man. It felt so good to be able to give back a little.

When we were visiting the up-north kids this past spring, Mathias made me a beaded necklace. He was in kindergarten and it was a string of random letters and sweet little beads from a kit. (Something roughly like this but geared towards slightly older kids, and with actual necklace chains.)

He made me a little choker, the length his mom wears (I thought that was observant) and proudly watched as she helped me put it on. I wore it all day and then, long after he’d gone to bed, Richard was helping me take it off when–CRASH!

There wasn’t a stopper at the end, so there they all were scattered across the floor. Grandparent quiet time fail.

We scooped them up hoping we hadn’t woken up the kids and, well, the easiest thing to do was to put them away in the little travel container for my hearing aids, and they quietly came home with us.

So Thanksgiving week there we were again and I had brought them with me in case he’d like to reassemble them–only, now he’s in first grade and reading so instead of picking letters that looked pretty in his eyes, I was wondering if he might want to spell out words this time? I didn’t even know if they had any more letter beads, though.

I brought it up when Mathias wasn’t right there to hear; I wanted his mom’s take on it first.

Sam said something about, oh, we’ve got the findings so they don’t fall off again, no worries.

But Lillian was in the room and she wanted to get right to fixing that for me. So she did. She made me a new necklace. She restrung everything at hand, the letters random as they were meant to be. The plastic fake Venetian glass bead. The embossed metal flower. Another that looks like a repurposed memory from the collection of antique teacups my father’s mother loved to collect. All the original beads, all put back together.

She got the finding attached at the end with some help from Sam so this time they would all stay on that chain like they were supposed to, and then looked up at me with those beautiful four-year-old eyes of innocence and counseled me solemnly, “Don’t tell Mathias.”

I was not expecting that and laughed like you do when the joy all comes out in a little burst at once, thinking, I will, though, honey, I will. Probably at a toast at his wedding someday. Or yours.

(Forgot to hit publish last night.)

There was a dad grocery shopping with his three-year-old daughter yesterday when she suddenly started being loud. Friendly loud, and nothing at all wrong with that–but we had four kids in six years and man I remembered the days when the adults around us would frown at the sounds of small children in public.

I will forever be grateful to the empty-nest parents, whoever they were, who from time to time made a point of telling me my kids were cute. A few of them even said that when they weren’t acting all that cute, because they  remembered those days.

It is a privilege to get to pay their kindnesses forward.

I was thinking puppy, but the dad declared it a polar bear in his post today on NextDoor thanking whoever it was out there who had given it to them. He wanted it known that his little girl had been talking to it for several hours now (Nextdoor didn’t send his post to my inbox till today) and she had walked it around their home telling it all about the place and had introduced it to all her stuffies. I can just picture it. She had a new friend.

He so made my day.

I thanked him in a private message and told him I was going to do one more random thing: invite his family at whatever time might work for them to come to the creche exhibit at our church that runs through this Wednesday. The entire building is basically turned into a temporary museum. There’s a hands-on children’s area for his toddler, concerts every night, all of it free and open to the public. (I should have added, come see the puppet show.)

Link: www.christmascreche.org/

So, the hat that I started working on while Mathias was doing that two-mile bike ride and Lillian was doing a shorter one: it was the Mecha Piedras yarn that I’d moved to the suitcase at the last minute.

It was done and in my purse on the flight home, itching to get out.

I’ve mentioned before about using the wheelchair service at airports.

We were the last flight of the day at the end of Thanksgiving weekend so of course it ran late, and though there were four wheelchair pushers lined up at landing with names on their tablets for who was to claim which–somehow there was none for me. Come on, Southwest. This particular time, I really needed it. Maybe someone had given up and gone home after a long day; I mean, I couldn’t blame them.

The gate attendant made a call. I expected, especially at that hour, that we’d be standing around a very long time if anyone came at all.

Within two minutes at most I suddenly heard a cheerful, Hi, friend!

Oh cool! It’s you!

It was the petite Asian woman who’d pushed me before. She was delighted to see me. She’s the kind of person who’s delighted to see everybody any time. She makes everybody’s day.

Who else could it possibly have been for.

We were in the new and not quite finished part of the airport where part of the walk to baggage claim includes a wall on one side and a roof but you are exposed to the great outdoors on the right, and it was quite cold. And pretty dark.

I fumbled with my purse, wondering if I’d be able to find my folding scissors just with my hands. Was–? Yes it was, and I pulled out the hat, too, turned it inside out as she pushed, and snipped the ends off as she watched from behind.

That mottled brown was exactly perfect.

I’d offered it to Sam’s old university friend but Sandra, who is a serious hiker, had chosen a different colorway and with no yarnovers after I’d said the solid one would be warmer. The Piedras was in the knit two together/yarnover repeating every other row pattern like the one I did on the flight out: fine for San Jose’s temps. So that worked out.

I made this, I told the woman. It’s cold out! as I offered it to her once she pulled up to the conveyer belt and could stop a moment. It’s wool. And then I pulled out her tip, beyond grateful for the help.

She was thrilled.

So was I. I knew, I just knew, that that hat wasn’t supposed to come home with me and the further into the flight we’d gotten the more I’d wondered how that could be so.

And then that soft washable wool ended up in the best possible place.

My audiologist sympathized when I got them but told me that no, that feature couldn’t be turned off.

The resident engineer was sure it was for calibrating the things each time.

To me, it’s an aural ping-pong ball bouncing up and down on the table till at last it rolls in a straight line.

What it is is a sixteen-note little tune that my hearing aids play starting about ten seconds after I turn them on. You cannot just instantly hear the world; you have to wait. And then you have to listen to that (stupid) little tune finally getting to that one repeating note before any outside sound will click on. The volume is pre-set to make the tune loud enough for someone like me to be able to hear it even in a noisy environment–and that’s a lot.

Which is how I got told by Lillian, who was standing looking up at me, Grammy! You have birds in your ears!