The email from Cottage Yarns said that starting next week the shop will be closed for two weeks for their vacation.

I had been meaning for over a month to get up there to replenish my Mecha supply for Zoom hat knitting.

There was this persistent thought…and I wondered, Is this just me? Or should I? So I did what I do and said a prayer: if You want me to do this, then please make it so obvious that I will never question whether I got it right or not. Help it be unmistakeable. Either way, please bless my friends, separate from any of that–they’re such good people.

I pictured her needing to attend to customers with questions, and thought in no way do I want to do anything that would distract her from what she needs to do to earn a living (I know the rent there is crazy) and sometimes it gets pretty busy, especially right before a long break like that. I put it in G_d’s hands to handle the details and I would try to take my cues from that.

I got ready and headed on up there, hoping.

There was no other customer in there the whole time:

I walked in that door and Kathryn’s face lit up, delighted to see me, and then she immediately exclaimed over my gerdan. What was that? I told her how to spell it: like garden, only with the e and the a switched. Her husband wanted to know, How was it made?

Glass beads woven on a small loom. Made for me by a woman in Ukraine, where these are traditional.

They follow the news on Ukraine closely, they told me, and we talked about today’s developments. The listing warship that was towed away by the Russians after Ukraine’s successful drone.

Kathryn is far from the gushing type, but wow, that necklace: the flowers that looked so realistic, the wheat at the top, the sunflower at the bottom. So pretty. She just couldn’t get over it.

I showed her the picture of my sister’s afghan so far, and turns out they’d been watching the Little League games. They might even have seen Parker, and even the possibility delighted us all.

I waited till she’d rung up my yarn.

“I planned this,” I told her, pulling out the little box that the gerdan had come in inside the shipping box. I quickly took it off my neck and held it out to her along with its box. While she stood there speechless, I took out an identical box from the same artist, took out the big sunflower gerdan and put that one on me.

I have several, I told her, and every time I’m out and about it makes someone’s day to see me wearing one. Ukrainians know what it is and they feel the support it conveys. You see more people than I do. You can do more than I can alone. This was meant for you.

I told her that I had felt strongly to give one to a friend, a retired NASA rocket scientist I kid you not, and ordered this one made–but she had picked a different one. Which is fine. What I didn’t know was that she was teaching classes to help Ukrainian refugees assimilate and they took one look at her walking into class after that wearing a gerdan and they knew exactly what it was and what it meant and how much their teacher loved them, visibly loved them.

And yet I still I had this other one. I have always really liked it–but I had wondered who it was meant to be for, because it had always felt like it was waiting, somehow. And today I finally knew.

I knew it was just her colors.

What I didn’t know is that all her childhood she had declared that she was going to be a florist when she grew up. “And look at me,” she laughed, holding her arms up, taking in the sweep of the room, embracing it all: “I’m a yarn store owner!”

Wearing flowers so beautifully created? To support Ukraine and her people?

It meant the world to her to be able to. She had never known such a thing existed.

I told her I had promised Oleksandra that I would wear her sunflower gerdan in celebration the day Ukraine wins the war.

“I will wear mine, too,” Kathryn promised. She laughed again, adding that she would on her vacation, too! And a whole lot of other days! She loved it so much.

They’re going to visit the area where she grew up, near my oldest, and near one of their children.

I came away from that conversation thinking, and I bet you’re going to find the perfect place, buy it, be done with your unpleasant LYS landlord and move away and my favorite yarn store will be gone forever. I selfishly hope not.

But wherever they go, love will be there because that is who they are and what they do.

We were out. Do you want peaches? I asked him.

Yes, (as in, Always, knowing where they would be coming from.) I looked at the clock–yeah, I had time to go, if I hurried. Traffic…

Off the freeway at last, glad I hadn’t been even five minutes later in that growing backup, past the construction zone, pulled into Andy’s.

And it was a whole different world. Rows and rows of trees, the mountainside looking east and the coastal range over yonder to the west, Andy’s flowers blooming around the small gravel parking lot, that familiar wooden building with the overhang.

Next to which there is a single parking space right against the patio. One step out of the driver’s seat and you’re out of the sun, half a dozen more shaded steps and you’re inside. My lupus approves.

Only, for the first time, someone else was in that spot.

The man was I’d say probably late 70s or maybe more.

The one in his hand didn’t even make it into his car: he stood outside the driver’s side taking one appreciative bite, then another. Kind of shook off the juice running down his arm there a minute trying not to be too messy about it and then tried to head it off at the pass by taking the next bite from under the bottom of it in a pose almost like a kid at a drinking fountain. And another. (While I was going in with my previous boxes, finding out they don’t reuse them anymore, taking them back to my car and heading inside again.)

The moment demanded to be shared in solidarity, and I found myself calling over to him, Good peach, eh?

He held up the little that was left towards the sky with the biggest smile on his face and pronounced with feeling, “There is nothing fiiiner than a perfect peach.” His eyes swept around the scene, the farm, the flowers, the mountains, the fruit. It had made his summer, right there on that spot, and he was clearly glad for me that I was heading in to go get some for my loved ones and me, too.

I told him about the treks to pick Lorings in West Virginia coming from DC in my childhood, and how I found Andy by searching for them. He was glad I’d found where to go; he loved Lorings. He loved this place.

All was right in his world, and now it was in mine, too.

(Picture: wet and blocking in bright direct sunlight.)

Started this merino/silk laceweight in April, then the afghan project took over. It’s not abandoned, it’s bedside: I often, but not always, knit one row on it before calling it a night. Gradually that adds up even though it feels like it couldn’t possibly.

I took it with me to a routine doctor appointment today after a brief inner moment of should I take the afghan, vs are you out of your freaking mind, honey?

That good doctor talks to her patients and she listens to her patients and so she tends to be a bit behind and you know I know how to be glad of that extra time.

And as I worked I thought, Y’know? Feather and Fan? It’s the Chopsticks on the piano of lace knitting. Cliched, repetitive, tiresome, unimaginative, All That Lace Ever Is to the utter novice (meaning, once upon a time specifically me) –and yet. Hey, listen to those little kids play. Look at how that hand dyeing needed that particular pattern applied to it, it just did, no other one could have created an effect that matched the dye work like that. Anything else would just have chopped it all up. Rainbows are supposed to come arch shaped.

(Laying flat, it’s 67″. Maybe a few more. But it will stretch of its own weight when I pick it up after it dries, the silk in it will do that, so I’ll have to try it out first.)

Oh and? Thyroid, blood tests, blahblahblah but the thing I really wanted to know? While half-apologizing for wasting her time over what might not even exist?

When I took that hard fall in the garden May last year that knocked my teeth lose and my nose is still faintly red–she said I’m right, it did: the bone at the front of my chest where I bounced off of has piled on more bone there.

My body is trying to wrap me in bubble wrap. But it’s okay, we’re good.

Okay, so, what’s the next big carry-around project?

I was going to toss something in the recycling but first needed to get that last bit of plastic wrap off the top of it. I thought it would be quickly done, as I stood out there by the bin next to the open gate, but it was being remarkably stubborn.

I looked up at seeing someone new coming down the walkway. I smiled a hello.

His face was–wary, is the only word for it. “I’ve got a package,” the UPS man in the UPS uniform with his UPS truck parked in front of the house announced abruptly.

I thought, well, yeah, duh, that’s what you… I mean…  What I said out loud was, “Thank you!” with a smile in hopes of helping his day go better.

Afterwards, the more it sank in the harder it hurt. This very tall, very dark-skinned Black man was simply doing his job but felt he had to preemptively announce to the 5’5″ older white woman in that now-fiercely-expensive Silicon Valley neighborhood (I mean, when we moved here, the couple around the corner were a firefighter married to a hairdresser, just try to buy their post-WWII tract house now, we sure couldn’t) that that’s what he was doing.

I know tensions must be high at work with the strike so narrowly averted and with feelings strong.

But man.

Sometimes what that means is that other tensions you normally squash away can come bubbling up at unexpected moments. Like being afraid of how someone will react to your walking up to their house in complete innocence bringing something they themselves ordered.

I wanted to run after him and hug all better the little boy he once was.

I’m going to put a hand knit hat by the door in hopes of seeing him next time. I can’t mend everything in the world, but I can knit.

Quite some time ago, when it was still notable to see a Tesla S sedan in the wild even here in Silicon Valley, fair promises were being made about their producing an affordable electric car for the masses soon.

We were suckers, but willing suckers, we said to each other as we put our thousand dollars down: we wanted to help keep the fledgling company in business long enough for that model 3 to come out. We wanted to make a statement. We wanted the car companies to know that we the buying public wanted the industry to turn electric enough that we were willing to risk a chunk of change to make that statement on behalf of our grandchildren’s future.

We were #134,000-something on the waiting list. We wanted that car.

Assuming, of course, that the resident 6’8″er could get into it. This is the man who over time cracked the dashboard of our first-year Prius (2001, the ones that looked like a pregnant mouse) with his crammed-in knees so we traded it in when they came out with a bigger model. The 2007 we’re still driving.

Fast forward.

We just got an envelope in the mail, and my first thought was, How did Tesla get marketing info on us?

Go ahead and open it, he said when I tried to offer it to him, because after all, like sexist businessmen everywhere do, the company had addressed it only to him.

Inside was a check.

Elon Musk isn’t letting us divorce his business tactics from our household, he did it first. With no letter nor communication (only because I’d long since lost that paperwork supposedly so carefully filed), nothing other than the passing of time that it took for them to do it, we got our thousand dollars back.

And there are plenty of other companies making electric cars now. We got the future we put in that reservation for.

I was walking into Trader Joe’s yesterday when my eyes met those of an older woman looking into mine with clear and delighted recognition on her part. Ukrainian Orthodox, was my guess. I noted she did a quick glance at my chest, but no, I was not wearing a gerdan this time.

My mistake and one I instantly felt a pang at. I try to put one on before any outing around here for the sake of the refugees, if I’m not wearing an embroidered blouse from there, and instead she was the one smiling and putting me at ease.

I had not been planning on buying more of either for the moment.

She’ll never know it but I’m sure the impact on me of that, of how it made me feel that what I’ve been trying to do is actually more important to the community than I’d had any idea–and not just to me–is part of how the following happened.

What I wrote this morning to a Ukrainian artist I had not previously actually interacted with but whose page I had followed for months:

This is a beautiful necklace and I have admired your skill and art, but had not done more than that.

I woke up this morning with the surprise of a sense of certainty that was completely unexpected that I needed to buy this necklace: for me, but especially for you.

I of course cannot know your specific circumstances at all. I pray for Ukraine and its people every day, and somehow this morning it felt like God was saying, this daughter of mine needs to know that she is not alone. Go be with her. Share the love of her work with her out loud where she can hear it.

And so I bought it and am very grateful for the privilege of doing so. Thank you for making this. I will wear it with pride and love and much gratitude, and I wish you all my very best from across the world.

Such a beautiful letter I got back. It will stay with me a long, long time.

He’s a fellow gardening and fruit tree enthusiast, so I wore my beaded cherry tree necklace to the doctor’s today. Besides, it’s pretty and I’m a relentless showoff for other people’s art.

He liked it, and I told him a woman in Ukraine had made it for me. In Kherson.

He took a deep breath at that one. Then a quiet, “Wow.”

She had sent me pictures of her apartment, I added, nodding, and had declared, We will repel the invaders. We will rebuild.

We quickly got on with what was supposed to be the point of the appointment, tests, lupus, meds, etc.

But as it was time to leave, he suddenly stopped and turned back to me. He’d clearly been thinking about it because he said, “Please give her all my best.”

He paused a moment, then added with maybe more emotion than he’d intended, “Please tell her we’re all with her.” He wanted so much to convey that. I promised him I would.

And I remembered the time he had had to cancel an appointment with me to fly to his elderly widowed mom in Hong Kong when she had been ill. He had never outright said it but I knew that that was while the mainland authorities were violently putting down large pro-democracy protests. But his mom needed him. He came. Her whole country…

Please tell her we’re all with her.

That I did, and why it was especially meaningful to me to hear it coming from him.

It was a bit of a cri de coeur: I had tried leaving individual messages, gotten no response, and finally wrote to the whole ward.

I have a tart cherry tree, I said, and I’ve been getting up early in the mornings to pick from it hoping to beat the risks of the low UV exposure at that hour and it’s flaring me and I absolutely have to stop. But it’s a crime to let those cherries go unpicked, and the last of them are ripe now.

Save me from me, I wrote. Email me first so we don’t get forty people with a handful apiece, but please, come get yourself some pie cherries from my tree. It’ll be hands-and-knees work, though, because the ones left are mostly down close to the ground.

The only answer I got last night was from a friend insisting she was going to pick them today–for me.

We agreed to wait to see if anyone else answered first. People were being too polite, not wanting to shove to the front of the line, I figured (I mean, how could anyone not be passionate about pie cherries, even if that first person wasn’t.)

I got two messages this morning: one from a friend who admitted she’d long wished she had a tree like mine and that sour cherry was her favorite pie, too, and she would dearly love to have them. Could she come by after her dental appointment?

That would be great!

The other came in a few minutes after the first, from N’s daughter, saying, That’s my mom’s absolute favorite, I’d love to come pick them for her.

Several hours after I’d heard from her mom, I told the daughter that I’d completely forgotten till that moment, but, I had wire racks from old ovens around the base of the tree after seeing a ground squirrel next to it: they won’t come up where they can’t dig down, and I didn’t want it chewing on the bark and roots. Those might be rough on her mom’s knees.

That was it, she was coming with her kids. She called her mom and then told me they were on their way over.

Meantime, I was on the phone with the doctor’s office and they said I needed to be seen but I needed to have a covid test first, and not just a home test.

The daughter took pictures of her kids holding up their treasureboxes of bright fruit with the cherry tree as background and it just made my day.

They held some out: did I want any?

(Always, of course, but I had so much in my freezer.) I opened the door a crack, trying not to breathe in their direction: No, I’ve got plenty, thanks, though!

They left, I sent out a note to the ward saying the cherries were picked and thank you everybody, and I headed off to the clinic.

The grandmother read that and dashed over, hoping she hadn’t lost her chance to at least get some. Turns out she had missed that phone call.

Richard had been in a meeting and I hadn’t interrupted, so he didn’t know that the daughter had come by; he just met the grandmother at the door (trying to keep his distance because of the covid exposure), and a moment later found her crushed, saying, It’s stripped. They’re all gone.

(While the daughter had been going, Mom, answer your phone…)

And everybody’s having a good laugh over the whole thing now.

Oh, and the covid test? It was negative.

Picked another five+ pounds of cherries this morning, only this time I had the sense to pit them before taking the shower they were going to make me need. I froze them in pie amounts and had a half a pie’s worth left over.

Got out two stoneware bowls a few minutes ago, covered them in thawed pie crust, made a half recipe split between them, they’re in the oven, and hopefully we’ll manage to share one tonight and one in the morning rather than scarf an entire one down each all at once. But we’ll see.

Then the phone rang.

Richard’s aunt and her son, the grandmother and father of the groom on Saturday, have just been diagnosed with covid after avoiding it for so long. (Quick thought: let’s see, that’s two of the five people I hugged there that I can think of…)

Me: Are they okay?

He said they were.

Good. Let’s all stay that way. (Hoping hard, knowing that she’s the caretaker to her husband.)

Eight minutes left on that timer. Soon there will be pie.

Oh there you go.

I woke up this morning with the thought, and those people were okay because people who didn’t know them pulled over on the freeway on that mountain pass next to that truck on fire and that steep drop-off in order to get them to safety, at great risk to their own. I just needed to emphasize that point to honor who they are and what they did, whoever they are.

Meantime, I finished a random Zoom-meeting-knitting hat. It started with an intended recipient but the overtwisted stash yarn was nah…not what I was looking for… But it’s done, and someone will like it.

I am determined to make some progress on that afghan even if I’m doing everything three times to get it right; I’m getting closer to where it’s more obvious and less of the stage of what will it actually look like if I do this no wait I meant this. Two rows in 90 minutes with about 300 rows to go.

But at least I won’t be doing seed stitch in alternating doubled-stranded colors with a third worked across the back of them for much longer.

When did they say Christmas was?

Guess where we were today. (Youtube link)

Some of both the bride and groom’s families were caught in that mess while the truck was still on fire at Altamont Pass. We were a little later, and by then the fire was out but it took us a very very long time to creep past.

I thought no way someone survived that. They did, though, they’re apparently okay.

So we were late to the cousin’s son’s wedding in Modesto but we made it, they made it, everybody understood, and the angst let go to the joy as we walked in those doors. (Man, did we look that young back in the day? Wow.) Their friends were having the times of their lives. The couple was having the joy of theirs. So tender to each other.

The DJ made a point of celebrating Richard’s aunt and uncle’s fifty-third.

Coming back, we opened Waze first.

By now, the 580 freeway was a complete no-go. As it should have been earlier in the day, and we were directed to a very long way around with a windy mountain road with super-tight close-barrier lanes and drop-offs–we would never normally want to take that route but we were grateful for it, we made it, and we’re home safe and sound.

May they live long and happily ever after. Such a cute couple!

It never had a name.

It was packed high when her old friend volunteered to come on the long drive south and helped her unpack and then flew home, just so she wouldn’t have to do any of that alone in a town she didn’t know.

It was packed high when she moved north a few years later.

It was again when it took her to Washington State, and back down, and back up, and back down, several times a year as the lockdowns continued. But mostly it had out of state plates during that time.

It was taken through the carwash and made as pretty as its nine years could be before it was taken to the lot today. Carmax: after they’ve looked up its accident history you bring it in and they look it over and they give you a number. Yes or no. Door number one or door number two. Take it and walk.

It is not making the drive to Boston. Cars pay high rent too there.

And so some family looking for a super comfortable, well maintained, reliable, nice, very low mileage (most of it from those trips), nine year old car will have one they’ll enjoy, too.

I met up with her so that she could have a ride home, for the last 24 hours that this is home, in a surprisingly comfortable waiting area while they did all the paperwork for four sets of clients. I would have finished the hat I’d just started but for lack of a second circular needle–I’d considered, then had thought I wouldn’t need it. It wouldn’t be that long. It was.

But that’s okay; I can manage the decreases here.

Both kinds.

At home.

I am so going to miss her and I am so happy for her on her new adventure.

We were not planning on going to see any fireworks, but the fireworks came to us.

Our daughter got in one last visit with her sister before her move to a much longer plane ride away from the neiblings.

Her delayed flight home finally took off about the time it was supposed to land, which meant that we started driving on a crowded freeway at 9:30 p.m. on the Fourth of July for the airport.

Note to self for future reference: one might want to avoid that.

I have never seen so many fireworks in my life. Not only could we see the various cities’ official displays over the Bay (or I could, since I wasn’t driving), cool to have back after they’d been canceled in the worst of the drought and pandemic, but, a little less cool, people were shooting them off like crazy. Everywhere. Nonstop. Next to the freeway. Over the freeway. From behind the wall of the self-storage place over here, the auto body shop over there, in the middle of the trees (!!!) next to the something-star hotel built on what used to be the bad end of that town. We were heading into what looked like a semi-circle of them again and again, and the illegal ones didn’t go very high, either, with the sparks coming right down.

Did their mothers know they were doing this?

Someone’s house on the other side of the Bay caught embers and took fire in the shenanigans but the firemen were reportedly right on it.

One boom shook our car as white sparkles shot upwards right next to us.

Arizona? Nevada? You sure can’t buy them here. That’s a heck of a road trip for a little blow-up-go-sparkleboom.

Reports today were that two people had damaged their hands and dozens of fires had been set off by the more than usual illegal displays.

For us, it was also the distracted drivers swerving all over the place, mile after mile. One guy simply pulled over and watched the shows, which seemed quite reasonable, although, dude–get off the freeway first.

Which, eventually, we did, and hugged our kid home, and everything was fine.

Got up. Picked sour cherries. Put the bowl standing in a plate with a bit of water in it so that any bugs would freak out and come out but not be able to get out, as I do, and they did, and thus drowned a few I would never have known were in there. Left it there a few hours and never saw a single bug remaining inside the bowl.

We visited P in the hospital, and she looked a lot better than the last time–they have been throwing every anti-viral and anti-bacterial at her, and she needed both.

I did not know that shingles could invite bacteria along the inflammatory path. Not what you want in your brain.

I caught my breath when I saw her half-open her eye for a few seconds; she hasn’t been able to do that for weeks.

We talked about hospital food. “It’s actually pretty good.”

Yeah, we said, Jesse Cool took over the menu just after the last time I got out of here–matter of fact we went to her restaurant for our anniversary dinner a few nights ago. So good. She’s got a Michelin mention these days.

I asked if I could bring her some sour cherry pie next time and she perked right up at that idea. “Yes! Sure!”

I knew her friend from Ukraine passionately loves sour cherries, so I asked her if she would tell them they were welcome to come pick a couple of pounds, a good pie’s worth, and she grinned, picked up her phone and started typing. I told her I’d email the couple, too.

Which I did, and they’re coming over Monday–after the friend has had a day to recover from the vaccinations she just got, because, reasons.

I bet I’m not the only one who brings our friend pie.

He was running late, but at least that would get him past rush hour for the long commute home.

Friends of ours moved far enough away that they were able to buy a house, one with enough land to plant a goodly number of fruit trees, is the plan, after they clear out the neglected overgrowth.

They are really excited about it but didn’t know where to start.

He works nearby, and today was an in-office day and that was perfect: she’d been hoping for one of my apricot seedlings for awhile and it was waiting for her.

He picked my brain while we picked cherries together. You want the squirrels not to devour everything? Plant sour cherries, tart apples, and see the Indian Free peach there? The downside is it needs a pollinator. The good side is that not only are the peaches great, not only is it resistant to leaf curl disease, but the peaches are sour during the growing–right till the very last when at ripening they turn sweet and the squirrels take awhile to catch on that the rejects are the good ones now.

Also: that row of bushes? That’s California coffeeberry, and the tiny fruits are supposedly edible but bland (never tried it) but a big food source for the birds that like to nest in it where they’re protected from the hawks. The Bewick’s wrens take cover in there, and since they are mostly extinct now except in the Bay Area, I’m pretty protective of them.

And then we talked hawks: mine, and their red-tailed family they love to watch. Cool!

Clearly it’s been a good move for them and their young kids, even if I miss them.

I told him Morgan Hill is a hike for them, but if they want to sample the best stone fruit varieties before planting, Andy’s Orchard is absolutely the place to go.

They will be there.