There was an unexpected knock on the door. Michelle opened it, listened a moment, turned, and called, It’s for you, Mom.

Years ago I confessed to Sandy next door that the town paper had run a piece on older dads, interviewing them as they chased after their toddlers and small children. Rodger had talked about the joy.

I noted that no mention was made of his previous life and wife and children nor just what kind of joy he expected them to feel after he left them. I have always kind of wanted to meet him, because I just didn’t get it: why, I wanted to ask the man, did you deliberately lose so much? Your ex is a privilege to have as a neighbor and her kids are the best.

On the other hand, if he hadn’t, she would never have moved into that house and I would never have met her. So there’s that.

I saved the article and saved the article and at long last tossed it, thinking, she doesn’t need the agony of reading that.

Oh! she told me when I finally mentioned it–No, I didn’t see that, actually, I would have loved to have. I’m long past worrying about all that. And then in a conspiratorial tone, hand to one side of her mouth and kind of mocking herself: I’m curious!

In early 2020 after a medical crisis she sold her house and moved into assisted living near her son and oh goodness it turned out to be about two weeks before Covid lockdowns began so she couldn’t even see him except to wave hi through the window.

I texted her kids pictures of the old house as changes began with the new neighbors, paint, landscaping, and asked if I should share them with their mom; the answer was, No, not yet anyway; it would be hard for her.

Her daughter at the door today told me that Sandy had passed and they had wanted me to know. The family was holding a remembrance together on Mother’s Day here.

Turns out Sandy’s ex had also recently died. His memorial service is tomorrow. Also here.

His obit does not mention her. Just his wife of 42 years, children, and grandchildren.

Her obit does not mention him. But I knew she loved him. Just their children and grandchildren.

Who clearly co-ordinated between each other to make everything as easy as possible, since Sandy’s kids live out of state.

While I wonder at how, somehow, when the one was gone, the other went, too, her 84 to his 90.

Carly Simon wrote a song, Like a River, to her late mom: Do you know any more about God? Are you dancing with Benjamin Franklin on the face of the moon? Have you reconciled with Dad?

I think, from what little I heard on the subject, that by the ends of their lives, they had.

And oh how I miss her.

I thought this was brilliant so I wanted to pass it on. Conversation sparked by E. Jean Carroll’s success at holding her attacker accountable in a court of law.

The primary election season is coming up faster than we’d rather. So–and this is coming from a young and female point of view in a discussion that began for her with some friends in college–consider the candidates.

You’re on an elevator. It has no security cameras inside nor out. Someone else comes on. Do you instantly get off that elevator and wait for another one, or do you feel fine because there’s no need to have there be anyone else seeing much less recording what this guy’s going to do while you’re alone in a space together where nobody can intervene for you? Where nobody knows?

Now, if you’d want off that elevator car because you can’t trust that person with your personal space and body, why would you think he would have more empathy for the public at large than what you knew he didn’t have for the actual human being right in front of him? What kinds of choices would he make after being elected? After gaining the power he’d sought?

And then we talked about some of the political candidates we wouldn’t vote for but wouldn’t cry if they did get elected because we know they’re decent human beings with good intent.

Trustworthy.

Friends are moving away, and I missed them last time but today I got a cowl into her hands before they leave: cashmere, because nothing else would do (yay for mill-end outlets so I can).

She just happened to have put on a dress this morning that matched it.

I need to be more ready to do that more often in more circumstances, because, man, it felt good to know she’d be taking part of here to there when they arrive at their new life.

I will so miss them.

After a long-planned trip abroad, our daughter got home today after 22 hours in travel from where the sun is halfway out of kilter in its path and season.

She’ll be starting her new job soon, with time to find an apartment across the country. So much change.

Dear Whole Foods,

This is how much I wanted fresh sour cherry pie: we drove an hour over twisty, nail-biting mountain roads to Santa Cruz to a nursery that had a single English Morello tree left and set aside for me and then we did that drive in reverse. I cleared out gravel that went a foot deep, left behind by the former owner’s gardening plans. I planted it. I watered it. I rescued it from a huge Japanese beetle invasion by scouring the Internet and then a friend scraped off his barbecue grill for me and I scattered the ash on the beetles at night and watched them fall off dying and turning into fertilizer to put back the leaves they’d stripped off that tree.

And it survived. But fruit was a long way off; it took two years before it actually started growing.

It’s doing great now, thanks for asking, and even in the drought we got ten pounds of those little cherries the last two years, enough to invite friends to help with the picking for their own pies.

And I learned: you really really want to pit every one of those tiny things by hand before you throw them in the freezer for Christmas baking. Trust me, you do. So I spent hours pushing down with all my weight on that pitter to get them to skewer the way they were supposed to skewer: no pit left behind.

There were none. Go me.

Now, I don’t go to your store all that much but I do appreciate how easy it is for my dairy-allergic child to find what she needs there, and so it happened that I had a twinset of your pie shells in the freezer for her. “Palm fruit” rather than palm oil? Give your marketing crew my regards.

Now, one would think that after driving over dangerous Highway 17 to get that tree, planting the tree, taking care of the tree, picking the tree, pitting the cherries, and freezing them in two-pound pre-pied amounts that I would also go to the bother of making my own d*** pie crust, but, today, I did not. My tree is in bloom, there’s more fruit coming soon to make way in the freezer for and heck, I just wanted to taste that goodness again. Badly.

I know that you’re trying to Save The Earth (TM). I know that you don’t want those earthmoving monster trucks to dig any more metal out of this beautiful planet than they have to, or heck, maybe you use recycled Cadillacs, I dunno, but I think that maybe–just maybe–you might want to think about having those aluminum foil pie tins be a little bit thicker.

Because: this is the tricky part, lean in close, I want you to hear me on this one: when you put the filling into that crust, or indeed when you take the culmination of your glorious work out of the oven, the tin underneath isn’t supposed to, indeed for the satisfaction of your customers absolutely cannot, accordion itself in the center and flop over like a dying fish.

Chinette paper plates are far stronger than your attempts at playing heavy metal.

Picture taken before I dropped my phone in the goo charging side down.

What is that sound? (Glancing out at the dark.) I was trying to work out a frustrating computer problem and it was being distracting.

The wind had blown around a tray that had had seedlings in it (oh is that where it went) and the piece of plastic was being drummed on at the edge of the patio like the sky was tapping its fingers, demanding to be paid attention to because it was way more fun than what I was doing.

The rain was right.

Before we left for Seattle ten days ago, the pomegranate tree still had some leaves in the bright light reddish gold of early spring.

Now they’re all a lush dark green and the first flower buds have appeared. I love how they mimic cacao pods at this stage.

The Anya apricot that germinated right before we left has started to sprout side branches.

Re the older woman who coughed at church last week: I didn’t see her.

But clearly one of the young men who’d been at the front had seen the whole thing because he wears a mask while breaking the bread for the Sacrament and had forgotten his today and knew just whom to ask. That there would be a ziplock in my purse with a bunch of new ones, readily offered.

I had actually taken it out while unpacking everything from the trip and yesterday thought, that needs to go back in there, and went and got it.

I was so proud of him. He was looking out for everybody, whether they noticed it or not.

It was my old friend Eli, who took care of my mango tree against the cold weather while we traveled when it and he were younger. Whichever college gets him next year will be very fortunate to have him.

On the ROOF?! He was stunned.

Yes.

Not under the house? Is it a slab?

It’s a slab. It goes up and out. The guy had thought putting the motor that far away would help make it quieter for my hearing impairment but what it did instead was make the noise reverberate through the metal all the way down and it’s much louder.

He shook his head in disbelief. That’s the worst, he said. He couldn’t believe a contractor had done that.

He showed me the motor to a ventilation fan, how it was in this gray metal box. Just to be sure I was right. And then he apologized at how much it was going to cost us to replace the fan alone in that case. We’d already looked at and priced the cooktops.

This was at the place where I bought my Speed Queen washer and dryer, an independent company with a hundred-plus year history with the surrounding community to uphold–they know their stuff and their reputation to uphold and they’re good.

He could not have expected my reaction to the number he gave with apologies: profound relief, mixed with a whole lot of gratified self-satisfaction: I knew it. I knew it.

Then I gave him the number a contractor had given me for replacing the cooktop and fan, and the fact that he was close to ten thousand dollars cheaper. That is not a typo.

He was speechless again. And then–he didn’t want to badmouth the guy–but some contractors, you know, they think if you own a house you’re rich so they can quote anything, he told me.

So. The Hestan? It’s gorgeous and the lights on the knobs are great, but, he pointed out, those brass pieces on the burners? They won’t look like that. At all.

Okay, just saved me from that high end one.

The Bosch? He told me what he did and didn’t like about that one, my choice.

I explained about losing my balance in a car accident years ago and that I fall a lot–so I’d prefer the knobs be between me and the burners. I told him how with the current cooktop set so far forward, I’d set my sweater on fire. Twice.

His face! Man, I think that guy’s going to remember today’s customer.

So now Richard has to decide if he agrees with what and why the guy got me wanting the one I do now.

I am to call the guy’s installer to come look and measure first.

We are finally making some real progress and that portable one-burner Cuisinart we bought, woefully slow when you’re used to gas but immensely helpful in letting us take our time, will hopefully disappear off the countertop very soon.

In January, a very kind friend offered to drive us to the airport when we needed it.

Yesterday, her husband asked around if anyone could take them to the airport.

At rush hour. Across the Bay.

I’d hurt my back in the last hour at Sam’s before flying home Monday but knowing how much they would need that ride I said yes–along with a few quiet prayers that I’d be able to manage it. And if not, then that someone else would step forward.

I didn’t hear back yesterday and didn’t hear back today and that’s unusual from them so I sent off a hey do you still need this.

Huh. Nothing. Well, I guess they didn’t, then, and went about my day and didn’t fill the car nor take out stuff like reusable grocery bags to make more room because sun exposure time vs it wasn’t needed anyway.

Five pm I picked up my cell and Missed Call had appeared on it in the last hour.

Turns out they had answered; the email had vanished. Oh. It’s been wonky, that’s why I sent it again from my other addy. They’d called my cell, not knowing that the landline is the one I can hear ring.

Maps said 50 min to an hour 50 to get there that time of day and they needed to arrive by 6:30 at the very latest and they were halfway across town and it was 5:00.

I immediately called back, asked if they still needed a ride, said give me two minutes to get out the door, turned off the preheating oven, scribbled a note to Richard who was in a meeting before vanishing on him (he’d known I’d offered), and made a dash for it. Whatever was in the car was in the car and we would make do.

They knew it was a terrible airport to try to get to but it was the only one with a direct flight after work in order to get in at a reasonable hour. They were going to see their only grandchild. She was turning one and she had just learned to walk.

Oh how cool! Such a fun age.

We had a great time catching up on life. It felt an immense privilege to spend that time together. I could even hear Eric in the back seat most of the time, and that’s highly unusual for me. Man, that felt great.

The traffic was as good as it could have been at that hour.

They thanked me, I thanked them, and we pulled up in front of the terminal at 6:29. At 6:30 their bags were out of the car. At 7:25 I sent them a message that not only was the traffic so good the other way that I was already home, I’d filled the car on the way. They told me they’d had enough time to buy dinner, and had just boarded.

After two and a half hours on the road the only time my back had twinged the whole way was the brief moment when I tried to reach the FastTrak toll pass velcroed to the bottom of the window to reset it to 3 so we could use the carpool lane. No dice. I’m too short to reach the quite reasonable spot where the tall guy set it up. No matter.

I can only chalk it up as a small favor from G_d because on my own, I was not at all sure I could manage that trip I’d committed myself to. But I did it.

I expected pain and it didn’t happen.

What I got instead was joy.

We were celebrating three generations of birthdays together.

One way not to run out of yarn to work on is to bring lace weight.

I bought this at Stitches West 2019 from (this is as close as I can find to their bright and shiny 80/20 merino/silk lace weight in the Isabella colorway) Western Sky Knits in Montana.

I did a not quite the usual hat on the way to Seattle; out of sheer boredom, a few rows into the stockinette I found myself doodling k1, p9, then k3, p7, k5, p5, k7, p3, k9, p1 as I went round the rows. Then half a dozen or so plain stockinette again–and then I reversed the triangles, p1 then 3 then 5 then 7 then 9, and finished it plain from there.

I found myself laughing in surprise mid-flight: I had just knit Charlie Brown’s shirt.

Anyway, right before the trip I’d grabbed that Western Sky stuff that had been waiting so long and wound it up so it would be ready to go.

At one point there was a “whaddya you gonna do” shrug from Lillian’s mommy that her daughter adored unicorns. As three year olds do.

How could I knit anything else after that?

I was a few inches along when Mathias, busy with Legos with Grampa, looked over at my hands and said in wonderment, “That’s PRETTY, Grammy!”

I suddenly realized all he’d ever seen me do was practical hats. Travel knitting. I’ve made so many. They’ve gone to so many. And that white cashmere/silk afghan that I’d splurged on to make him as a baby that was now proudly on their couch–so soft, it’s nice, but it was white.

All these colors!

It is now officially child approved.

And by an older child: there was a sullen teenager in the airport waiting two hours for today’s flight, as did we, trying not to let on who his parents were. As teens do. I had my phone out and was reading the news (Fox fired Tucker Carlson today?!) so my hands would only have to knit for the length of the flight.

Once we were boarded, though, it was all rainbow knitting all the time.

Yonder teen passed us as he came on.

He saw what was in my hands. He stopped.

He looked at my knitting. He looked at me.

I looked back beaming my best grandmotherly-wisdom-love in his direction.

He went on his way with a noticeably lighter step.

I don’t know his details on why I suddenly felt considered an ally, whether the unexpected project simply gave us a moment to see each other and see good in each other and that was enough. Or if there was more to it for him.

All I know is, I’m so glad my hands were speaking in colors.

How many years ago was it? Someone I only knew a little back when Purlescence was still open posted on FB about having all these extra tomato seedlings and it seemed terrible to throw them away but the whole packet’s worth was way more than she was going to put into the ground. Please. Somebody. Take!

She does not live close by but her office was kinda sorta halfway between us, so when I expressed some interest she dropped them off after work.

At the time I wondered why she would go to so much effort for such little things; years later, I totally get it.  They’re yours, you’ve nurtured these, you know what they could give to someone, how could you not try.

It had been easily twenty years since I’d grown a tomato plant. I had no idea where the path of the sun relative to my yard was or where what was shaded when.

I watched some of hers grow and was inordinately proud that they did. I watched some get killed off by my inexperience; I never did get a Black Krim that year. But somehow, eventually I actually got to pick a tomato off my own vine that I had raised that had all started with her generosity and enthusiasm.

I was hooked, and even last year when every drop of water was being accounted for I grew a tomato plant. One single one. Bought at Costco at the last minute when I just couldn’t stand not having one.

Burpee’s and Park’s send out their catalogs in the thick of the January gray and cold (and, this year, rain.) Not before. They know their audience.

So. I had a few extra seedlings on standby after transplanting: nobody needs more than one zucchini plant (uhhh…) Okay, nobody needs three. I wanted to make sure I had replacements in case the snails devoured anything.

And yet… (Day 1, day 2, day 3…)

They were all fine…

I messaged my next door neighbor. I had one seedling each of Sungold tomato, butternut squash, and a zucchini leftover, and I’d planted all I was going to need for us; did she want them?

She’d love!

She had all kinds of questions. Could you grow them indoors? Do they need direct sun?

You can always try; they might get pretty big. Six hours, as far as I know, in order to produce. (Tomato: Oh yeah? Just watch me!) I told her of my crazy Sungold that kept going for three and a half years.

I knew how much she was going to enjoy watching those grow from tiny to productive, and walked away mentally thanking Janice all those years ago for starting this. It’s all her fault. I’m so glad.

Oh, and, I told her that squash vines can go on for 10-12 feet but I’d deliberately chosen varieties that grow small and straight up.

Still in the process of opening up, but I loved how the morning fog softened everything.

This was my one Costco-impulse-buy tree, labeled as a Stella ultradwarf cherry that would top out at about eight feet. It doesn’t think so. But at the time, I was helped by a young employee who read the tag on mine as he lifted it into the cart, and in listening to my enthusiasm looked over at the others and decided he was going to buy one too and plant it for his mother. A small cherry tree, she could pick her own, he mused–she would love that.

I don’t know who or where they are now, but I think of them both often when I look at mine and remember that there’s a kid out there who loves his mom and a mom who raised a thoughtful kid. I hope they’re getting lots of cherries, and by now he probably is married and has kids of his own old enough to think about trying to climb it to reach some for Grandma.

I know there will certainly be days to come when I will wish that my bad day was the kind of a bad day like this one was.

That said.

We were about to leave for church when, walking down the hall, I caught a glimpse of shiny–wait, what? Turned and looked and it was sunshine from the skylight bouncing off the water on the floor. Water?!

The toilet was Niagara-ing impressively.

I waded in and turned the water off to it, we put a whole lot of towels on it and down the hallway, threw a bunch in the washing machine, managed not to soak our Sunday best in the process, washed our hands and headed out.

Or were going to–but someone had parked across our driveway, you know, one of those I’m just running over there for a few minutes things, and he was soon out of the way–after sitting in his truck and being on his phone awhile first.

Got to church, sat down–and the woman behind me started coughing. A lot. Right into the back of my neck. She was not wearing a mask but I had just stocked my purse with a bag of new ones so no problem, and offered her one to match mine.

This is someone I’ve known for 36 years and I did not expect the reaction: she stood up in the middle of the meeting livid, stared me down angrily, and walked out.

I was like, what just happened here?!

I’d had no idea she was a MAGA. I was trying to help her out (and everybody around her) with what she’d clearly forgotten rather than embarrassing her by moving away from her myself, which would only help myself.

I apologized to her husband after the meeting for upsetting her.

We got home from church, started in on the towel laundering, and the dryer was only halfway working. It would do it, but it took two and three rounds through and in fact the last load of towels is still running at 8:00 pm as I type even though I did what I could to make sure the vent was clear. (Ed. to add, third round didn’t do it. I gave up and hung them to dry the rest of the way.)

The grandkids FaceTimed and that helped save the day.

But I knew I had to say something to that woman or this would come between us forever and life’s way too short for that.

I apologized in an email. I had given offense and I’d had no intention, but I had and I was sorry.

(Type, edit, pray for her, edit, go away for a few minutes to look at it with fresh eyes, repeat, pray so I’d say it right. Edit some more.)

But it felt important to keep at least some medical context so I said, my autoimmunity has been mildly flaring and it took me straight back to 14 years ago when I’d been starting to flare and someone had sat down behind me in church with “just a cold” that turned out to be bronchitis. My lupus and Crohn’s went nuts and I lost my colon and six months later after I still didn’t stop bleeding they did major surgery again.

I touched briefly on the lung damage and cardiac inflammation. I just can’t do germs with a system that thinks I am one. And so I watch my exposure carefully, I said. I just wanted to explain–but I gave offense and in no way meant to and I apologize.

Prayed again and sent it off.

Sometimes you just have to tell someone how it is. Especially when you don’t want to be a was.

And to establish boundaries.

It was vaguely reminiscent of our five hour round trip to Antioch two years ago to get him his first Covid shot: it was driver’s license renewal time and there was no point in not doing the Real ID thing–why pay the fees and the DMV time and the bother twice.

We gathered the documents, submitted them online, set the alarm and drove to where and when he could get an appointment–across the Bay a few minutes after that office opened.

Their website didn’t let us schedule both so I came along for the carpool lanes and in hopes they might do mine anyway. They didn’t. I’m next week. But at least at a much closer office.

When we got home It was hard to fathom that we’d done so much in the day and it wasn’t even ten a.m. yet. Wasn’t it lunch time by now?

I waited for people.

I carried the KitchenAid to someone’s car.

I carried my late MIL’s toaster oven to another person’s car.

Not only were she and I moms of the same age, we drove the same car and looked like each other surprisingly much. It was great fun. I noted that there were wooden spoons and a spatula tucked inside her daughter’s new toaster oven because every first apartment needs those.

That delighted her no end.

The contractor having brought up the choice, I did research on fiberglass vs polycarbonate roof panels and brought my results to Richard and let’s get this done.

His reaction was, That’s nice–but what I really really want done is the taxes.

The taxes! That’s what I was going to do today…!

Yeah, when they made some announcement awhile back about declaring California a disaster zone for the floods and said that that meant the tax deadline was helpfully being put off for months for us, my reaction was to groan, Noooo. Don’t tell me that! I don’t need any help procrastinating them, I just don’t! I deliberately did not Google to see if that was a counties-specific or a state thing. Pretty sure it was state, don’t want to know.

And I could tell you all about the fun *that* was this evening, but I’m sure you all did yours and that’s enough of it to have to deal with for the year.

They. Are. Done.

And for the first time ever, the IRS let me file electronically after accepting my name. Maiden one, but that’s huge!

And that’s a whole ‘nother blog post about Bush, the Patriot Act, the Social Security office suddenly seeing half the wives in America now that states making the legal changes were no longer good enough, the IRS never getting the memo and claiming discrepancies and that I was never me–unless my returns came by mail. And then somehow I was. Go figure.

Till today.

Next year maybe they’ll even let me use my actual legal last name!

I should have written it Dec. 26th and kept wondering why I hadn’t yet. It should have gone right out the door. And yet.

Then today suddenly felt like the day and I sat down and typed.

In my experience, at least, I wrote on my freecycle.org post, the on-off switch always goes first on an aging KitchenAid mixer, and this one’s about ten years old: you have to plug and unplug it. I got a replacement after it snagged a bit of my not-short hair when I wasn’t careful. Also do not put your hand down in the bowl unless it’s unplugged even if it’s stopped because it might turn itself back on–which is how I broke my wrist on a previous old one that had that problem.

But the motor is still strong. It has a reset button if it should overheat but it’s never overheated. There are two sets of bowls and whisks, making it easy to beat egg whites at the last, since they need a clean and dry bowl, and not have them deflate while you’re putting the rest of the recipe together, it has the beater and dough hook. It could last another ten years, potentially–you just have to know and not risk the risks. Tie your hair back.

Oh and where the bowl comes down to the base with a thump it’s taken the paint off the machine. But the bowl covers that up.

So with that glowing review (not exactly) I said a little prayer that the person who really needed this would get it, and hit Post. There are lots of people out there who can’t afford one of these machines at all and I just wish I could give them all new ones because there’s nothing special about me that says I should be able to so easily. But I’m able to. So just tossing this in the recycling felt wrong but by golly I was going to let them know what they were getting into with this one.

Holy inbox, Batman.

The first person who answered, I immediately felt, it’s her. She’s the one it’s for and why I held off on posting this these last few months. It needed to be when she would see it. A few messages between us later, I feel that way even more so. She just was.

The second guy wanted to know if it still had its box. After ten years? (Why on earth would I hoard that…) No? Never mind then, he said, not interested.

Yeah you just wanted to sell it on Ebay, thought I.

Somewhere before person #8 (at which point I marked it as Taken, which auto-deletes it from the site) there was a proud mom of a daughter setting up her first apartment, who quite enjoyed that I was so delighted for her daughter’s sake at that milestone as was she; I told her there was a very very small chance if enough people flaked out on me–but did she need a Cuisinart toaster oven? I’d inherited one that I’d be glad to offer.

She checked with her daughter, got back to me, and said, Yes please! I don’t think she knew that she never even had to compete with any other free cyclers or anybody else to get it. It just happened and was meant to be.

I get a bunch of space back in my kitchen after ignoring a gadget we just weren’t using. Everybody wins.

And it would still be here in the way and unappreciated if she had kvetched to herself about the changes in her own life–it’s hard to know you’re about to miss your kid so much–but rather, she shared with a stranger her delight at her daughter’s next step forward into adulthood.

And I was delighted with the both of them. And everybody won.

There is actually a third old-version-5-qt bowl.

After thirty years of that particular size and shape and appearance being the designated barf bowl when anybody’s sick (with fervent thanks for the disinfecting power of dishwashers) some traditions were just too hard to let go of. It stays.