Six of them: if it’s April, it’s someone’s birthday around here. The phone rang, FaceTime buzzed, then the doorbell: Surprise! Doordash, two mini cakes, making sure things were done right.

The next birthday girl chimed in: the baby should arrive late next week.

So her new daughter, too, might join the Aprilization of this family if she wants to. It is possible they’ll have the same day.

I asked if she wanted to see a photo or wait till we could bring it to her?

A photo!

And so she got this and the story of the clover chains and loved it.

I wondered if knowing her baby afghan was finished was that one last thing she needed in order to feel ready to go.

With you all the way, honey, with you all the way.

When Richard was coming out of the hospital in February, a friend in his eighties had just gone in and as we waited for the obligatory wheelchair attendant at checkout, we debated asking them to push us briefly to George’s room–but didn’t because we knew it wasn’t a fair thing to ask them to add to their schedule while other patients waited.

That was the right thing to do, but I will always be a little wistful over it.

He never recovered from his pulmonary embolism. I asked if I could visit. Was he lucid?

Karen gently let me know it was time for the innermost ring to be the ones present.

She and their children, who came in from all over, kept him company nonstop all these weeks. They assumed George could hear them but past that they really couldn’t say for sure. Hospice got set up at home. They had a big family, there were lots of grandchildren, and every one of them got a chance to tell him they loved him. I can just picture their son who plays in a blues band strumming away softly at his dad’s bedside and his dad wanting to pick up his guitar to play along.

She knew she was going to be a widow.

That doesn’t make it any easier.

It was good to see people hugging her again and again and again and again and again at church after they announced his passing. Everybody wanted to be there for her every second.

Just like she had been for him.

I waited till today to mention it, just in case.

Nope. No sign of it.

I’m subscribed to the Post Office’s service where they scan things and tell you what’s going to show up in your mailbox that day.

One of the things it said Friday was a piece that horrified me: it was a solicitation for applications for Postal Inspector, okay, but–on it was a picture of the back of someone’s unmistakeable ICE uniform with the word POLICE across it and text that seemed to conflate the two.

This was an obscenity that was never going to pass  through my door. I was going to tear it up and dump it straight in the recycling bin outside.

It never showed up.

The two of us were of one mind on this: we don’t want anything to do with that flier–but we also don’t want the new mailman (or anybody) to be censoring our mail.

With a few edits on the names, this is what I wrote tonight for my expecting niece after being asked to write a memory of her late mom to include her in with the coming of the new baby. Our niece was the other baby who was on the way at the time.

—

Dear Jessica,

When we found out we were expecting our first, I sewed a bunch of cute little baby outfits in great anticipation–and then miscarried at 12 weeks.

I gave everything away. It was too painful.

There was a family party, I think it was the next day, and I found myself going to the basement of your mom’s house to get away from it because everybody was being joyful and didn’t they know?! People were acting like it hadn’t happened. Turns out Grandma H had told them not to say anything, thinking with the best of intentions that it would give me a break not to have to think about it.

Uncle Duane followed me down those steps a moment later because he knew exactly what I was going through. He heard me out. He then told me about the baby they’d lost at six months along that I had known nothing about, and twenty-something years later here he was crying quietly as he told me and heard me and was there for me.

When we were expecting again later, I wanted to prepare for my baby, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. Eventually we were getting close and I had essentially nothing and knew that was stupid and knew I had to get going but the what-ifs kept stumbling me.

And in that context the local aunts and uncles on Richard’s side decided to throw me a baby shower because this time it was a celebration that we could all freely celebrate (and I needed that kick in the pants to believe that I really was going to get to have this baby. She was almost here!)

So we came, and your mom was there, and I assumed the whole time that it was a shower for the both of us because our due dates were only about a week apart, and yeah it was my first and her third but still.

So after the food and the talking and the preliminaries they started handing me presents.

I kept expecting them to hand some to her, too. It kept not happening.

I finally blurted out, But what about Cheryl?!

Well now there was an awkward moment.

But the reason I tell the story is because I was in awe of how she handled it. She totally deflected anything about herself and said Well but this is your first! She’d been in on the planning of it for me and that was what it was about as far as she was concerned.

She was gracious, she was loving, she was inspiring, she understood exactly where they were coming from and where I was coming from and it left me wanting to be a lot more like her when I grew up.

Love,

Aunt Alison

The picture opened up and I laughed.

Blue House is judging you.

And we’re judging it right back. Really, now. Did it think anybody would think those eyelashes are real?

After ten years of trying there was some serious celebrating to do. Saturday morning was the baby shower. Lots of friends, lots of good food, lots of baby gifts.

I found myself sitting next to a woman who introduced herself as the other grandma and she was delighted when I said, You’re S.’s mom!

Yes!

I knew that meant she had flown in for this. This is to be her first grandchild. So excited.

The friend handing the mother-to-be the presents picked mine up almost at the end.

G. opened the card and read who it was from and instantly realized why the wrapping paper was the size and squishiness it was. Her eyes went huge and straight over to mine, as if to ask, Is it?! Is it!?! while absolutely bursting with love.

My eyes loved her right back and I gave her a little nod. Yes!

Her mom’s a knitter. Her sister’s a knitter. She knows.

She leaped to her feet with the Rios baby blanket held nose to knees, wanting everyone to be as thrilled as she was. “It’s so soft!”

Fillory Yarns in San Jose had held a sale-by-mail during Covid lockdown. I knew that yarn would be *the* yarn for–something, that it would tell me what, when. And it did. It instantly did when my friend told me her daughter was expecting and that it was a girl. Even for Rios it was particularly soft. And washable. And a color she wears a lot. That yarn.

I said to the other grandma, I’ve known G. since she was born. When she was three she told us she was going to grow up and marry our John, six months older, and I wanted to hold her to it, but, no (said with a grin.)

Given that her son is the one who did marry her, it took her a split second and then she laughed and laughed at how we were rivals in mother-in-lawing and she’d won.

She was so grateful over that baby blanket.

It and the shower were a message that in this town where she didn’t know anyone except immediate family, she belongs, too.

Great times.

My sour cherry was impersonating cheerleaders as it waved its pompoms in the wind.

What I was trying to capture with the camera, though, was how the sky had suddenly turned a strong yellow. Yes it had started to rain and yes sunset was ten minutes away, but it was at the speed of a light dimmer and I’d really love to sit down with a meteorologist or physicist and ask, How do the particles do that? Why don’t they turn the sky pink, or even purple, since you get those at sunsets? Why just yellow?

And why does it sharpen all the colors and make them brighter when cataracts also do a yellow overlay and make everything duller and fuzzier?

I can just hear my mom chuckling and going, You were the kid who followed me around asking, Whyyyyy? after every explanation in answer to that question. Nonstop.

If you heard that squeal just now, I came around the corner to explain to him, I went to smash an ant on the wall, it fell, I didn’t see where it went but I felt it land on my foot and suddenly found myself kicking real hard and jumping back and, yeah, it got noisy there for a second.

His face! He was still back at the wait wait wait WHAT?! He exclaimed, You can’t. Feel. An ANT! Land on your FOOT!

I laughed because I had–and I knew exactly where he was coming from. What the nerves no longer transmit, you gradually forget they used to be able to do. I studied harmonics in a physics of acoustics class in college so I know what they are in theory and they must sound divine, the pure math of sound and all that (anyone else remember the Harmonic Convergence group in the news? Was that related to the start of Burning Man? I digress.) But asking me to report on hearing them in our experiments in the lab? It was already ten years too late for that.

That is the one specific class grade I remember from university.  A-. Never was quite sure about that one.

Don’t use phone apps for directions, she told me, they’re a mess, use this other one.

Sure! I even printed it out.

I have idly wondered from time to time how, when you’re driving on the freeway and you look up at those steep hills to the west covered in houses, you can’t even see any roads except the biggest ones, but the views from up there must be amazing.

They are.

And I learned today that if you look down at them from your car for longer than a fast blink you will land on someone’s roof.

Years ago I learned how to be comfortable driving the narrow switchbacks in the mountains to Richard’s aunt’s house. I figured I was only good for the one total freak-out where I gave up and walked back to her door and asked her to drive my car to the top of her drive because I just just couldn’t. (Someone else later tumbled his car on a switchback there. New driver. He was fine.)

I came home and said, Your aunt’s road is a piece of cake. This one seemed to be less than a single lane wide, a little rough and the edges a little frayed at times, no barrier, and it was straight down from there. Tight, tight, constant turns. At one switchback it looked like recent construction above and there was just loose dirt going close to straight up, a landslide waiting to be come Friday’s rain.

She wasn’t going to be home, so I was to take them out of her mailbox and leave my own box by it.

The whole time I was thinking, What if someone comes around the next bend? You can’t back up around the bend behind you. You don’t have an inch to go around. What if this road just dead-ends? How do people pull into those driveways without disemboweling their cars? How did this county approve building up here where no fire truck could ever possibly go, heck, not even an Amazon box truck? And for the love of geography, why aren’t the house numbers visible?

I finally simply put the car in park in the roadway to go looking for one. Wave hi towards the concept if not actuality of a Ring camera?

The road–it needs a better description–continued forward and no other traffic happened (I mean, why would it) and at last it let out onto another that was steep and curvy but not so much on the terrifying.

So it was a loop and I could loop around again and get a better look for that house number, now that I knew what to expect. But you’d have to come to a full stop at every house to look.

I tried to talk myself into it.

Nopenopenopenopenope.

So the lady who bought a lot of the wrong size hearing aid batteries–my size–and whom I was bringing homegrown Meyer lemons to will get together with me next week at a store safely downhill from there. The post office won’t let her mail them and it won’t let me mail my produce. So we’ll just have to do it ourselves.

Since I’m making her make all that extra effort it seems like I should do extra, too.

Gee. I wonder what else I could possibly offer. Right? (And if she googles my name and finds this, I hope she tells me her favorite color.)

Friends dropped by this afternoon and surprised us with roses to wish us a happy Easter. Made me wish all the more that I’d remembered in my quick note last night to wish one for all of you who celebrate, and I hope all who do–and who don’t–had a wonderful day today.

There was a walk around the church tonight with each of us holding a mini light. There were readings at intervals along our Road to Emmaus and a gathering together on chairs set out on the lawn for the final triumphant reading of our risen Lord.

There were more people than chairs, though, and I saw a couple I didn’t recognize standing a little behind us so I motioned them to come sit by us where there was room.

Turns out they’re in the middle of moving here and are house hunting.

When she said where they were moving from, I asked if they knew Grant and Colleen?

Absolutely! Love them!

He’s my cousin.

She couldn’t wait to tell him she’d met us. And then she told us her husband was the brother of…

Camille?! I love her!

So now I get to hope they find something right around here where they have instant friends.

The ones who dropped the roses by?

The husband said tonight, I didn’t know you lived there! We almost bought the house next door to you when we moved out here.

I said to Richard on the way home, and he thoroughly agreed, That would have been so cool. But then we would never have met the family that did.

How often, when you ask a man what his wife’s favorite color is, can he tell you right away without squirming because he feels like he should be able to tell you but he suddenly realizes he has no idea.

But he did know, with certainty. Cool. I went stash diving and–oh, yes, that one exactly.

So. Doctor’s waiting room for a routine check. I pulled out the just-begun carry-around project and marveled at how finely spun baby alpaca yarn can be as jumpy on the needles as a happy toddler in an ice cream shop, especially old stash from when some mills were new at working with the stuff. But it makes such a soft fabric. (Why did I put needles that big in the bag? Stuck with them now.)

A woman was checking in and as she walked past me, she stopped and introduced herself as a fellow knitter.

Cool! Loved her scarf! I asked her about how she’d gotten started.

Her mom and grandmother were knitters; How about you?

I told her my family had traveled coast to coast and back when I was a kid and my mom had taught me how to knit to keep me from killing my little sister in the back seat. She laughed and asked if it had worked and I said yes, while thinking in my mom’s direction, I think so–I don’t remember any arguments after that. Mom, if you want to chime in?

I told her, Six kids and a camping trailer and she winced a little and yeah I don’t know how my folks did it either but they did it. Mom was knitting my sister an Aran sweater I seriously coveted so I wanted to learn to make my own.

We didn’t have a lot of time to delve in deep but we both would have loved to and I told her the name of my blog. So to her, if you’re reading this, welcome! And hi!

Palm Sunday: beautiful music, scripture, reverence for the Sacrifice made for us all so that we could find our way back to the Love that unites us all. His being willing to feel every person’s pain, to befriend us personally, compels us to be willing to share each other’s burdens in kind.

I caught tidbits of quiet conversations between friends trying not to talk politics there, but: Saturday’s protests. Where they were. How it united so many, so everywhere, so good.

There was Hope in the services.

And in those conversations. A lightness felt, a burden lifting: we will get where we intend to go.

Love for love.

The next door neighbor showed up offering oranges from her tree.

She found herself going home with a baby blanket.

Meantime, the mystery at Grand Central Station is solved. NYC now knows where the five foot heart balloon on the ceiling came from: the elderly couple and their daughter were heading to a Valentine’s party and lots of random people wanted to play with it. Cute video.

I remember the big (to my childhood eyes) field between the church and the Safeway on the Maryland side of beautiful, woodsy Western Avenue in DC and the clovers that dotted the grass and spread down that field. We would pick them and make a slit near the bottom of a stem with our fingernails and slide the stem of another through it, chaining them into flower necklaces that celebrated with us for the rest of the afternoon and then quietly gave way to nature.

White clovers had some of this yarn’s color at the center, with all those curled white petals above. A few were purple.

I’m sure the older girls taught the younger ones how to do this, though I mostly simply remember making them with my best friend Kathy. Those older girls would have included my older sisters–and Richard’s.

Whose cancer finally took her when her youngest was in college.

I remember, when our kids were growing up, her backyard sewn in meadow flower packets that had beautiful wildflowers blooming all summer. Cold, cold water from the mountains ran past it all in a tight stream hemmed in by squared stones set in place just so by pioneers at the beginning of the western water rights era so that their children’s children’s children could help things grow.

Her youngest will soon have a baby girl of her own.

Clover flowers in a meadow. With hopes of making chains of necklaces with the little one someday in memory of her grandmother.

(Photo from yesterday, didn’t take one today.)

Eight and a quarter repeats now after doing 21 166-stitch rows today. I haven’t worked this hard nonstop on an afghan since my grandkids’ cousin was born with a wrapped cord and not breathing on his own for his first fifteen minutes while the hospital scrambled to replace his blood and cool his body in a protocol Stanford had pioneered not long before.

I typed the above thinking a fervent oh, if only, wanting to hug my friend Jody whose granddaughter did not survive that complication.

That baby’s mom and dad needed a tangible symbol of all the hope and prayers sent by everybody.  I didn’t have the stash nor funds for more superwash merino to do it in one color, it was stripes the length of each skein and friends chipped in with more skeins of their own to be a part of the cause. Ten days start to finish.

I was told afterwards that that baby emphatically did NOT like to be cold. (Gee, I wonder why.) That made me all the more glad we had sent him our warmth.

He is turning 13 this year and doing fine.

Do you ever get yourself to keep at it by telling yourself that if you do this one row, you’ll never have to do it again? That that one row at least will forever be finished?

And then the next and the next and the next and the next.

This blog post brought to you with thanks to the makers of blue ice therapy gel packs.