Which doctor’s on call today?

Why, the nurse shot back into her phone: if it’s the wrong one are you going to go out of labor?

I hadn’t said a thing about being *in* labor, nor had I shared my misgivings about one of the OBs on that team, but a huffy question like that demanded a forthright answer: Yes.

We called the folks later to announce our new little boy, and Dad teased me that I’d missed his birthday.

I know, I know, Dad. But the other doctor was on duty yesterday and there was nothing I could do about that.

Happy Birthday to our son who had his own first baby boy on Mom’s 80th birthday. Improving on my parenthood from day one. He and Kim do a great job.

She’s my mom’s age but has had more health challenges; she gave up driving some time ago. She needed a ride to the dentist. Yay for chat lists, which let you ask everybody so nobody gets put on the spot.

I sat on the Scandinavian-style couch in the waiting room with my small, portable Rios cowl project, listening fondly to the happy chatter, then the quiet, then the familiar sound of the drill.

The receptionist coming off her lunch break saw me, exclaimed over my work, and came over and asked if it were Malabrigo?

Yes! I asked if she was a knitter.

Oh, I’m a BIG knitter!

Instant kinship. We had a great time. (I tried not to take too much of hers.)

When Gail got done I got her and her walker in the car and then asked her, Anywhere else you’d like to go?

She looked like she was holding her breath, hardly daring to hope. She was trying to say it without giving away the intensity of emotion I saw in her face: Why, yes!

Trader Joe’s?

Her nose wrinkled a little. She really could use a trip to Safeway.

The little one one at midtown, where you don’t have to walk a mile to find everything, or the giant one on El Camino?

She grinned. The giant one. She hoped that one of their scooter-carts would be available.

Alright then!

They had two just inside the door to choose from, one in good condition and one with the seat torn. She chose the torn, and I silently wondered if her experiences with her weight influenced that choice and I hurt a little for her for it. I remembered the days when I would be driving my kids to school and she, her kids long grown, would be out there race walking for miles every day. And yet fate refused to let her be thin.

But never mind, we had a grand time, me with a cane and a cart following her around, her, electric-wheelchairing it. It’s a huge store, trying to compete with Costco. We walked it side to side and end to end. I reached things for her so she didn’t have to get up. I put a few things in my own cart as long as I was there. She wanted the Irish butter. I helpfully found Danish, and some other European country-style made in America, but nothing that said…

She spotted it and reached that Irish Gold before I could. It was at sitting-person height.

I was happy that among all the staples and common-sense items, she chose some stuff that was simply fun food. Every pantry should have something that’s a just because you feel like it.

Back at her house, I got her walker set up, put three of her bags on it at her request and carried the fourth and she let me in to put it up on the counter.

She explained about her table. And over there, that empty box.

A friend of hers had had many many pictures from years when their kids were little together, and there were faces there whom she no longer knew or knew how to get in touch with, if they were still with us. She had gone through them all, and these were the ones with Gail’s family and the rest were a chance for Gail to identify any of those others.

The Simon and Garfunkel Bookends song…

There had been so many. Gail was almost done going through them. She showed me a single stack, about six inches high: those were hers.

All the rest–and she said it with a quiet laugh, and in that moment I felt her appreciation for a good and long life and all that had blessed her and hers along the way.

All those other pictures. There really was nothing to do but put them in the trash.

She understood my oh goodness, she felt it, too, but sometimes you do what you can. And then you move on.

And as I write this I suddenly wonder if I’ve ever taken a picture of her myself. I want to. I need to. And soon.

Writing it down so I can find it later: I experimented to see if I could adapt my favorite blueberry cake recipe from chocolateandzucchini.com to use some of the freshly- made almond paste they sell at Milk Pail, with a higher almond and lower sugar content than any I know of.

For a few more weeks, anyway, till they shut down because Steve wants to retire. I need to find out where he sources it.

Okay, here it is:

Highly-Requested Blueberry Almond cake

Mix in one bowl:

1 2/3 c. flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

In Cuisinart: the almond paste is sold in small random packages; I used .35 oz the first time and about .5 oz the second. Both worked, they were just a little different. So, pulverize it in a Cuisinart; add in 1 stick butter, sliced and at room temperature. (Note that Wayfare brand dairy-free vegan butter worked great, too. Now I have to find someone besides Steve who stocks it.)Whirr. Add 1/2 tsp almond extract and 1 tsp vanilla, whirr, 1/2 c heavy cream (sour cream, plain yogurt, or going dairy-free, Kara brand coconut cream worked, too), then add 4 eggs and 1 c. sugar and whirr some more.

Add dry ingredients in. If you have a small food processor you might want to pour the wet ingredients into a mixing bowl first and add the dry in over there; one more thing to clean but easier to scrape into the pan, your choice.

Pour half into a greased 9×13″ pan. Cover with four cups (don’t be stingy) of fresh, rinsed, patted-dry blueberries, then add the rest of the batter on top. Sprinkle 1/4 c of brown sugar across the top and bake at 350 for 50 minutes or till a toothpick comes out clean.

I made this for Richard on Monday and it was so good that he and Michelle asked me to make it again, dairy free so she could have some, and the Wayfare dairy-free whipped butter (butter beans are an ingredient. Who knew) with the coconut cream worked both in texture and flavor. I also happened to overdo on the almond extract a little that time and it obliterated any mention of coconut flavor.

Blueberries, almond paste, Wayfare, Kara coconut cream, sour cream, butter, and the particularly good versions of almond and Bourbon vanilla extracts: I have no idea what I’m going to do when that place shuts down. They are small but they have all the best stuff.

A funny story on the side: twenty-five years ago there was one single herd of Wensleydale sheep left in the world. Handspinners pitched in to try to help save the breed; I’m not the only one who bought ten pounds of their wool, and I’ll have a hand spun coat just as soon as I finally finish that button band in time for the SpinOff Magazine Rare Breeds Contest. Of 1999. Well anyway. So, I was at the doctor’s waiting room working on it once and someone with a British accent came over to sit next to me and ask me about my knitting.

The yarn was a new thing to her, and so I told her it was Wensleydale I’d spun.

Wensleydale! She smacked her lips loudly. That’s good eating!

I was so not expecting that reaction. I was speechless. I knew they ate a lot of mutton over there… I had no way to respond to that.

It wasn’t till years later that I found out what she’d been talking about and had a good laugh at myself and wondered what she’d thought I’d been thinking.

All of which I was reminded of last night as I made toasted cheese sandwiches with Wensleydale with cranberries. From Milk Pail.

Thank you for all these ingredients all these years, Steve!

Finished the fourth 100g ball of yarn on the afghan last night, put it down, picked up the dusty purple cashmere cowl project I’d gotten from near-zero to half during Friday’s driving and thought, I’d really like that finished for tomorrow if it is in any way possible. 120 stitches a row…

And at 11:00, hands and time demanding an end, I finished the castoff and broke the yarn. Done. It was a good length after all. Gave it a quick rinse and spinning out and set it to dry overnight, wondering who it was for.

The person I thought would pick it went straight to the Rios Anniversario cowl instead.

I was walking out the door, church over, wondering how I’d just walked through all those people and not felt that spark of hey you.

Glanced to the right and walking out the door with me was Ella.

I knitted for her once before: she was four.

I had gone to her widowed great-grandpa’s funeral. She adored him. He was part of her everyday life. He’d driven himself to a game at Stanford to cheer on his team, gotten in his car to come home, had felt the heart attack coming on and had had just enough time and presence of mind to steer away from the car in front of him on that fast busy street and plow into the unoccupied parked ones along the side instead. And he was gone.

Ella held up remarkably quietly through the proceedings for someone who was so small.

Until the moment they started wheeling his casket towards and then out the chapel’s funeral door (so named because it opens extra wide precisely for that reason) at the front of the room.

She leaped onto the bench, reaching with her arms and her whole soul towards what she suddenly seemed to have realized was gone from her forever in this life, crying: NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had this thick, cushy Robin and Russ yarn in my stash…

I overdyed it to her favorite color. It wasn’t as perfectly soft a wool as I would have liked; those were harder to find back then and outside my budget in that particular slice of time–but it was okay, and I knitted her an afghan. Her late great grandma had given me some wool yarn just before she’d passed; this was softer. Ella had had a knitter in her family and I could be her hands for her.

Ella has just finished her first year of college.

I tugged upwards at the dusty purple in my purse, and asked her, suddenly quite sure of the answer, Do you like this color?

I LOVE this color!

It was time she finally got something as soft as she deserved. I didn’t say that. I didn’t want in any way to put down the earlier gift. But man it felt good.

(I just posted this, got up to walk away from the computer, when it finally hit me: the afghan was purple, too. Just little-kid brighter, is all.)

This was a day when computer time just wasn’t happening. I’ll tell you about our day trip tomorrow. We had fun. Night night.

In the Mormon church, they try to keep congregations small enough that they stay personal. If they get too unwieldy they get split.

Trying to remember if I mentioned this… The ward we were sharing a building with no longer fit in the chapel while ours had lots of renters, and with Silicon Valley landlords raising rents through the roof a lot of people have been moving out. We shrank.

So after quite a bit of work at finding the best solution, a chunk of the other ward got moved into ours, and we’re talking eighty people. On my self-appointed project of knitting something for every woman, I had after three years finally gotten to where I only had to knit a cowl when someone new moved in. Now… Well it’s going to take me awhile. Again.

Someone came up with an idea of how to give each of the women new and old a chance to tell a little about herself: she threw a potluck dessert party at her house and told everybody to bring a shoe and a story about it to introduce ourselves by.

Which turned out to be a really cool way to let the shy and the extrovert both feel at home, so I’m mentioning it here in case anyone else ever needs an icebreaker idea.

One mom of two small boys tried to let the turn go past her, and almost got away with it but we went back to her.

She confessed she had forgotten to bring a shoe. But distracted and forgetting, she shrugged, that was the life she’s living right now with small children.

The room was full of moms and people who love other people’s kids–the laughter was warm and understanding, and she sat down clearly feeling warmly welcomed.

Which was the point.

Jean was at church! After a month in the hospital. She was surrounded by family, some local, some that had flown in to help her celebrate Mother’s Day.

I showed her my phone and grinned, “This is your fault!” It was the picture of the pomegranate flower on this part of the tree, and (scrolling) the baby pomegranate. I reminded her of the time she’d shared hers and how revelatorily good they were and told her that’s how I came to plant my own.

As I spoke, her son-in-law sitting between us was typing my words into his laptop in a huge font to make sure she got every word. Her daughter-in-law leaned forward, loving this, looking to see Jean’s reaction.

Jean looked tired but happy. “You’ve got a green thumb.”

I am so grateful I got that chance to show her she’d made a difference. Again.

So there was this burgundy-red soft Malabrigo Mecha hat, the carry-around project I’d cast on to have at the eye doctor’s last week so I could do simple knit stitches around and around by feel while my eyes were dilated.

Someone I know through Facebook posted a cri de couer last night while having a particularly hard time of it.

I immediately offered to finish knitting that hat expressly for her. I told her I wanted her to have a warm hug from me, that she mattered and was loved. I took a picture of it in its barely-begun glory, and then a second photo where I put it with three others (yay for all the recent hat-knitting time spent on airplanes) for comparison and asked her to pick her favorite.

Or to name any color and it would be hers.

She said it was one of the nicest things anyone had ever done for her. I wanted to weep and throw my arms around her from across the country.

There is no shame in depression–the truth is that it took great courage and strength to voice it so as not to be defeated by it.

I told her that years ago… That the gift that such an experience leaves us with is that it feels imperative to tell the next person that they are not alone. That they matter. That they are loved. I cannot say those words enough, I can only put them into wool.

I finished that hat this morning and went back to the computer at noon at last to sign in, having asked for her snail mail address. Wondering if she would allow me to have it. Holding my breath a little for her.

There it was.

She liked the hat in the upper left the best.

An hour later, she had its tracking number. Happy anticipation, I hoped: a gift in itself. Even if numbed right now, the memory won’t be.

And the burgundy-red hat waits its turn for its own recipient, ready.

Some friends put on a presentation tonight about what it was like to be Americans living in St. Petersburg (and I don’t mean Florida) for nearly two years.

They were there as an older Mormon missionary couple: but by the laws of the land, they were not allowed to act as such except inside the walls of the church. They could not do nor could they say anything to identify themselves as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints anywhere else unless someone asked them first.

Which crystalized it to simply quietly living one’s faith by doing good to others. Because that’s what it all comes down to anyway: trying to put more of God’s love into the world.

Which is how they ended up as volunteers helping out at the Hermitage Museum. Volunteering was definitely something they were allowed to do. They learned all they could about the place, for visitors’ sakes as well as their own and tonight, ours.

Sue said that one of the cultural disconnects she discovered was the very concept: historically, there were the royalty and there were the peasants and if you wanted something done it got done by the ones who had no real choice in the matter.

The idea that retired people, in particular, volunteer all over America in order to contribute to the good of society at large–really? They do? Sue said that even though that was a new idea to most, they really liked it.

I came away feeling like I need to get off my duff and go do more for others. A lot more.

Buy Corelle, the physical therapist told me at the time: it’s lighter on your hands and helps with the arthritis. Which was severe at the onset of my lupus 29 years ago, to the point that I was having to eat with plastic utensils.

I have my favorite Mel and Kris stoneware collected over twenty+ years and mostly use that, but my kids remember the Corelle plates and bowls as part of their growing up. I have broken many of them and don’t replace them because there’s no longer the need.

I have not broken a single stoneware plate.

Basically, I use the Corelle as covers over things in the microwave and as an easily-cleaned coaster while stirring my morning cocoa and that’s pretty much it.

Hands. They must be protected. You never know, they decided. So when my husband and his siblings needed somewhere for their folks’ Corelle to go, it ended up here.

We tackled that box today. I marveled that every piece was perfect, not the slightest chip anywhere–unlike mine, which have seen better days even though I’m very careful not to let the edges touch anything else in the dishwasher.

I had a moment of, how on earth could that be, and then realized that my late mother-in-law could not have abided setting a plate with a chip at her table and she definitely could have afforded to replace any.

There were so many pieces that if I added them to mine that middle shelf would probably break.

And so the old chipped faded ivy pattern which I prefer got booted out today in favor of plain no-frills white. Which is thinner, too. Curious.

There is one, count’em one single plate with an old-fashioned blue scallop/snowflake that probably dates to the ’60’s; I figure I’ll give away a chocolate torte on it and hope it doesn’t come back.

Then I pulled out my pretty, substantial, memories-of-friends hand thrown stoneware and set the table for dinner.

 I so love this picture.

My daughter and her son at the Anchorage Museum, a place that preserves and offers the past, the present, and (with displays under construction and areas where we thought we knew what to expect cut off from our view) the future.

On a less philosophical note, they do still have the best qiviut I know, and this time I bought a skein. I was told they do ship.

So there I was this evening, explaining to Richard why I was laughing: I had just been reading that one of my old Purlescence friends was at work today when a five inch lizard ran up her pants.

Yes there was a security camera while she was ripping them off and dancing around like a crazy person, but she’s been assured it was aimed elsewhere and just missed her.

My husband’s response: having forgotten it till just then, he reached into the pocket of his navy pants and pulled out one of the ancient cotton socks I cut the toe and heel out of years ago to use as a liner for the hand splints I wear at night to keep my fingers from curling. More effective against arthritis than any aspirin.

He’d been talking to a guy at work today who’d suddenly asked him, “What’s that coming out of the bottom of your pants?”

“Oh. It’s the wife’s.”

Two in one day. Anybody else?

It was still there. I told Parker about it and he went running to look, his little brother right behind him. The two of them are a pair.

He had been three. It was just to the left of the bathroom door. I did not mention that it was from when he could proudly go potty all by himself now: a small, perfect handprint, like a time capsule, lower than the door handle that would have been an upward reach.

(Many times I’d thought of washing it off. Never quite did.)

But back to Friday for a moment: while the rest of their family was finishing up their birthday visit with the great grandma on the other side, our son ducked out for a few minutes that evening to let us see the baby without any competition for attention from the other kids. After all, Spencer would never be not quite seven months again.

They’d fed him right beforehand. He should have been fine. But his routine, his surroundings, the faces around him, everything had been strange all day long and he was tired and he was Not Having It Any More. From the screaming baby at the door till he fell asleep in my arms about 45 minutes later.

I did manage to distract him into half smiles a few times and almost a laugh. His grandpa got some hold-the-baby time, too.

He stopped crying for a little while–and then remembered that oh right he still wasn’t home and he still wasn’t in bed, and let loose again.

We had bought a fun Halloween pacifier on impulse in Santa Cruz last fall and had forgotten to bring it to them in time for that: it was still here. Cool. So that problem, at least, we could solve, even if it took a minute or two to hunt down.

I have a childhood memory of my grandfather rocking me in a wooden rocking chair on a planked wooden floor with Eichler style floor-to-ceiling windows behind him. I was very little.

I live in an Eichler. Carpeted, hey, but the plate windows behind me and wooden rocker, that I could do.

Gradually, with some gentle nudges from me on that pacifier when it started to slip, he gave way to the sleep trying to claim him. Barely, restlessly. But he was quiet at last.

Saturday was our day, and as they came in the door there was my tall son with the baby in his arms again.

Spencer took one look at me and immediately broke into the biggest grin.

I was utterly, completely smitten. I was already, but man…

This time he had a complete giggle fest with me. It was great.

Sunday morning early, they all flew home.

Sunday afternoon with the light coming through the windows just exactly so, shining bright on that wall next to the front door, it stood out and we could see it. He’s quite the basketball player in his age group (I’ve seen him play–he’s good!) and he probably had to do a nice little leap for that one.

A time capsule of an eight-year-old star athlete, missing only the autograph.

“You can wash that one,” said my husband.

Someone in the New York Times, I think it was, was quoting from Oliver Sacks’ last and posthumously published book, and now I really need to go read it.

Sacks was talking about the restorative power of gardens. Of being in nature. That it offered powerful medicine to the brain.

He said that of his neurology patients, even those whose minds were far gone with Alzheimer’s: if you got down to the soil with them and handed them a seedling, not one, ever, had tried to plant it upside down.

They knew how these things must go, and the worst ravages of the brain could not take that away from them.

My sister-in-law asked two days ago if we were enjoying everything.

?? Enjoying what?

Today the doorbell rang: it was the truck driver she’d been expecting to arrive here. All those pictures she’d taken last year, all that inventorying, all those ranked choices between the siblings, the conference calls–she was looking forward to all that work on our behalf paying off for us.

Boxes and boxes and boxes and I’d had no real idea.

The soft but entirely synthetic afghan, so not my thing but made the way my allergic mother-in-law had asked for. I was just at the very start of teaching myself to knit lace at the time–there was no such thing as online knitting anything other than this still-new little group called the Knitlist.

But then the Barbara Walker books came back into print.

I chose a pattern that was a mixture of feather-and-fan and cables. Because cables. They were more my thing, but I figured if I did a whole swath of lacework like that I would be forced to keep going and I would make mistakes and learn along the way how to correct them and I’d get more confident at it. I committed myself inwardly to an hour a day and pretty much held to it. My own mom said an afghan should be long enough to cover your toes and go up to your chin–and my father-in-law was 6’7″. I was a careful newbie at this yarnover thing. It took me three months.

I stretched it out and looked it over, quite pleased: I did a good job with that, and that was actually really nice yarn.

I have grandkids coming in two days and my living room was stacked high with moving boxes and I wanted them out of there. Books, quilts, old cameras. An electric can opener! Something we’ve never bothered to buy, but it would be nice and now we have one. The yellowing plastic dated it to, I dunno, around the time we got married? Things lasted then, and so have we.

Pulled this thing out and guffawed in disbelief. Burlap? Is supposed to hold water across the desert? Was this some kind of a DadH practical joke? Because he would have loved it if it had been, that would have been just his thing.

Richard was surprised at my surprise: everybody knows those work, right? Of course they hold water!

How?!

You’re the fiber artist, you tell me!

Me, slightly bug-eyed, feeling that rough fabric: it was tightly woven, but. Uh… No. Just no.

But the thing does say it’s patented, so? If we believe hard enough? Or something.

Maybe if I tried filling it. I’m not sure which way would disappoint me? If it works? Or if it doesn’t?

It’s got to be waxed on the inside. Surely. Right, so I don’t need to make myself have to try to figure out how to dry it back out.

Where on earth do I put such a thing?