What we have here is a fine case of what the right would yell socialism at us for. Wouldn’t trade it for anything.

So: I typed out a note to the city public works department and said, My understanding is that Bradford pears usually live 15-25 years. Mine was planted in 1987. As far as I can tell, it’s got a bad case of fire blight and that fire blight has started infecting my other trees.

I asked them what my choices would be if they chose to replace it.

I sent that off Saturday night. Monday morning comes a response (including an apology that no, they don’t use fruit trees as street trees. Well, no, I didn’t really expect they’d want plums plopping on the sidewalk nor cherry pits under the tires but it was worth trying.)

Half an hour later they were at the door to inspect it and to plan what to do.

The guy thinks it can be saved. That will mean chopping away maybe even half of it and hoping the rest makes a comeback; there are bird nests up there, it’s been a beautiful tree, as he looked up fondly into it. Clearly he loves his trees.

There is no curing fire blight; there is only cutting it out. Maybe, just maybe, that will be enough.

He left and I thought, we are so lucky.

Gas, water, electricity, sewer, garbage–the city owns those, too. No fighting the endlessly manslaughtering PG&E, you just (remember this one?) call city hall. They’re right on it.

Because their city hall bosses will get voted out of office if they don’t, the council members know it, they have incentive to treat people well, and by and large our people take pride in serving and being a part of the community. That’s the one good thing about PG&E: everybody who doesn’t have to deal with them is so grateful to have the good guys on our side.

The pipeline that blew up a neighborhood in San Bruno? Which runs for miles including a block from our house? The state required PG&E to inspect every inch of it. They ripped up the street here. They cut corners. They broke the law again. They had to come back and do it again, with a temporary gas line laid out on top of the road next to traffic. That was fun.

It is so much nicer to have people that answer to us and all the better, who don’t mind at all that they do. Who take pride and who value that they get to do their job well.

One of my semi-guilty pleasures is the New York Times Spelling Bee, a variant on the old Boggle game except that it requires that every word use the middle letter of the seven. Any letter, any direction, any number of times. Given that my TBI messes with word retrieval, I figure it’s a good brain exercise.

Suggest a word, the site helpfully offers in the how-to section.

Oh honey you better believe it. Their dictionary is…limited. I started keeping a list of rejected perfectly good words and finally told them, I can tell your guy’s not a fiber artist. You don’t get felt without having fulled the wool.

And yet. I’ll occasionally randomly type and watch the screen cheer at–what the heck was that? (Grabbing my hardback Merriam Webster.) A skateboarding term? Who knew? A term for a jet with three engines?

There seems to be a cross-cultural divide here.

Doesn’t stop me, though.

Back in the day, the elementary school let out twenty minutes earlier for the little kids than the big kids; there were no school buses after Proposition 13 passed and they wanted to stagger the parent pick-up times a bit.

I had both for awhile there. So I would come for the first set and wait for the second. I was The Lady Who Knits, adding a bit of adult supervision to the playground.

My youngest graduated from high school twenty years ago.

I was at the eye doctor this afternoon. It took me a moment. It was a jolt to see the years in another parent’s face and halting walk.

You wait, they call you, they measure your eyes and send you back out, you wait, they call you back, they dilate and at last you see the doctor. So there was a lot of coming and going on repeat in the waiting room.

On the last of her returns before I was done I managed to catch her eye and smile–and to see her face go, Oh wait. I think I do know you.

She came over, nodded at the lace cowl on my needles and referring to both it and where we were, said, simply, I bet you could do that with your eyes closed.

I laughed. I said I could. (I’d been knitting a fair bit of it without looking at it.)

She walked back to her seat halfway across the room before I could reintroduce myself, and that was fine.

If she does figure out where she knows me from it’s definitely the knitting that will clinch it for her.

—

Edited to add: the banding video. Could you put your legs over that wall and let go? I most assuredly could not. The ledge that they’re rappelling down to is 18 stories up.

Shower taken, hair still wet, no hearing aids in yet, didn’t hear the bell.

I was standing in my kitchen at 8 a.m. when some random strange man walked past just outside the slider ten feet away, wearing a backpack with orange warning stripes and some kind of uniform and looking official as he was about to open the gate and leave our backyard.

In my astonishment I simply stood there and mouthed a bemused, Who? Are? You?

He laughed, bless him.

Turns out he was the AT&T lineman. They actually still exist, and we had been complaining for some time that ours was down. They just don’t seem to have a lot of people left who do that work but they were still good at charging us for it.

Wait, nope. They’re refunding us three months. Good.

Landlines carry more frequencies of speech than cellphones do so they’re easier for impaired ears to hear on.

Or were, but these hearing aids BlueTooth directly from my Iphone 16 and give as good as I’m going to get.

But the landline stays on when the power goes out, and there’s something to be said for not having to use up the juice on your connection to the outside world in an earthquake.

I cannot tell you how good it felt to hear the phone ring and to have it not be dead when I picked it up to answer.

—

A side note: yesterday the peregrine eyasses stumbled out of their nest box for the first time. Today was banding day and there will be video posted of when the parents were going at the researchers and these babies got the first radio transmitters with their leg bands. For the first time in all these years the count was: four males!

They decided to do something a little different for today: so they asked ten people to give two-minute talks on Mother’s Day.

I was second to last. I didn’t mention all the national parks, I didn’t reference Simon and Garfunkel’s “We’ve all gone to look for America,” I kept it short.

I said, When I was ten my family drove from Maryland to Wisconsin, where we rode a boat up the Wisconsin lakes, to the Peace Bridge, across western Canada, then down the West Coast, to Texas, into Juarez, Mexico, and home. Six kids and a camping trailer. Two months on the road. Mom spent it knitting my sister a sweater and I wanted one like that and I would study her hands. She taught me how to knit on that trip.

I said that my brother as an adult had told Mom he didn’t think he could ever have the patience she had to raise a future family like that.

Mom answered in astonishment, How do you think I learned it?!

I said, If you wanted any help, if you needed something done, if you needed a kind word, my mom was–is, at 95–the one to do it. I want to be like my mom when I grow up.

A friend told me afterwards that the two little girls sitting behind her, sisters, had protested in unison out loud in outrage: “But she IS a grownup!”

Like, She KNOWS that, doesn’t she?!!!

Often when I’m coming out of the pharmacy I see the same guy on the corner where I have to do a U-turn standing at the center divider holding up his sign, his pup quietly at his feet: I would guess a veteran, maybe 30. By now he recognizes me and I him and I give him a smile and a small nod if he wants to make eye contact. (My car door is always locked.)

Today while I waited for the light to change I found myself going through my purse.

I rolled down the window, batting away the sense of vulnerability to it. Aging has its privileges.

“I only have crackers,” I told him, wishing not for the first time that I had the packaged shelf-stable meals I used to keep in the car against emergencies that I don’t think are on the market anymore. Surely there’s a good replacement out there–but I’d have to look for one to know. And I’d have to remember to put it in the car where I can reach it without having to get out of my seat.

A small package of BelVita oatmeal cookies, or, as the package says, ‘breakfast biscuits.’ It wasn’t much but it was something.

He thanked me with a warmth I hadn’t seen in his face before. Suddenly the little bit of human connection that was really what I was trying to offer became what he, to my surprise, all the more gave to me.

This afternoon we got the text we weren’t expecting quite yet and I quickly assessed: no, it wouldn’t do. I changed my clothes because only the softest cashmere would do against her sweet face, should it be that I might get to hold her.

We both got to.

We visited for about an hour, not wanting to wear our niece out, telling her and her husband stories from when she was born that she hadn’t known and there was no longer anyone else who could tell her. How she’d slept so well vs my newborn who didn’t. Eight hours.

We reminisced over how, when Richard and I had just started going out, he was two hours late for a date and I was thinking I had just been stood up for the first time in my life–but by him of all people?! What was going on?

My doorbell finally rang. He had been at her folks’ house an hour away and her dad had been woefully late giving him a lift home.  He knew this was not good. So to keep me from getting mad he’d done a master move:

He’d borrowed a baby.

I opened my door and there was this 6’8″er while I was still trying to get used to that and he had a small baby over his shoulder and my immediate instinctive reaction was to think, What is that baby doing so far off the ground?!

Which made no sense and has been a joke between us ever since.

That of course, I told her, was your big brother.

So many stories this new family will make of their own.

At the sound of it, I am just not that adventuresome. And yet if you put some in front of me, most likely life and being a good example to my grandkids of being unafraid of something new would require that I gamely give it a try.

Maybe.

In a NY Times article called “13 Dishes You Should Eat to Understand Food,” the first thing mentioned is Rommegrot.

Sour cream porridge with smoked reindeer heart.

…Say what now?

Can you just hear my Swedish ancestors laughing and going, C’monnn, you can do it!

I’m picturing those reindeer we met on a farm in Palmer, Alaska, gently eating little bits of dry reindeer chow out of our hands (reindeer are surprisingly small.) The guide told us to be careful not to touch their antlers, because the soft velvet stage while they grow out caused, as a matter of protection to the animal, a great deal of pain if you did. Once the antlers were fully grown and hardened and much less vulnerable to damage and no longer full of blood they could lose, then they were fine.

They were gentle and trusting and happy to be fed.

On a cool day after we got home from our trip, I put on a sweater–and felt something in the pocket.

A single small piece of reindeer kibble had fallen in and followed me home.

Eat their hearts? But they’ve won mine.

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.