Still pondering that woman from yesterday.

She was–maybe–young enough to be the age of my oldest, and I think that helped my reasonable-Mom reaction snap into gear. Raising four teenagers taught me not to take offense even when it’s intended because it means the kid is hurting badly and needs understanding and not taking it personally. And a firm guideline, definitely.

As I think back to a screaming 16-year-old, a soft answer in utter calm and love but utterly to the point, a slammed door, and, after two hours’ self-imposed cooling down, a complete angel reappearing who never kvetched about any of that again.  One of my memorable moments of motherhood. Who knew that it would help get me ready for yesterday.

I marvel that this woman had happened to knit–and with the weather that had been chilly for May, had happened to choose that day to put on that one–that particular simple but unusual pattern that I could spot from a mile away where you get to the end of your shawl knitting on the diagonal and then drop stitches spaced just so all the way back down to the beginning. Clah-poe-TEE. A French-speaking designer.

I marvel at the timing. My unusual arrival time due to the schedule of the day paired with her departure time from Costco: seconds off and the whole thing never would have happened.

Frankly, I marvel at what she did, of course, but whyever she did it clearly had nothing at all to do with me. She was reacting to something that I represented to her, whatever it may have been in her history, and her choice of outfit made it so I could offer her an out: anybody who didn’t quite see what had happened could have thought we were just two knitters striking up a quick conversation with an implied compliment.

But the experience offered her a choice: if she’s any kind of a good person, then the starkness between her behavior and mine was a heads-up that she needed to confront whatever the source of her angst was that was causing her to lash out at complete strangers and to do better.

We’ve all had moments. We’re all human. Sometimes we simply need to see ourselves more clearly to find our way back up when we’re down, hopefully with the support of those around us.

She’ll never know it, but I’m rooting for her.

The day here started off quite chilly and I wore a sweater.

Richard was off at Maker Faire (I want to see that 3D printer in chocolate too someday) with Michelle. SPF 100 sunblock is good, but it’s not that good so I didn’t join them.

While they were gone I was coming into Costco doing the usual slightly awkward thing with the cane and the cart and trying to manage past others coming and going from the same tight in-and-out area, when one woman who wanted to be done and out of there fast kind of shoved her way forward through everybody in her path, abruptly turning her cart in front of me in such a way that I was forced to do a little dance to avoid hitting her, skittering to a stop with the cane askew–you know, being graceful and all that.

I was thinking, eh, we all have times when we’re in too much of a hurry and we just don’t see in time.

She looked me in the eyes and made a rude face at me.

That, I did not expect. (And not out of an adult.)

In that same moment I noticed the pretty handknit around her neck, a large wrap in a pattern that was all the rage a few years ago. I asked, with a straight-out-of-Stitches smile, “Did you knit your Clapotis?”

Busted and she knew it.

The briefest hesitation, then, “Yes, I did,” she answered with a half smile in a mixture of pride and agony as she beat it the heck out of there.

“You’ve always liked to garden,” he said today.

“Yes, but I didn’t for years,” I answered, saying that I think it was because having grown up an outdoorsy type and being so sun-confined with my lupus, I think I was afraid that if I broke out of that at all I’d get more and more reckless with it and so I’d kept that side of myself tamped down hard. For years. It was just easier not to have to look too up close at that sense of loss. Years ago, when getting to see my children grow up was a long way off and by no means a sure thing and I was doing everything I could, I suddenly realized one day that I’d just spent six months without even once walking all the way around my own back yard.

Now I feel like I’m reclaiming not just it but me. I deeply need to dig in the dirt and to see life coming forth from it. I picture Parker planting the seeds of all his apples and it just makes my day every time: from my botany-loving Grandfather Jeppson who died before I knew him and yet whom my Dad says I take after to my grandson, a straight line down the ages through every circumstance.

I reminded myself of that conversation with my husband as I went out to put my tomatoes in the ground at 6:00 pm. It was a little early in the evening for May but I had a lot to do. I kept my back to the sun and hey, look! The first actual tomato!

Oops. My critter cover didn’t fit over that tall tomato cage. I need to figure out how to set that wiring around them all, it’s been wrapped too long and wants to sproing inward on itself a little too hard. Might take two sets of hands and Richard was off at a ham radio meeting.

All these tomato plants were planted at the same time in the same seed starter kit. Two were moved into a bigger pot early on and put outside in direct sun; a third awhile after; and the rest, well, they were left in front of what wasn’t a great window for sun exposure to begin with. Look at that difference, and the roots far more so: a gallon of soil held tight vs, for the smallest, no discernible side roots, only the white squiggle it started out of the seed with. Same age.

Problem was that I’d needed more soil and buying more soil meant being out in the sun at the nursery during business and non-rush-hour hours and finally I simply did it.

The little ones will catch up soon enough.

And yes, I blogged several weeks ago about planting new seedlings. They were from the same batch as these and they all died in the first 24 hours. I transitioned the rest more gently from scraggles in the window to being in bigger pots outside to in the ground and I waited till I had most of them too far along for the snails to go after.

And then I went looking for baby apples and snapped clamshell covers over all the sweet Fujis I could find and as many of the more sour, less vulnerable Yellow Transparents as I could. Some of last year’s clamshells had given up the ghost; I clearly need more. A good problem to have this year.

Me: The scan was fine so I can cancel that appointment, right? (I feel fine. I don’t want to be a patient. I’ve been a patient a lot. Now it’s my turn to just plain be an ordinary person while I can for as long as I can and I’m pretending I never have to do the patient thing again and just let me enjoy my break while I have it, willya.)

The nurse: Um, no, you better go.

The specialist: The scan was not quite so perfectly fine.

And that is how I ended up having a procedure done today that was an inpatient one done under anesthesia back in my mom’s day. I did not know this doctor, but he struck me as being terribly weary of inflicting pain on the innocent. But the thing is what it is. I had no idea what other burdens he might be bearing; my heart went out to him. I wanted badly to comfort him, to tell him it’s his job to do his best to keep us healthy and it’s our job to be grateful for his efforts and skills and caring. It wouldn’t bother him if he didn’t care, it’s a sign he’s a good person. As for my end of things, it would be just one day–or the start of knowing what to cope with, and knowledge itself is power over illness, along with all the love in the world.

I at last got him to laugh when I told him I was going to call my daughter and tell her what I did to celebrate her birthday. He did seem better after that.

And the verdict is (roll the drums, blast the trumpets): no bladder cancer. The Remicade and Humira side-effects haven’t gotten to me yet. And I say (waving my magic wand, making it so) they never will. So there.

And the knitter in me wonders if I should knit him a hat. A warm and soft one.

Old dishwasher: out.

That took a lot longer than expected but we promised each other we would be all sweetness and light while working on this. He didn’t fit into some of the tight spaces and forgot that I might call a plier a screwdriver at the hour it had gotten to and at one point I stopped myself and went, Wait: I am being growly. And I stopped being growly

It is done.

Oh, wait, I know what I was going to say–I got a happy email from my doctor, saying: Scan read. Looks good.

Yes!

I think, actually, there was one in the room the whole time but at 4 am one does not remember details.

And so I stumbled across the house to where I knew my rescue inhaler was, next to the weather station that said it was 38 outside. Brrr. The mango monitor? Forty-nine. Good. I finally fell back asleep about when it was time to wake up. Richard was trying to let me get some rest.

Late, I had to eat and drink in a very few minutes, when I am not someone who likes breakfast early, because they required a four-hour fast before the CT scan and X-rays. Remember that drink 8 oz every two hours or my kidneys fail thing? You simply get through what you have to get through, but I knew I would be in no shape to drive.

Richard dropped me off, the techs there were wonderful, and Michelle picked me up when it was over. I knew worrying before I get any results back is a complete waste of emotional space but it’s easy to do–I didn’t even pull out my knitting, I read a Time mazine to keep my brain busy, and then there was my sweet daughter asking if I’d like to go check out that Penzey’s spice store?

She knew I’d never been but that I’d been wanting to. When there wasn’t a parking space close enough, she dropped me right at the door so I wouldn’t have to do a minute’s time in the sun before she hurried in herself.

My spices were generally old as dirt and about as useful as. Michelle thoroughly enjoyed my delight. Four different types of cinnamon. Indian spices. Vanillas. Mixes of their own making. The cream of tartar I was out of that I needed to make a certain someone’s angel food birthday cake coming up.

There was a pretty jar with a lift top at each display so that you can inhale, imagine the dishes to be made of it and then on to the next. Tandoori, Sate, Northwoods Fire seasonings, Parisienne Fines Herbes, really good Chinese Five Spice, a seafood soup base with clams, crab, shrimp, and lobster as the first ingredients, those all went into the basket. The pizza seasoning or the version specifically designed to doctor frozen ones?

Michelle reminisced longingly over the pizzas on homemade bread I used to make (before her dairy allergy set in), rolled up and sliced cinnamon roll style to try to contain the kids’ messes–and so we agreed it had to be the real-thing bottle.

I finally sneezed after I got back in the car. Once.

And then she whisked me away to Timothy Adams for hot chocolate just because. Adams was there, cheerful as always and glad to see us. Totally unfazed by my slumping down over there–I’d needed that.

They all totally rescued my day. I didn’t make it to knit night–I was just too tired to even think of it–but I made it through what I needed to and had a good time after, topped off by Skype time with the grandsons.

I did, however, manage to spot and pull this nasty little specimen out by the roots after dinner. (For scale, the lid of that big bin is half again the size of our trash can’s.) This one weed, at least, is gone from us and it can never come back. It was deeply, deeply gratifying.

He found it. He pointed it out to me. He offered to buy me one for the fun of it. I said something about Mother’s Day by way of justifying it and he just kind of waved that off–no need for an occasion.

I was so not expecting any of that.

And so I am finally going to have an electric spinning wheel: small, portable, useful, and the Electric Eel Wheel might actually make it so my nerve-damaged fingers can spin laceweight, but even if it doesn’t I would love it. I could spin on my lowest-energy, highest-flare days. (And it would just flat out be a fun toy to play with, he’s right.)

On Ravelry they say they expect to charge about $200-240 with a single bobbin after the Kickstarter campaign is over and then they will get to work getting them made and mailed before they consider how far they want to take this business after that. “This project will be funded on Tue, Apr 7 2015 10:42 AM PDT,” meaning, that’s your deadline if you’re interested. Everything’s open source in case you want to make your own, including the bobbins, but meantime, the single-bobbin+wheel price starts at $149 (with one still left in that option as I type). We went for three bobbins.

I like these guys.

I was watching the path of the sunlight closely today, moving the mandarin pot in and out of the hole I’d dug so far, and decided that it was going to have at least a half hour to maybe even an hour in the winter more direct sun if it came forward about a foot; all I had to do was dig a little more. The more hardpack clay replaced for its roots to grow into the better anyway.

The Gold Nugget variety we bought, it turns out, survives to 26F, six degrees colder than almost all the other varieties, it produces in the early spring rather than winter, the flavor is supposed to be intense, and then, unlike some, the fruit can simply wait there on the tree for months without rotting. Ready when you are. Eating a perfect tangerine right off the tree in July? No problem.

I would say we totally lucked out when we got that one.

There was a meeting at church tonight and having just put down my tools since I can only be outside in low UV I decided I was too tired to drive; Richard said no problem, and off we went.

And so I got to be the passenger and thus put my full attention on it.

We were pulling through the big driveway there when I suddenly exclaimed. He had no idea why. A little further and he stopped by the door and then asked what that was all about.

You didn’t see it?!

No, I didn’t, what was it?

A Cooper’s hawk and some smaller but not small bird were doing a crazy-fast slalom race across the parking lot and over and around our car, in such tight formation the whole time that at first glance I had not been able to tell it was two birds. They were right there at the passenger side!

Wow!

I wasn’t the only one watching, I realized as I got out of the car and looked up. C A W W W. There were two ravens at the top of a tree watching, knowing that hawk would win and waiting, two-on-one, to mob it and steal its hard work the instant they could.

Only, our car had blocked their view a moment and I had spotted them at it. Corvids are always very interested in what humans are doing–they’ve survived via scavenging from people for millennia. They turned their attention to me and spoke up some more, conversing with either each other or me or who knows.

And with that diversion, the hawk wasn’t forced to give up his meal for his mate and his nestlings, wherever he might be now. His.

The first day of blooming for the Stella cherry.

Caught another cold and slept very little last night but it didn’t stop me from doing more digging and planting this evening. The prep work for the Gold Nugget mandarin is done, other than that nicked water line. The one single zucchini/pattypan hybrid seed I sprouted inside is now out there giving it its all, hoping for not-too-cold nights. What the heck. I put more seeds down near the baby plant–we can sauté the flowers and skip scaring the neighbors with the excess.

The friend who’d recommended Black Jack figs has hers espaliered.

I waited for Richard to get his input. After digging a hole in the corner at the end of the row the Stella is on (which was fine with him) and then thinking no, I don’t want it there, I went back to our original plan, which was to put it in a pot to help limit its size with the least effort or at least to buy us some time till we decide to do otherwise while we see just how fast this thing grows. Turns out we’d had different ideas on where that pot should go so I’m glad I waited; he’s been so supportive and I’m trying to return the favor.

He most wanted it up against the back fence, thinking how about to the far right from the cherry picture.

I could so easily espalier it right there and ditch the ugly Costco fake-wine-half-barrel thing and that would work really well.

If I wanted to. Not sure I do. Fig trees are pretty and I want it pretty. (Okay, and I’ve never done anything remotely like espalier work before.) But we could always transplant later–the Stella used to be in that same pot.

So I took it over by the tea roses where he wanted. It took some work to pull its bulging sleeve off–it turned out the roots had grown into every molecule of space and where they’d hit bottom they’d curled around and back into the mass like a felted knitted thing. Planted like that, they would strangle themselves. They were already working hard at it. There was nothing for it but to cut them apart and pull as hard as I could, again and again, doing as little as possible and as much as I had to and separating them into roughly four solid clumps with a few stragglers and hoping that would be enough.

But at that point I was fast running out of daylight and a decision had to be made.

A stick in the mud in the pot. Plunk. It’ll do for now.

My daughter-in-law two days ago: “I love that stage where they’re learning to talk.”

Gam-ma (as Hudson calls me, in two separate words): “Me, too!”

Meantime, back home where things are quieter, the bird feeder had been empty an hour or so while I waited for the sun to get lower; I filled it right before cooking dinner and then we ate.

Meaning the flock was hungry and staying away and then a fair number would all have been coming in at once, starting, often, with the doves. And meaning we were out of sight of the windows when they would have been doing so.

These things do not go unnoticed.

Dishes begun, I had my hand on the door to go out in back when I realized all too late that there was the Cooper’s hawk right there smack dab in the middle of the bare-these-days fence line. The only time I’d seen him of late was when he flew directly overhead last week as a crow dive-bombed him, apparently actually striking once, while its mate chased and chastised and two others joined in half-heartedly from the side but swooped back away before getting any too close. I know they go after him if he’s got a meal in claw and I know they badly want to own his nesting tree next door. If you chance to see a large dark bird swaying unsteadily at the tippy-top of a tall tree, likely it’s a crow or raven playing king of the mountain. But for all their swagger they dare not fly as high as the raptors soar.

He was having none of that. No stealth tonight. This was an in-their-face declaration: I own this. The finches had fled but he had stayed–food was clearly not what was on his mind.

Only, I was moving right at that door and he saw me coming before I saw him.

The moment hung in the air, eye to eye, me surprised and mentally apologizing. I want more hawk sightings, not fewer.

He lifted his wings and was off across the yard in no particular hurry (and I know how fast he can go when he wants to) and in no fear. But there are certain protocols a wild thing must abide by.

And on a smaller scale.

There was yet another honeybee on the frost cover as I took it off the mango tree this morning, but this one was healthy and alive. How do you help a thing that will sting you for it, but I batted once gently at the back of both fabric and bee and it was freed to go.

Yesterday’s flower is nearly spent and its center is beginning to look like these already. The young tree may shed these soon or they may grow to all they could become. I remember Dani exclaiming, when he was encouraging us to plant this tree, “If you don’t try it you will never know!”

I love that I get to find out. And then, finally, to know.

Let me say upfront that it’s nearly impossible to rile my husband. He’s calm, steady, seeks for understanding, he’s my rock. So I can’t imagine that he was anything but matter-of-fact in his statement. Me, on the other hand, I think I struggle a little harder at staying charitable when someone hits me right where I live. Literally. Even if we tell them they don’t know, they can’t possibly know, we remind ourselves, only those who live it can.

Although, the doctors and nurses at Stanford Hospital certainly do a good job of it. Good people. Yeah… That, “Oh I remember you!”

Our ward shares its church building with another ward and at the beginning of every year we flip which one has mornings and which the afternoons, whose toddlers get their nap time, who gets to sleep in.

There is an elderly woman in the other ward who–and this is the first year she’s done this–has decided she didn’t want to make that switch so she would just join ours. She probably has her favorite seat that her ward knows all about and she always goes there unless someone beats her to it, and that’s fine. We do too, going for where I’m most likely to hear, assuming no one else is there yet.

Two weeks ago she sat down right behind us (we always get there a little early, she, a little late) and started coughing hard. I apologized but got up and moved as far away as I reasonably could without making a scene (scoot down that bench…) Our ward knows. She had no idea, so we explained after the meeting was over and hoped that was that.

Last week someone beat her there–he was from out of town, visiting his grandkids. Directly behind us, clearly sick, coughing deeply. Given how fast and how hard that same cough would hit me a few days later, I can understand why getting ready for church he’d probably thought it wasn’t much. And I can certainly understand wanting to spend every minute with your grandkids you can (this being why I’ve been wearing face masks to church since Madison was born–I don’t want to be limited in when we can go see ours. But last week I forgot to bring one and there you go.)

The brainstem lupus had me fainting in the shower this morning, saved by the shower chair a dear friend dropped off last night when she heard. The tyranny of the ileostomy is that it does not care that you’re too sick to deal with changing the dressing every third day, you absolutely must and you must do every step right because one four-month staph infection is enough.

Hopefully all of this will be very short-term. I prefer my Crohn’s flares being in the past tense–and for the most part, they are, this is nothing compared to those two big ones: when my life was saved by an experimental med, when my life was saved by major surgery.

Michelle’s idea is that we should ask permission to place a box of face masks at the entryway for all who might need one to help themselves to. I think I should have one and a spare in my purse as it is.

Richard went off to church this morning. That same elderly lady sat down behind him after he got there.

And again she was coughing. A lot. While asking after me.

A short and sweet, “My wife is very ill. Someone was coughing right behind her last week.”

We bought plane tickets before all this started to go see our grandkids and to celebrate a birthday. Assuming we’re healthy.

—–

P.S. Rereading this I’m thinking, can you tell I’m ready to be done with this? And remembering the nurse I once apologized to at Stanford who comforted me with, and I’ll never forget the kindness of her words, “It’s okay to be grumpy: when our patients feel well enough to be grumpy it means they’re getting better and they want to go home.”

I’m so tired let’s see if I can proofread this right. Happy tired.

Their goofs meant I totally won. Not enough other people could find them, I think.

We had this one spot behind the plum tree that was a perfect space, now that the weed trees were gone, for another, specifically a bigger tree than some of the others I’ve put in. Not being in a raised bed meant that much more allowable height, and it likely wouldn’t shade the solar there even if it got out of hand (which it won’t.) And the neighbor on the other side of the fence there had once so hoped out loud that we would plant a peach near enough to reach over her side a bit.

If we put one there it could go that far but it wouldn’t have to–perfect.

And I could plant a standard size without having to look for a semi-dwarf.

The only problem, and the thing that had stopped me previously, was the roots I would have to deal with that would surely be left over from those weed trees.

I only considered it because I’d fallen in love with a gorgeous specimen of an Indian Free peach two weeks ago, the last one at that nursery, and by the time we decided that yeah, we really did want it it was long gone and from every other retailer I called, too. Bare root and potted both, sold out.

That’s what happens when Dave Wilson, the grower, describes it as the all-time best-tasting peach they know of.

And: Indian Free (developed and named by Thomas Jefferson) does not get peach leaf curl disease. In our foggy area, this is huge. It produces in September and October, long after my others are done for the year. The peaches are tart and presumably, like my Yellow Transparent apples, uninviting to squirrels until full ripeness–at which point, suddenly, wow. The peaches, anyway.

Once we’d agreed on it I didn’t want to lose a year’s growth to having to wait. One last try. I clicked on Where To Buy for the variety one more time this morning, even though I hadn’t found anything at all within three hours and I’d spent an hour and a half on the phone yesterday asking.

But I’d wondered about this one retailer I hadn’t called–because clicking from Dave Wilson to ProBuild had been a complete bust, a page that said they sold building (only) materials. The end. Well then why…?

How about if we try clicking “handout”? For another retailer, that had been a dead link so I’d ignored them all but let’s try it.

Turns out ProBuild does have a nursery on the side with a list of what they stock but the page is not on their site but on Dave Wilson’s instead. Huh.

Indian Free. There you go.

I called them.

Sure, we have five! Bare root. Do you want us to reserve you one?

I told them nah, I’ll be right there–well, as in, coming from… Thinking, it would only be about an hour, right? I figured I was safe and I wanted to pick it out myself. (I had to pick up the dishwasher part on the way. It was an hour and a half.)

Those who have driven the steeply twisty Highway 17 over the mountains with slow trucks and heavy traffic and quickly-alternating vivid sunshine and dark under the redwoods will understand when I say I felt like I had to pry each deathgrip finger off the steering wheel when I got there, but I got there.

More or less. There was no sign with that street number. There was no sign that said ProBuild. I saw a nursery, but I wanted the one I’d talked to and I did not want to make that return drive in rush hour traffic. I figured I just hadn’t gotten there yet. (Wait! Is that Golden Fleece?! Gunilla! It was, or at least their old place, but I did not dare take the time to find out.) I kept on going, but no, the numbers were going the wrong way. Turning back, it really was San Lorenzo Nursery at 235 River over there. No sign of the word ProBuild anywhere, not even on the construction-supplies place next door.

I looked around a bit and asked for help, and when I explained the lupus/I need to stay out of the sun thing, the guy was wonderfully helpful.

I saw four. (Come to think of it now as I write, maybe they’d put one aside for me over in the area marked Holding after all–I’d better let them know I already got it.) I picked out the one with the thickest trunk. “There aren’t any on Citation rootstock, right?” (Semi-dwarfing.)

“No,” he apologized.

I hadn’t expected one; “They didn’t make any this year, though, I don’t think.” (He agreed, with a look on his face of oh, so this lady knows!)

They hadn’t been planted in paper pots as the season had gone on. The price hadn’t been quadrupled. There was a long sand and soil bed that he pulled the one out of for me and then he wrapped up the bare roots in plastic for the drive home. The tree was still dormant. This was good.

$19.95 and no tax on food-producing plants. Twenty bucks for a lifetime of perfect fall fruit, and from a really nice group of people.

I drove back over 17 with the tree going from the far back to partly into the passenger side next to me. I knew now where the mudslide had been, where the lanes were going to be narrowed. I was in no hurry. (Yank that wheel lady and you’ll have a faceful of twigs.)

UV levels went down to 1 and it was time to start.

I hit root. Root. Another root. Chipping away at the biggest there was a sudden smell of eucalyptus. There were earthworms doing their best at it all. I pulled one way back, then got sensible and got out the clippers and got rid of it.

I ran off to get Richard. And back home again. We were losing sun time fast and you don’t leave a bare root tree drying out.

In the end I did my best and simply straddled it over the chipped-away big root down there in the dirt, knowing it was dead and this was alive and the peach would win. Not perfect but I’d made a pretty darn good big hole and it would do. I mixed in soil amendment and raised the level around the trunk to just so high below the graft point like I’d seen the pros do.

I stepped back and looked and it was suddenly just overwhelmingly gorgeous. That’s a big, healthy tree. I can’t wait.

I stopped by the local nursery today and they told me the back wall along the fence is where they kept their bamboo stakes. Six feet tall, a set of six, seven bucks. Hey.

And so the frost cover won’t rest against the mango tree leaves anymore–and I spent a fair amount of time up on my tiptoes trying to get that thing over those stakes and back down firmly to the ground all around.

With all that extra space above the tree to heat up, so far at four hours after sundown there’s only a ten degree difference between the outside temp and underneath that canopy, but unless we have another severe cold snap that should be enough and I can always take them back down again while the tree’s this small.

And I won’t accidentally break off the tiny beginning of a leaf at the tippy top while taking the cover off in the mornings now. I know, I know–that one hurt, enough to get me off my duff and to go track down those stakes. Thank you all for the suggestions.

Oh, and on a side note? My friends Mel and Kris are going to be at Stitches West again this year. YES! Buy yourself some fine pottery (I’ll bet they’ll have yarn bowls) and tell’em I said hi. I put in a special request for rice bowls with extra high sides, perfect for berries and ice cream. Save me some.

Rita: here (at the end) and especially here, where I knew in that moment that I might well never see her again. But I felt I was seeing her with all essence of strangerhood stripped away and she me and somehow it was enough.

I hadn’t seen her since then. Last Sunday I found myself thinking of my old friend. She’d been one of the patients who’d founded our lupus support group way back in the ’70’s, reaching out to others, putting an ad in the paper and seeing who might show up, offering, Let’s talk. She’d been a young mother when she got hit with it with kidney failure, bam, right out the gate.

She was middle aged and I was a young mother myself when I joined the group shortly after diagnosis, and in my first year or two got my first echocardiogram and saw my heart on a screen, had my first EEG, and briefly had kidney failure myself. I held on tight to the hope she offered and I wanted to be as kind and as thoughtful and reflective as she was some day when I grew up. And I simply wanted to get to be her age.

I am where she was then, in surprisingly decent shape all things considered, and I do now what she did: I come to those meetings to give others the hope I had so much needed.

I picked up the local section of the paper and flipped to the back.

I admitted to myself that I was looking to see if her obituary might be in there. Not something I’d done before nor that I wanted to find, just, it seemed the thing to do. Nope, no sign of one.

The emails came in last night and today. I guess I’m not the only one in the group who’d been thinking of her–two others had tried to call her.

Turns out they had found a tumor that explained why eating had become so hard and she had opted to simply observe where this new adventure might take her as it chose. It was a thing to learn, not fear.

She left us a little over a week ago, and I like to think she was letting us know. She was ninety-two or three, not sure when her birthday was.

I still want to get to be her age. And because of her I can see that I might.

It seems we will have room for yet more fruit trees, with a call in to Chris at Shady Tree for a bid on two more weed ones that are shading the solar panels (and my mandarin and mango. Richard stood by the Page with a UV meter and it read zero at 2 pm, thus the yellowing leaves and my willingness to let a little more bird habitat disappear for a few years till the new catches up.) Montmorency? Lorings at last? Let the plotting commence.

And then.

We were at Costco, looking at a monster package of cherries. Rainiers–I’d like to try them, but that was a month’s supply. Now it might have been different had they looked like they hadn’t just traveled a long way over a long time and then been left out unrefrigerated, but as he wondered how we could eat them all it yanked my thoughts to our Stella cherry, to all our fruit trees as they grow up. That box (which we did not buy) potentially represented only a few branches’ worth.

For a brief instant the sheer volume to come overwhelmed. Countered instantly by, but see the difference is that we’ll be eating and freezing however much we want and then giving just-picked totally ripe homegrown to all comers, and surely there will be no shortage of those. A sun-warmed, dripping-ripe full-flavor peach is hardly the proverbial and much-maligned foundling zucchinis abandoned on doorsteps in the dead of the night. ( A side note: make zucchini bread, using butter, brown sugar, baking powder not soda, and, the most important part, substituting ground pecans for a quarter to a third of the flour. That will justify any zucchini planting you might ever do.)

And the picking of that fruit means this necessarily sun-deprived lupus patient will have reason to be outside at dusk for many a day, getting some badly-coveted fresh air and the satisfaction of doing good in the process. It’s like you cast on and then the trees do all the knitting for you.

Cherry on, then.