“But, officer, it was really just way too big a stick for her, I was afraid she was going to trip and break her beak and then where would her babies be, I was just helping her out, honest…”

I put some wool roving out on the back patio a few weeks ago in anticipation of nesting season and waited. It stayed there. I thought that perhaps the dyed wool of previous years had been snatched up sooner (or was I trying too early), that maybe the red caught their attention better–I wondered, are birds colorblind?

Today I sat down to my emails and found myself being constantly distracted by jays and doves and shadows of who-knows-what flying sideways over and over across my vision; there are floor-to-ceiling windows to two sides in this room and a translucent awning on the patio just outside. And then suddenly I realized: the wool is gone.

I stopped and watched a mourning dove struggling with a stick that looked so big I didn’t see how she could possibly lift it, much less use it in a nest. But she wanted that one. She tried again and again, stubbing the end of it on the ground, not quite getting it balanced in her beak, not being able to simply open her wings yet and take off with it, not being willing to let it go despite the abundance of tiny twigs under that olive tree.

Then a large and brilliantly blue jay flew right in front of her, squawked loudly with its wings wide open, and rushed her. If that mousy little gray thing wants that one so bad it must be the best one in the yard. Mine. The dove spat out the stick, scuttling away fast. The bossy jay grabbed it in triumph and flew gleefully in the opposite direction. See? Not too heavy. Piece of cake. Mine.

Jay, honey, you are going to have fun when your kids are teenagers, with that kind of example to grow up by.

I went looking, then, and found some samples of carded wool so old that the sheep they’d come from had probably died of natural causes by now. I opened the little packages and pulled each one out. Sheep 101–now there’s a poetic name. 102, 103, …109. I pulled the almost-felted-by-now cottonballs of cotswald and romney and merino into fluffy bits and put them out on the patio.

The mourning dove watched me and who’d. Alright, bird. I hear you. I went back outside and moved some of the fluffs over to where that stick had been, safely further away from where the resident human perches.

So far she hasn’t come to it. But the jay did. It flew down away from the wool, *picked up a stick in its beak, dropped it, hopped closer, picked up another, repeat from * till length of time desired. It hopped to just shy of the wool, finally, considered a moment–what the heck was a herd of moorit and albino gophers doing here?–turned its head away, grabbed a tiny stick, and flew back off to the left like the first time.

Since I started typing this, I’ve seen two jays fly at it and consider it. Almost ready for it.

I’ll get you, my pretties, and your little friends too.

p.s. Lene, your amaryllis’s second bud just opened up. Here’s today’s shot of it. Happy spring!

Thanksgiving. A time for family gathering around: let the pun times roll!

Bilingual turkeys speaking chicken with a knitter’s accent: BlOCK, blockblockblockBLOCK!

The Monterey Bay Aquarium has a new exhibit, and I’d like someone to explain to me why the young African River Otter, after zooming past an obstacle in the water, stopped and head-butted the sandy floor. I think it was one of the male twins they said had been born in the past year. Meantime, a larger one on land above him stood on its hind legs, eyed the crowd with his white whiskers making him look like an aging champion, and pumped his paws high in the air, Rocky Balboa style, twice. We were totally charmed.

And watching them cavort, it hit me: water ferrets. My brother once mentioned to me that he hadn’t been emailing much lately because his new pet ferret was entranced at his typing, and would scramble onto his shoulder every time and take a flying leap onto the keyboard.

I could just see these doing that, just pleading with you, type me a river. Water ferrets.

Judy, I found this: http://carderock.net/carderock.html which has one very badly-worded sentence about 2/3 of the way down on the first page about the naming of Cabin John, although, the history on that page is fascinating: for instance, the first settler who stayed and farmed in the area was the great-grandson of a man who arrived in Virginia Colony as a Scottish prisoner of war of the Cromwell government. I did not know that any of the colonists were POWs.

The site does explain something I never knew about the rock quarries on River Road: they were used for building the canal! Makes perfect sense, but I never knew that nor that they were so old. When I was a kid, we were strictly forbidden to get near them; those steep rock faces dove straight down.

I believe the stone entryway of the house I grew up in came from there… (Dad?)

Here’s another, from cabinjohn.org, giving the various theories–the folklore about a hermit was the story I grew up with–saying that Captain John Smith was the first to explore that part of the Potomac, and that Cabin is probably a corruption of Captain. It says, “The following is a description of the Cabin John area as recorded by Captain Smith in 1608: ‘The river … maketh his passage downe a low pleasant valley overshadowed in manie places with high rocky mountain from whence distill innumerable sweet and pleasant springs … Having gone so high as we could with the bote, we met divers savages in canowes well loaden with flesh of beares, deere, and other beasts whereof we had part. Here we found mighty rocks growing in some places above the ground as high as the shrubby tree .’ ”

I went looking for the CD of photos my friend Karen (of water turtle fame) took, to add to this post, but haven’t found it yet. I now know one place I want to point my camera when I go home to Maryland for Stitches East: I want a shot of that quarry. And the tiny stone house, the old innkeeper’s lodge at Seven Locks Road, that is the oldest building in Maryland, next to that quarry.

I can’t wait to go home. I’m so glad I have Stitches East in nearby Baltimore as an excuse.

“Do NOT call into a disaster zone. Email them.”

Yes, dear, I know. We live in California: it’s a given that you’re supposed to have one out-of-state person that everybody knows to call to hear the news. Things happen here. But Minnesota? Who makes plans like that in Minnesota?

My husband’s aunt’s house was a half mile from the epicenter of the ’89 Loma Prieta quake. His grandmother called and woke me up at 4 am, trying to get word on her daughter. I groaned to him, hours later, “Your grandmother got the time zone differences backwards!” I was later told she’d been dialing the phone all night. She kept saying to me, over and over, “I couldn’t get through! I couldn’t get through!”

I’d had nothing I could offer by way of comfort; we hadn’t heard either. Turns out that, although the house was trashed, her daughter and her family were okay. There were even funny stories: like the electric shaver, attached to its cord, that bounced across the bathroom, down the hall, down the stairs, into another bathroom, and the wall landed on the cord. Great. Now, just how do you lift it off it to get it out again? Um…

My husband got his ham license and his Disaster Services Red Cross certification after that. Next time the lines were down, he would be able to help get the word out.

New York. My brother was able to call the folks. My cousin, at work a half block from the Towers, got the word out the next day about seeing the planes hit and walking miles home. Leigh Witchell from the Knitlist and I spent two weeks trying to track down any word on Madlove Gina; turns out she’d just quit her job in the Towers and gotten a new one in Jersey. Hated it. Wanted to go back. When 911 happened, she did go back–as a volunteer, to help, knowing that people she loved were in there. Anything she could do.

There were New York shopkeepers who stayed put as the endless streams of people walked past them out of there, handing out water to strangers in need, over and over. Heroes. They didn’t decide it was too many people for them to be able to make a difference; they made a difference.

Email. Do not overload the local phone lines, let the people who need them most immediately, the ones who are right there, have them. Wait. I waited.

Dave was away on a business trip. Wanda was feeding the kids dinner. I don’t know if that trip had anything to do with it, but they did not cross that bridge a few exits down the highway to go to the Twins game. There is a guilty relief that the people I love are fine, but it doesn’t lessen my compassion for the ones who can’t say that. My heart goes out to Minnesotans.

Eight embarrassing things, Adrian? Who, me?

1. I’ve definitely and happily led a very Mormon life: no drinking, no smoking, not even coffee for a vice, although I definitely like my hot cocoa and my dark chocolate. Valrhona. And Scharffenberger! Gotta be at least 70%. I read somewhere that dark chocolate, and knitting, too, are ways to lower your blood pressure. Given that I take meds to raise mine, which otherwise likes to give readings like 80/40, don’t tell on me, okay?

2. I can’t always think of a new punch line on my feet and often just cough up old standards when chatting with new acquaintances, like, “My husband” (who is 6’8″ to my 5’5″) “and I grew up together. He just did more. I knew when to quit.”

Trust me, after 27 years, he’s heard that one a few times.

3. Okay, here’s one for you: once upon a time, my little sister and I were supposed to entertain two visiting cousins our ages for an afternoon by canoeing with them up a lock of the C&O Canal, which runs alongside the Potomac River. My sister’s canoe kept bumping into ours–I think she was trying to race us, but I’m not sure–and I, being about 13 1/2 at the time to her 12, found it highly annoying. I pushed hers away hard with my paddle and accidentally flipped her canoe, dumping my indignant sister and younger cousin into the canal, where you couldn’t see past the first few inches into the thickly stagnant water. Ew, gross. (For those who’ve read about my water turtle in my book, it’s been cleaned up a fair amount since then.) I got yelled at a good one later by my mom, who wasn’t about to put it past me that I might have done it on purpose. I was righteously indignant, because I hadn’t done it on purpose–but probably only because I knew that I would never get away with it if I did. Part of me found it quite satisfying. (Anne, don’t read this. Oh, wait–your twins are 13 now, aren’t they? Want me to take them to Swain’s Lock?)

4. I occasionally totally forget that my car and my balance were smashed by a speeder seven years ago, and I do stupid things because I assume I’m still normal. For instance: re the story in my book about visiting Helen. What got edited out for lack of space, was, I told my friend Karen I wanted to touch the Potomac before returning to California, that that was part of going home to Maryland. Trouble is, we were at a lock of the canal where there was no good spot to do so; the embankment was a bit steep all along the river there. But! There was an overturned, bleached-out, ancient wooden canoe (it’s those canoes again) that the waves were lapping against, keeping it firmly in place against the bottom of the embankment. I would just step carefully off from up top, onto the canoe, just jumping a little and then balancing onto my knees, you know, and reach over and splash my fingers in the water over the side. No biggy. Right?

Karen, good friend that she is, tried really hard to talk me out of it. This seemed like a really dumb move to her.

Uh uh. No way. I was going to touch my beloved Potomac before I flew back, and that was that.

What I couldn’t see, was, that canoe was totally rotted out, so that when I landed on it, the first knee to hit it simply crashed right on through. And you know? The detritus washed up along the edge there didn’t smell so great. (Yes, Anne, I had that coming.) But I got my splash! Reached over, laughing, while Karen was just rolling her eyes, going, Some people.

The hard part was trying to stand up again without crunching through the rest of it, on a canoe that was swaying with the water, with little sense of balance on my part. Karen grabbed my upstretched hand and somehow we got me back up to her, though. What are friends for.

We got rained on at the last, to add to my muddy knee. And then we went to stop by her elderly stepmother’s: who had a white carpet and a white sofa. Who completely ignored my mud and our being wet and invited us warmly in.

I wanna be her when I grow up.

5. Can’t top that one. Think I’d better quit for tonight. Thank you, Adrian. This post is all your fault, and I’m quite glad.

I always thought that was an odd phrase. I have asked my folks about it from time to time, they being gifted wordsmiths: does anybody have cold heart cockles? What’s a cockle, and does it truly have heart? Where on earth did that phrase come from? They didn’t know, and neither did our dictionary.

Shelle just came home from a college internship in marine biology–a few hours after her Sea Silk shawl arrived home via UPS. Cool. She spent several hours showing us pictures of things she’d studied, some weird, some wonderful. One of those crabs looked exactly, in the photo she took, like the tick I removed from her back after she came home from a week at camp one summer, with a bulls-eye of red rings around that bug. (They tested the bug and her both, no Lyme. Phew.)

Anyway. She brought me a few shells, and I had to show this: these are Heart Cockles. So named because when you see the intact shell from the side, it looks heart-shaped. But what I now love best about them, something I had thought to be just an ordinary white shell you see on probably every beach–kind of like sea gulls, something you take for granted, right?–was this: they are a favorite food of giant sea stars, which can move amazingly fast towards them. The heart cockles have one foot, which they stick out so they can run away from the sea star. How does such a thing run? It flips itself, over and over, a seashell version of a living Slinky, running away at a good clip. Does Pixar know about this?

I mentioned in my book that I’d made my first Monterey shawl for my friend Michelle, who is a dedicated marine biology enthusiast. I had no idea, when I wrote that, that my daughter Michelle was likewise going to become one. But I sure can see now why she is.

So good to have you home, sweetie.

I signed a book for my friend Mary in Iowa at Purlescence last night, went out to dinner with friends and hubby, just normal busy life stuff, came home, and read Mary’s blog entry about her elderly father being interviewed and talking about how important it is to get our stories recorded. Yes. It’s not just a busy life–it’s how we spend our time becoming who we are.

My grandmother’s mother died of colon cancer when Gram was eight. When Gram was 60, knowing well what it was like to grow up wondering who her mother had really been as a person, she got talked into writing down some of her own life stories. Thank you very much, that’s me, the three year old in the family photo in there with the curls who, on being told to sit up at the table, declared emphatically, “I won’t sit up! I’ll sit down.”

This business of needing to get the words just right. It goes way back.

I got given a copy, with her inscription, “To Alison, who is old enough to read and enjoy this book.” I was by then nine. I hated it. It was boring. It had a vivid sunflower-orange cover, a color that was very much in vogue and that I very much hated.

Yeah, well. You know what comes next. Or some of it, anyway–the rest, I did not quite believe till I’d called my mother, who knew the people involved, remembered it, and confirmed it was so. So: I picked up the book a few years ago and read it, wondering why on earth I hadn’t earlier. Maybe I’d been afraid I would be critical of the writing, or that I might find it to have any vapid Washington DC politics, or–I dunno, but I didn’t want to be critical of my grandmother.

I liked it. Hey Mikey. The Supreme Court Justice who came to his office every day in a horse-drawn carriage? The senators’ wives being expected to wear hats and white gloves and to leave their calling cards at each others’ residences, timed and ranked by Senate seniority, her surprise at how southern and how Victorian-style Washington was in the early 50’s? It was fascinating.

But what I hadn’t expected to find was one story of what had happened after they made a slew of new friends when they moved there part-time after that first election.

My uncle, his father’s namesake, was serving in the Army in Korea, and an officer came up to him whom he’d never laid eyes on before, and barked at him: “I don’t know what your name is, soldier, but it ought to be–” And then he named my grandfather’s and his name.

To which my uncle, stunned, stammered, “Uh, yes, sir. That’s exactly what it is, sir.”

She named that officer. She published this when I was nine and my husband was ten.

It was my husband’s great uncle.

(For those coming here from Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s site, scroll down, the two posts before this one, they’re there, plenty to see, plenty to see, move along, move along.)

I got the surprise of my life last night. The son-at-home and hubby were set to go to a fathers’ and sons’ church campout last night. John said he had to do some shopping for it, threw the sleeping bags in the car, and took off. Meantime, the doorbell rings: the hubby’s 29-year-old cousin, showing up to help spruce up the place a bit. She vacuumed while telling me to sit, sit, go knit, go relax. Do NOT get up to help. Just sit.

I finally called the hubby, after she left, going, John said he was going to do some errands and go shopping but he just kind of disappeared on me and where IS he?! Oh, dunno, was the vague response, he had some shopping I told him to do.

So finally, much later, while I’m kind of stewing–they had to get a move on if they were going to get to this campout thing on time, this was not a day for the hubby to be working late, they close the gates at Foothill Park early–I hear a voice behind me as I sit at the computer, going, “Hi, Mom!” I turn around to say Hi John and where have you been?!–and it was my son Richard. Home from college, where he’s been doing spring term, to surprise me, with his dear friend Kim. John and my hubby waited a moment, and then came in the door behind them, laughing: they’d just picked them up at the airport.

I was not expecting to see the kid till August, much less two kids. (She has grandparents in this city she wanted to go visit and stay with, so they came in together.) He carefully waited till my trip to Petaluma would be over, because he knew how much I wanted to go see my friend Stephanie of yarnharlot.ca fame. And then he didn’t even brush my knitting needle sculpture bits out of the way, he was home and the piano was his! (Darn. I already had the tuner coming– *next* week.)

It’s so good to have him home!

Still no pictures, you’re stuck with just the stories for now.

I was reading http://highlytrainedmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/05/car-wrecks.html coming from Emergiblog’s Grand Rounds; the blogger writes of her response to an emergency situation in front of her, and how wonderful to find out, much later, that things had turned out much better than she’d feared. And she wonders at the people who saw and simply drove on by.

Memories.

California’s Prop 13, years ago, meant that most of the schoolbuses got ditched; there was no longer the funding for them. The end result is that schools that were designed for a line of buses instead have hundreds of parents dealing with getting their kids to and from each school on their own every day (but I digress). There was awhile where I had kids in elementary, middle, and high school, and I was doing the daily mad dash at 3 pm or so collecting them all.

One day for no reason I could have said I turned right rather than left off my street; that’s certainly the long way around, and it made no sense. I briefly debated doing a U-turn, but, eh, it was a beautiful day, and it felt like, well, all the more time to kick back and enjoy the scenery as I go. How about if I cut through the neighborhood to shave off some of that extra time I just piled on with that turn–nahhh, just keep going all the way to the main road.

Which meant that I happened to be coming up the road the middle school was on in the opposite direction from my usual. Which meant that I saw the two boys.

Now, one of them I recognized immediately, though I had no idea what his name was; I’d seen him since kindergarten, and I knew which mom connected with that kid. He was the one spraddled out on the sidewalk. The other on top of him, who knows, but he’d overpowered the first, was astride him on the ground, and had his hands grabbed on the other kid’s head, pounding it hard into the sidewalk.

They were just barely out of sight of the school. And car after car of parents was driving right on past them. I was as stunned at that as I was at the kids’ behavior.

My happy-go-lucky day was abruptly over, and I jerked my car off to the side, on the opposite side of the street from them. (Where, I realized later, I had the power of parental authority and my lack of physical authority wasn’t evident.) I leaped out of my door, unable to reach them for the passing cars, but screamed at the top of my lungs, “STOP THAT!!!”

They both leaped to their feet and away from each other as if they’d both been caught in the act.

“STOP THAT!! AND DON’T YOU *EVER* LET ME CATCH YOU DOING THAT AGAIN!!!” They were already heading for the hills, in opposite directions.

I was so mad. What a stupid, stupid, adolescent-boy act of testosterone poisoning. Didn’t they know the seriousness of it? Hadn’t they ever been around anybody with any kind of head injury? What did they THINK they were doing!!

I stayed thoroughly mad for about an hour. Glad that both boys knew I could identify them from Back To School nights, (glad that neither knew that I had no idea what their names were. Let them stew.)

Gradually, it dawned on me: I had gone the wrong way. I hadn’t cut through the neighborhood. I had just continued down the path that would bring me to that spot at that moment. And someone’s clueless 13-year-old sons grew up–they’d be 23 now–because I did.

The pancreas was indeed torn, and they put a stent in to help it heal. They gave her 6-8 weeks to expect for full recovery, but they expect a full recovery. That is one lucky kid.

I promised Lene a shot of our tree to go with her tree photo. This is the flowering pear that nearly died after the woodpecker ringed it, but recovered; there are no brown leaves this year. Hale and hearty and tall, it lifts my spirits every day to see it.

Meantime, I seem to be able to get large or quite small photos on WordPress, but I haven’t quite found out how to get that perfect size yet (but at least you can click on them).

I planted a small patch of baby gladioluses, years ago, and the plant that I will forever now think of as the Orchid Tree (I like that, Karin!) grew its leaves around their spot. 

This popped up and grew from under the neighbor’s side of the fence to come and chat with the flowers on mine.   Seemed appropriate for the holiday weekend.

I did the most mundane of tasks the other day: I called in a prescription refill on my meds.

One of them had expired, needed an okay from the doctor, and wasn’t ready when we picked up the rest. Nuts. It would need its own trip. It seemed kind of a waste.

And then, for no reason I could have told anyone, I didn’t get around to going all week. I just didn’t feel like it. Today I looked at the fact that it was Friday, that the clinic’s pharmacy closes for the weekend at 12:30 Saturday afternoons, that it was going to be closed Monday for the holiday, and, hey, I’d better get a move on already. I headed out the door.

And wondered, as I went along, if I would run into anybody I knew. It’s a big enough clinic that I fairly often do.

I go to the local lupus support group to try to show those struggling with a new diagnosis that life does go on, that you can be cheerful still, that you adjust and find you’re still yourself and still just as capable of being happy: I try to be who I needed someone to be for me 17 years ago.

There was one time, probably two years ago, that a woman showed up who just couldn’t hear a message like that, absolutely not, not yet and maybe not ever. She was sure she was too close to death to make any plans for any kind of a future, she despaired of having any chance of seeing her children grow up, and she was as depressed a person as I’ve met in a long time. This was no time for being chipper, this was a crying need for someone who understood–and every one of us there tried to be that for her. Every one of us had, on some level at some point, gone through that same uncertainty and struggle, if not as deep, still, enough to know. And several of us had gone through episodes where life was in the balance, and knew the power of knowing someone was there for us through the worst.

I have to say that for all the best intentions on my part, I think I was the person she least related to. Much though I would have wanted to do better than that. I was too successful at what I wanted out of my life.

As they were ringing up my prescription at the counter today, I happened to glance behind me and see who was waiting next for theirs. It took me a moment–it was her! I smiled; she seemed to have no idea who I was, and ignored me.

The next clerk motioned her over. She was waiting for them to get her meds when I finished; I walked behind her and softly called her name, not entirely sure I remembered it correctly. There was a moment’s hesitation on her part, and then she turned to see who on earth? I re-introduced myself as being from the lupus group, and now she remembered me: ah, yes. Okay. I asked her how she was doing; she sighed, gave a small smile, and said, well, she was here every Wednesday and Friday.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” I said sympathetically.

She looked me steadily in the eyes, and answered calmly, “Beats the alternative.” And then was clearly glad to see me laugh ruefully, gently–whereas once she might well have taken offense at that, might have thought it meant I didn’t really understand the depths of her pain.

Oh, I do.

I had hoped against hope back then that at that meeting she had simply let the worst of her fears vent, that it wasn’t really that bad, day-to-day, for her. But I didn’t know. I hoped we’d done some good in hearing her out. But I didn’t know. And then we didn’t see her again.

And I didn’t know.

And now I know. Whether we played any part or not, now I know that she did indeed begin to cope.

Today she got a chance to show a member of that group that had seen her at her lowest point that she, too, was continuing on now. That she, too, could smile now.

I don’t know if she’ll come back and give us another chance to befriend her.

I do know, today, she helped me. So few words were spoken, but so much was conveyed. She would be all right after all, come what may.

When I got home, I walked into the bathroom under the skylight and noticed that my amaryllis’s bud, which is still growing upwards, had started leaning to one side, so I turned the pot to even it out in its trajectory towards the light. And found, on the other side–I told you God is a poet!–what I never, ever would have guessed. Surprise!

A second bud.