I looked at the weather forecast–we’re finally supposed to get some rain, and a ton of it all at once–and decided to make a run for a gallon of milk and such while it was dry.

John’s a guy about my age who’s been working at the nearby Trader Joe’s probably since about the time it opened twenty years ago and has been a favorite for forever. He’s got a son as old as my younger son and we’ve occasionally compared notes and cheered each other on in this parenting gig.

And he likes to check up on how my health’s doing, having seen me when things were quite bad, but for awhile now I’ve been able to cheer him with my gratitude for how good it feels to have it how it is now.

Hadn’t seen him in awhile. I’d wondered if I just kept coming in at the wrong times?

But there he was and I was glad to see him; I deliberately got in his line even though it was a bit longer.

Once it was my turn, the first words out of his mouth were, “How’s the new grandbaby?”

His smile was as big as mine as I exclaimed, “So cute!”

He was moving a little slower as he worked. I only noticed (not out loud) because I knew him, but then he told me he’d been on medical leave these past four months. He looked in my eyes. While his cardiologist had worked out his meds regimen.

A quiet unspoken ohmygoodness mixed with understanding passed between us.

I didn’t know I’d needed to say that oh, and, the baby was a girl.

He had told me because he knew I was someone he could say it to. And because he knew I’d want to know.

I asked after him while trying not to probe: the Monday before Thanksgiving is not uncrowded at a grocery store, and he didn’t have to tell anyone he didn’t want to. I was feeling quite protective of him. I did say that I’d had a cardiologist since I was 32 and I’m still here, so… (So he had to stick around, too. Because I said so. To myself.)

But he’d let me know the basics and I’m grateful for that. John of Trader Joe’s just went onto my prayer list.

The next time I get a slow clerk I’ll remind myself that maybe they’re working out how to live with a new heart condition, too. It can happen at any age. Well, hey, I should be patient even when every single one of us around is in perfect health.

You never know who needs it nor why.

We had to pick someone up for church who lives a good way off and we were uncertain how long it would take, and so with the cushion of time we’d given it we found ourselves arriving early.

Which made my assignment all the easier, the one where I provide the mother’s nursing lounge with several forms of chocolate–but just don’t tip off the little kids or it will be raided forevermore.

So. No crowds yet. The choir was still rehearsing in the chapel.

In the big multi-use room just off it there are always sturdy stacking plastic chairs with metal legs against the walls, ready to be set up for any size of meeting and heavy enough to stand up to any kind of abuse.

There was a mom in that choir on one side of the big doors, and out of her view there on the other in that big room, alone, was a girl of about seven.

As I went by on my way to that lounge she had pulled a bunch of those chairs away from the wall and was busily making two stacks of them right next to each other, one high, one low, alternating her construction with sitting on the smaller stack to see how high up she could see from now. While looking over at the higher pile and the even better Queen of the World perch it offered. It would be hers. But she had not quite dared its wobble yet. Not till she was sure it was done.

When I came back going the other way, she was holding a chair over her head, struggling to get just one more on that bigger tower.

She was a little leery of my noticing what she was doing.

She hopped up again onto the smaller stack, and it was plenty high for her. Clambering over to the other–she was so close.

Maybe. But I’d have to leave first, clearly.

By that point I’d stopped. I silently appraised her hard work with a smile (but I had not offered to help with that last wavering chair and she had had to set it down.)

I gave it another heartbeat or two. Then I beckoned her to come over and see them from over here where I was standing.

That big tower went upwards at first and then leaned a little, then leaned a little more, then a lot more, and just one more stress on the system and the whole thing would come crashing down should she try to get up there. And there would be quite a few of them coming down on her head.

I didn’t say all that. I just let her see it from this new sideways vantage point, a little further away, a better perspective. Any child who’s ever played with blocks as a toddler could instantly see it.

Oh.

Only then did I say, Yeah, those are ready to tumble, aren’t they.

She nodded at me, eyes big. She saw the problem.

But what really blew her away was that I hadn’t ordered her not to, I hadn’t told her it was dangerous, I hadn’t told her to put the chairs away where they belonged because they were in the way of where people walk and church was about to start, I had trusted her to take a good look and to see the problem for herself.

And that she was safe–because of the assessment she herself had made of the situation and the choice she’d made because of it.

I was very proud of her and went and told her mom that I was.

Lorna Miser’s mom Vera was in my knitting group for years, till her Parkinson’s became too severe.

Vera’s funeral was held today, and Lorna (former owner of Lorna’s Laces yarns) asked her mom’s old friends a few weeks ago as her mother was slipping away if they’d like to share any memories.

So I told her my story.

My book had just come out.

Vera decided to ask everybody in the group to surprise me: there is a dinner and fashion show every year at Stitches West where people can put their name in to be called up on the stage and model their best project of the year.

Would they like to knit a shawl from my book and then ask Benjamin Levisay, CEO of XRX, to bend the rules just slightly so as to let the whole group go up on that stage together in them?

They would indeed. They did. They chose different patterns. Benjamin thought it was all very cool of them and it didn’t matter to him one bit that another publisher had put that book out; he’s a sweetheart.

And then when their sense of happy anticipation was at its peak, someone went, Wait–but is Alison actually *coming* to that dinner? We have to make sure she does!

Uh, actually I’d had no intention, why?

And so they decided they had to let me in on it a few days beforehand, and surprised does not begin to describe it!

Benjamin had me stand up before the large banquet room when they were done and take a bow, and then they filed off the stage and came over to me for more pictures as the room kept clapping.

So that was my memory of the kindnesses (and work!) Vera had instigated on my behalf to offer to her daughter, who’d had no idea.

I gave her a hug after the service today, and she told me that I wasn’t the only one who had told her; the others had, too. It had meant a lot to them, too.

So then I told her there was more: to congratulate me on being accepted for publication, they’d surprised me with knitted squares they’d pieced into an afghan, with labels on each telling who’d made it. I could have shown her her mom’s, except that it was just too warm today to bring it.

I didn’t need to. Lorna was absolutely beaming. Her mother’s legacy lives on.

.

I’m just going to leave this little bit of happiness right here.

Does anybody else do this? I sometimes put a bit of random yarn next to the second stitch in from the edge as I start knitting so that I have a marker to show just how much I’ve gotten done that day and to nudge myself to do better after days when I don’t.

Sixty-eight hundred stitches yesterday was a bit much, though; I mostly gave myself a break today.

Impeachment hearings, the Democratic debate: given Sondland’s testimony today, we could impeach the entire administration. Think of the knitting time!

Thank you, everybody, for all the notes. So appreciated.

Rose came out of the vertebrae reconstruction surgery talking nonstop. She’s drinking clear liquids and the Rybka Twins (I had to look them up) whose booksigning the injured had been on their way to stopped by her hospital room wearing cheerful neon pink and big smiles.

Which meant her parents posted a photo of Rose with them with a great big grin of her own, holding up her newly signed copy in front of her face.

I think everything’s going to be okay. Time and patience and a lot of medical skill to come (there will be more surgery) and physical therapy and she’ll get there. Maybe even pick up an Australian accent just for fun before she comes home–she’s a singer, she’s got a great musical ear for it.

Today was such a relief.

That, and, I spent ten hours watching the impeachment hearings and at the end of it went, wait–I just need two more days like this and this afghan is actually somehow finally going to be done!

He’s there with them now.

My cousin’s wife was visiting with their youngest daughter (who’s I think 12) and niece in Australia and were in a terrible accident over the weekend. They’ve all survived, so far. But their daughter was going in for her second surgery today after massive brain swelling.

His wife posted that she had been pouring her soul out in prayer while overwhelmed with the memories, the 40 minute wait for the ambulance, her own broken bones as she was trying to help her daughter not bleed to death, her niece calling out for her mom, who was not there.

And the flies! So many flies, and holding that gauze she just could not keep them away from her daughter’s face to at least offer her that comfort.

And in the moment she thought that in her prayer she suddenly knew: it was the flies. Rose had needed to stay conscious, and the annoyance of those pesky bugs, that insect insult on top of all the fear and pain–

–had been what had kept her awake.

And she woke up again after the first surgery, which was on her brain.

Update: and she is responsive now after her second. Go Rose!

SWEET CHERRY PIE FROM FROZEN CHERRIES. (Announcing it with bells and whistles so I can find it later.)

One quart glass Corning measuring cup filled to the top with frozen sweet cherries–so, between five and a quarter and five and a half cups’ worth. Thawed in microwave.

Meantime, 3/4 c. sugar, the juice of one large juicy Meyer lemon plus its yellow (only the yellow) zest (the whites are bitter), was supposed to be 2 tbl of the juice but I threw the whole thing in and it was probably a fair bit more than called for so I upped the cornstarch from 3 tbl to an extra half teaspoon. Add 1/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 1/2 tsp almond extract. The random internet recipe didn’t have almond extract in it, and man, how do you live with yourself if you don’t put almond with cherry? Right?

It said to let all that sit absorbing for a few minutes, and I was doing that, not liking the lumps in the cornstarch nor the fact that baked, previously-frozen sweet cherries don’t have a super-lovable texture–and nuts to that, I just threw the whole filling thing in the blender.

That time, when I dipped a spoon in to taste, I felt like, I got it!

Poured it in the crust in the new pie pan and it’s in the oven.

Update: it’s not burned, that’s just the camera.

I whipped some cream to cover any faults and make it look pretty in layers and took it to the potluck, where people swooned over it: “You MADE this?!”

Hah. And I’d been worrying about experimenting on my friends. This is definitely how I’m making from-frozen sweet cherry pie from here on out.

This is your better-than-random Internet recipe for the day.

(Okay, I supposedly added the photo but it’s not showing up on my view of the post.)

I read recently that stoneware pie pans do by far the best job of making the crusts turn out crisp.

There was an art fair in San Mateo this weekend and my potter friends Mel and Kris were going to be there, and when I asked a few weeks ago if they ever make pie plates, Mel decided to throw some clay on his wheel for me and, literally, give it a whirl.

It’s gorgeous. They and their sons do such nice work. It’s 9″ on the inside bottom, 10″ at the top. I’m already regretting that I only bought one: there were two, with Mel saying he always makes more than what people request because there’s always going to be someone else who wants one.

There is a potluck tomorrow night.

Now I just have to decide what type of pie to make, and I am very open to any suggestions and favorites.

Did anybody else watch the Yovanovitch hearing? I was riveted.

I grew up around diplomats’ kids and watching her I felt a sense of recognition: that unflappable calm, that ignoring demands that she answer in a way that might be construed as political and thus at fault, that power in simply laying out the truth. Under fire, as the President interrupted the proceedings with tweeted derision.

I found myself remembering my then-nine-year-old neighbor Sandy next door talking about the time, while they were living overseas on a State Department assignment, that armed rebels had come to their door and her mother had told them to go away from her home and her kids and that she expected them to leave–and they did!

We need her mom to go talk to this administration.

We’re two months into the supposed rainy season, still watering the trees, hoping that we get lots of rain later to make up for what we’re having to draw out.

But at least today it was finally chilly and cloudy and it looked like a storm coming in. There’s none in the forecast, but having the sky finally not look like bright cloudless July helped restore faith that I just need to wait awhile. That and having to put on two layers of sweaters–which felt great. Thrift-store cashmere, I’ve missed you.

Pro tip: people who send theirs to the dry cleaners wreck the softness and then wonder what they paid all that money for and often enough end up ditching them. One good tepid-temperature soak in a no-dye no-scents liquid laundry detergent and gentle hand washing, a spinning out in the washer with the water turned off to avoid felting, laying the item out to dry, and there you go: the softness is back.

I give the sweater a good shake before putting it over the wide shower rod; if there was any shrinking, which happens lengthwise the most when it does, that’s enough to put it right.

I emailed the leader of the lupus group and said I wasn’t really sick but I was fighting the edge of a cold so I wasn’t going to be there this afternoon.

Turns out I wasn’t the only one. About an hour later she replied-all that she’d never done this before, but she was canceling the meeting, and hopefully next month we’d all be better.

All the more afghan knitting time for now.

Got coughed on on Saturday.

Woke up today feeling possibly a little feverish and took it easy, grateful for my flu shot.

I found a perfect, luscious little strawberry hiding away under a November leaf and proclaimed it my antidote. Yum.

All day long I’ve been remembering that Veterans’ Day when I was on my way to Cottage Knits, my route taking me past Golden Gate National Cemetery.

As I waited at the light at the corner that edges two sides of it, there was an elderly man near the end of the row. He was stooped, his head was bowed, his white hair blowing in the wind and chill, his face the picture of grief. I wanted to leap over the fence and hold him up. To somehow ease his unspeakable pain.

This page says more than I ever could.

Love you, Dad. Miss you, Dad. Thank you for offering your life for our ideals and for our whole world’s sake.