Jess the plumber came and I have a new toy. It doesn’t leak. You turn it a quarter turn to get full volume. It’s ready to take care of my fruit trees.

The original plumber had not only used a substandard part, he had welded it on so that it couldn’t be replaced without having to pay someone to cut the metal pipe and start over; now though, and Jess showed me, all you’ll have to do if/when we need to is just unscrew this and screw on another. Done.

I told him a little about the guy who’d installed the earlier one, trying to explain how we’d come to have such a mess there. The man had also installed not-up-to-code gas and water lines across our roof that had all had to be replaced and should have been caught by the inspector. He’d tripped over and broken another subcontractor’s lamp as its owner watched–okay, things happen–but instead of apologizing, he had defiantly said he’d done no such thing. And he’d stolen our bicycle tools.

Jess grieved, exclaiming, “That’s so sad!”

YES. Yes exactly. We can buy new tools and pipes. He can’t steal his way to feeling good about himself. And I liked Jess on the spot.

He counseled me, “You have to be careful.”

And I thought, and sometimes you have to luck out. Which I did this time.

When he was done he took a moment to marvel over my yard–“all those peaches!”–as well as the other fruit trees. He told me he used to work on a farm, and it was clear he missed it. I pointed to that that that and that one and said, “Peaches for June, July, August, and September.”

He was so happy for us! Me, I was wistful and said, “I wish I had something ripe I could offer you. Lemons?”

He laughed, shrugged, and admitted, “I wouldn’t know what to do with them.”

But he was particularly taken by the Yellow Transparent apple. Look how it had grown back! He told me it had lived by love. He told me I’d loved it.

I hoped I deserved that compliment–I do love it now but honestly, it took me a few years. First I had to know it better, and a huge thank you to my sister for explaining spring apples to me, much less Yellow Transparents, when I’d never heard of them and couldn’t figure out why by fall the thing was always a total loss. It fruits like crazy and its branches are particularly laden this year, to the point I need twice as many clamshells as I have.

And then he told me a little of his own story. He’d been in an accident when he was a kid: he wasn’t supposed to walk again, he wasn’t supposed to talk again. His speech was slightly slurred but I thought, given that history, I’d take slurred, definitely.

And in the long recovery he’d had to go through everything had all come down to love. Love is survival. Love governs everything, every waking moment, it IS the awakening and the everything.

I recognized that. I’ve been at that edge of life, I know… But he’s never lost sight of it. His very speech reminds him, and he is grateful.

And that apple tree–it just so captured it all for him. It made him so happy.

At the last, he motioned to the big dyepot that had been catching the drips. At about 35 pounds, I admitted I’d hurt my back emptying it the night before, which is why I hadn’t moved it more out of his way than I had.

It was full again. (And then some in the night, but I’d done what I could.)

“Here, let me, where would you like it?”

And so he reverently poured that life-giving water in a circle around the base of that tree.

And it wasn’t till afterwards that I saw how much it had meant to him to be able to take care of it as well as he did of me in the time he was here.

Thank you, everybody. Today was definitely better.

And… The outside faucet now refuses to turn all the way off. Yow. This is so much not the time to be wasting water— $135 for an hour of a plumber’s time tomorrow will be money well spent, for my sense of guilt as much as avoiding being fined.

Meantime, five fire hoses full time, 100 gallons a minute each for eight weeks, the most pristine Yosemite-area water in the state when free recycled water was available right nearby but, y’know, then you’d have to pay the truckers… That link gives a whole new meaning to Candle in the Wind.

I can’t fix them (ah, okay, here’s the followup article) but I can fix mine.

Overdoing it Saturday caught up with me the last few days. Spent most of today sick in bed.

But we did eat the last cherry and it did help.

I didn’t take its picture. Bad blogger. Just let me say it was a perfect cherry red with a faint, deeper stripe running down the center: big, plump, a work of art.

Written descriptions of Stella cherries that I’d seen call them almost black, and that was going to take at least another week. The battle with the critters had been ongoing and we’d been losing and looking at that pretty color I decided on the spot that, forget waiting for it to put on a little black dress: if it’s too underripe we’ll leave the other one a little longer. (Yup. We were down to two.)

Note that we had eaten grocery store cherries a few hours earlier.

I took my homegrown prize in the kitchen and sliced it down that stripe. The pit came out easily. I popped a half in my mouth…

…That would do. Wow. That would definitely do. For three years I’d wondered if I should have bought one of the varieties that had won the taste tests at Dave Wilson rather than the impulse-purchase tree at Costco. Did Costco get the unpopular leftovers? Had I, after all that work and water, deprived us of what we could have had?

As if.

I came around the corner and offered my sweetie the other half. I watched his face marvel as mine had. Wow that was good. “That’s definitely better than the ones at lunch.”

My thought, too, there was just no comparison. Next year we will definitely do the bird netting, in metal if need be, now that we know what we’ll get so much more of if we do.

In great self-restraint I left the other cherry in its clamshell on the tree for tomorrow.

We are savoring the anticipation.

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.

Our Stella had a single cherry growing in a spot where a clamshell wouldn’t easily snap over it, so I doused it in grape Koolaid and hoped. It certainly wasn’t going to rain–they say you have to reapply the stuff after rain.

It rained. Not that I’m complaining. At all.

Given that the first branches of cherries had been stripped while still tiny and green and I would have thought far from tasty, it amazed me to get to watch this one fruit gradually turn big and yellow in anticipation of turning red and openly taunting the wildlife. (The rest are in clamshells, and the critters have still managed to reach in at a few of those so I reinforced them with Koolaid, too.)

And then of course yesterday’s .63″ happened. I still had that same mug of fake-grape in the kitchen and when the skies let up a moment I took it outside to reapply to the otherwise-unprotected cherry.

Of course it was long gone.

He’s been working from home this week, fighting the edge of a bug (so am I) and keeping it away from his co-workers.

But this afternoon he suddenly realized he had a prescription we hadn’t picked up yet; was I up to going and getting it?

I was in better shape than he was, so, sure.

We’d just had a bit of end-of-season rain-blessed-rain earlier in the day, .16″, but looking at the sky and the weather report, that all seemed over with and the forecast said there would be no more. I reminded myself to be grateful we’d gotten that much, such as it was.

I drove home through a total cloudburst. In May? In California? Not that I’m complaining! The gizmo on our roof recorded .54″ by the time I got home and it’s at .58″ now. The yard is muddy. Water! (Edited Friday to add, and it rained some more overnight even though Wunderground said it would not. The total became .63″.)

Oh, and. I was going to tell you about that other cowl I stuffed back in the bag a week ago. It was done in soft Malabrigo Finito, knitted up in a twisted infinity scarf.

Sunday I went to see my friend Edie, as I do every Mother’s Day.

She surprised me with red and white miniature carnations and perfect, deep red farmer’s market strawberries.

Her son’s picture was on the mantle as always, forever the handsome, gregarious, blond 18-year-old who had been my daughter’s classmate. Her son-in-law greeted me with a warm smile, as did her other one when he arrived soon after. Her grandchildren were playing in the kitchen and the back yard, and I was suddenly glad that I’d grabbed a bunch of hand knit Peruvian finger puppets for my purse; I fished out five, one for each little one. A zebra and an alpaca and a…

She was wearing red. The cowl was red, and she exclaimed that it had been her son’s favorite color as she put it on in delight. “I’ve heard of these, but I’ve never owned one–and now I do!”

Adrian, Edie, and me. Why I come. And now I know why it had had to be that one. I can just picture Adrian looking over my shoulder as I picked out the yarn and then among the finished projects, knowing what would help his mom feel him close by.

Several years ago she’d given me a dwarf hydrangea plant and it had brightened my back yard ever since–but, I confessed to her in embarrassment, when the tree guys took out the olive it had been next to and the tree next to that while it was dormant they had moved some large rocks around and I’d lost my landmark of where it was. It had to have been under those rocks, because I’d never seen it again.

I sent her a photo yesterday. Mentioning it to her had gotten me to go look again–and there it was, coming back up, now, finally, after it had been dry for so long, against all the odds. Right there between my mandarin orange and my sour cherry tree, how could I miss it.

I can just picture Adrian grinning.

Time for a few pictures.

The bride’s little nephew was just old enough to have learned to not  just walk but run and so nothing but running would do, although he often had to lean his head down to watch his feet go to make sure they landed in the right places.

And here he is. After cutting the cake, Mely and Derek turned around to give one eager little boy the next bite.

A few pictures of my family too from our trip.

Wednesday, we flew in for Richard’s sister’s son’s wedding, got our rental car, and drove to my parents’ for a visit and a late lunch.

And as we sat eating, their phone rang.

It was my sister’s son, calling his grandparents in Salt Lake to let them know that his wife had just had an emergency c-section at seven months along and the baby had been airlifted to Children’s Hospital near them. His wife, meantime, having just had surgery, was going nowhere for the moment. He had a toddler to watch, a wife in one hospital in one city and a baby in intensive care in another where things did not look good.

He was trying to figure out if he needed to ask if he could crash their place from time to time while having no idea how long he’d be having to ask for or how much. The baby had had a mass…

Michelle, meantime, hadn’t joined us for that lunch because she was going to meet up with an old college roommate at a restaurant. The roommate had a toddler and was also seven months pregnant.

Michelle arrived and waited, and waited, and waited, no answer either… And finally just ordered and ate, wondering what on earth was up.

Her old roommate was suddenly in the hospital with no time to call and explain.

She lost her baby.

And so we went off to the rehearsal dinner the next night intensely grateful for the lives of our loved ones and our newly loved ones we were meeting and everybody else’s everywhere, keenly aware of how good it was to see ours. Of the fragility of life. Hugging our grandchildren, cradling Madison to sleep, and looking around at the entire wedding party and thinking, Let the love not be fragile. Ever. We need each other for this.

Saturday, our niece was able to be released from the hospital in time for them to make the drive to Salt Lake, where there was nothing more to be done. The medical staff disconnected their son from the machines and he passed peacefully in his grieving, loving parents’ arms, together.

Saturday, we celebrated Gwyn and Sterling’s wedding in San Jose, and for the second time in two days rejoiced with all our hearts over two people who were so clearly and dearly meant for each other.

It wasn’t till the next day that we got the message that the brother of our sister-in-law had passed while we were flying and celebrating.

There was a knock at the door tonight. It was Michelle, and her hands were too full and she needed help with an enormous, gorgeous floral arrangement she was trying to bring in.

It was left over from Gwyn’s wedding and Nina had asked her to share them with us. I inhaled the orchids: they were perfect and so was the timing. I’d needed that. I exclaimed over the colors and Michelle explained, They’re dyed, Mom.

Okay, somehow that felt just too funny. A moment of comic relief.

To life.

So much to say.

The bride’s father, struggling somewhat with the English, was delighted to find that we had a mutual second language (third for him) but laughed when I said I was deaf in English and French both. (Not quite kidding there in the happy noise of that crowded room.)

The ceremony on Friday was in Spanish. The love was universal–and it was intense. So. Much. Joy., almost as if we humans are almost too small to comprehend and take it all in. It filled everything. If ever there were two people meant for each other it was Derek and Mely.

My friends RobinM and Kunmi in Maryland gifted me some time ago with the surprise of a very generous gift certificate to Purlescence; I wish they could have seen my face or Nathania’s happy anticipation at the shop as I opened that envelope and gasped, stunned, thrilled, trying to take it in.

I got to see that same look and I wish they could have, too.

A few weeks ago, I had in my hands the last skein of the Cascade Epiphany I bought with that gift: a blend of cashmere, silk, and royal baby alpaca, the finest grade, one of the softest yarns in my stash.

And it was red. Slightly on the bluish side. Which *I* like but I dunno… Sometimes it’s an effort, though it shouldn’t be, to let go of working with the yarns that I favor and to use ones the recipient would rather.

Not having met the bride yet at that point, I went combing through Facebook photos. I wasn’t seeing it. But still it felt like nothing else would do–one would think I could reconcile those things, stash, dyepot or yarn store if need be, color choices showing up in pictures, but I couldn’t so I threw the problem in G_d’s hands: please help me get over myself and my love of this yarn I’d been saving the last of for just the right thing if what I’m supposed to be knitting her is something else.

Stubbornly, nothing else was coming to me and that red just felt all the more right. Huh. I didn’t know what the climate was like where the bride was from but I did know she’d be living in a cold one for awhile here and that Epiphany would make a good warm cowl against the skin. And so I knitted it up.

We were some of the first to arrive at the rehearsal dinner Thursday, guessing on the rush hour traffic on the careful side, and so I had a moment to hand the bride a small gift and to tell her, This is for (specifically) *you*.

She was wearing a fabulous dress–and that cowl was an exact match. The tape had come undone off the top of the wrapping (never buy flocked gift paper, it sheds little glitter bits all over everything and it doesn’t stay taped) and she peeked in and gasped. “That is my FAVORITE color!”

Several months ago I knit another warm cowl out of Malabrigo Arroyo. The colorway was beautiful but not really mine; I kept thinking it would look fabulous on someone who was Latina, but whatever, the feeling was that I needed to knit this and I needed to have it ready on a moment’s notice. It’s easier to knit something in happy anticipation of a specific recipient but I had no idea who the who was. Just that it needed to become a thing.

This was before my nephew announced his engagement. Even after, the cowl being finished and put away and forgotten, it didn’t dawn on me.

And I made another one out of silk that didn’t get very long, just a sweet little thing is all; my hands were hurting, the lack of give to the yarn helped not at all, I had no idea why I was making it and at the time I just cast it off and called it done. This was right after the Arroyo.

Last Tuesday I was packing my bags for the trip and wrapping the bride’s cowl in happy anticipation.

At the last second, when everything else was in the suitcase and ready to go, on some impulse I went looking and I found those two forgotten cowls. I found a third–and felt no not that one at all, put it back, and I did. More on that later. But the Arroyo and the silk went into my carryon. I still hadn’t figured out why.

I did very quickly after I met Mely’s family: her mother was a cheerful, sweet, funny woman (I didn’t have to speak the language to enjoy how much laughing went on wherever she was) but she was seeing her daughter off in marriage to a good man–but one who lived on a different continent, as would her daughter now. I can only try to fathom how that would be. She needed a sense of connection to the love all of his family feels for all of hers during the lonely, missing times to come.

Mely had probably shown off her cowl to her mom by the time I opened my purse again at the end of the rehearsal dinner, but I don’t know for sure.

Two cowls.

Her mom exclaimed over the knitting, and her close friend, who had been sitting at our table during the dinner getting to know us a little and who now lives near where the bride and groom will be living and who had played translator quite a few times over the course of the evening, told me something I didn’t quite get about I think the mom’s attempts to learn to knit. I could have gotten that wrong. Whatever, they both appreciated what had gone into the making of those two things.

And then her friend got it and translated what I said again to the mom: Choose. Pick your favorite.

Mely’s mom gasped, stunned. It had not occurred to her! And–! Really?!

She considered a moment, stroking the fabric on the soft Arroyo; she held it close to her face and neck and then holding onto it threw her arms around me. She laughed in delight and put it on. (Not so much on the matching on that one but there are other outfits. Definitely colors that look good on her.)

Her friend, meantime, was wearing a dress that quite matched that bit of silk that I was wishing I had made longer–but it was enough. I turned then, and, picking it up, placed it around the friend’s neck.

Now SHE gasped. “It’s my favorite color!” And it did match her dress.

A very small, almost trivial part of the weekend. And yet. In an evening of love, of changes ahead, of returns shortly to where we live with everything different now, we all felt a little more that we were home among each other.

And that good woman has a tangible reminder of trust that her daughter is well loved where she has landed.

Topped off the day–church, phone calls, Skyping–with an invitation to dessert chez Michelle: a homemade lemon bundt cake with three cups of berries and cherries, and as we waited for it to come out of the oven she cooked and pureed a sauce made out of that much more of the berry mixture and strained the seeds out.

So, so good.

Two weddings 850 miles and 24 hours apart. Got to one dress rehearsal dinner, at least (the one I escalatored my skirt just prior to) but there was no chance on the other.

This afternoon, one bridge over the Bay was closed down for repairs and all traffic rerouted. We’d taken the cheap flight via changing planes in Vegas so as not to have to take the 7 am return and we didn’t have a lot of extra time.

Michelle had opted for the 7 am return–and they canceled the flight on her after she got to the airport.

T h e  T R A F F I C.

Richard’s cellphone rang as we were finally crossing the second bridge: did we want a ride? Phyllis knew we’d be coming in and that we’d be tired.

Yes oh please yes–but–we’re not actually home yet…

We saw some of the wedding party entering the hotel as Phyllis was looking for a parking spot and figured we were good.

I apologized to Nina for my shoes: I hadn’t had time enough to open the suitcase to find the other pair. She laughed for sheer joy of the day.

So much more later, but man, it’s late in the time zone we’re feeling.

I now know what happens  when your long sweepy skirt gets caught in the edge of an escalator.

The place had been built about ten years ago so your mileage may vary. I don’t know how long it was in there, just that we had about one step to go when the thing jammed.

And I was stuck.

I pulled.

My mom pulled.

We couldn’t just stay like this–and it was outside in the sun. Lupus demanded I get out of there. I gave it one last try pulling a little more this away–a small tear, a lot of black grease, and I went tumbling backwards,  free at last.

The sympathetic young man coming up behind us that we only noticed just then was going wow at the predicament and cheering us on.

The escalator did not start up again. Clearly it required a reset. Good. It should.

Mom sewed it and the rest will have to wait: Crisco rubbed into it followed  by liquid detergent a few times and it should come out.

The only thing better than anticipating seeing the grandkids is having them and their parents actually arrive.