There was an article in today’s Mercury News and I found myself wanting to throw out the hype and the extraneous and, for the sake of his children in time to come, distill it down to its essence re a man who’d been away from his family on what I assume was a business trip; while overseas, he’d bought some toy fire trucks to bring home to his little ones.

The in-flight movie was a foreign film about firefighters rescuing people.

He thinks, gratefully, that that put him in the frame of mind to react well in what would happen next: he was in the emergency seat aisle and next to the window, and he wrestled that door open on that Asiana flight in San Francisco that had just crashed and then, instead of riding the slide to the ground to safety, he shouted to his fellow passengers so they could know there was a way out and he stayed to help.

Someone screamed MOVE! and smacked and walked on one already-hurt woman trying to protect her daughter, someone hit her, at least one man in utter panic adding injury to injury, people pushing and shoving and grabbing for their bags, impeding the exodus from the plane as the smoke came at them; but the man by the emergency chute helped the woman and her daughter to safety.

And dozens of others.

That man was later grateful that in such pain and chaos the best had come out of him, that what he would so hope his response to others would be actually had been, and he clearly ached for those who’d panicked and done terrible things. For those who now have to live with themselves for not doing right by their fellow passengers–that would be so much harder, and how could you ever know in advance how you would react, maybe blindly like that… He asked that people not judge them.

He was so glad that movie had been the one shown. He wondered maybe that had made the difference for him?

His compassion for those who’d responded poorly in such primal fear moved me deeply.  He wondered if he could just as easily have gone that way too, but thank heavens he had not.

He got home. He told his children nothing; they were too young to handle or understand such an enormity as he’d just experienced, and so he protected them, too.

And his little boy, playing happily with his brand new fire truck, out of the blue and with no prompting whatever exclaimed in delight, “Let’s go save some people, Daddy!”

(Edited to add, Thank you, Ben Levy, sir.)

Thank you, everybody. The giddy intensity of accomplishment yesterday gave way to a quieter, I did it! that’s had me smiling all day. Chan called me the Blanket Doctor, and I told her I gave it a dose of anti- boy antics.

And back to the soft cream dk silk project at hand.

You’ve seen the first picture, right? What you can’t see on that first one is a whole bunch of other loops besides the ones that show there, pulled way, way out.

Sometimes when you have to go to the blankie hospital, you have to get stitches.

I spent several hours again on the thing today, using Friday as my inner absolute, past-due deadline.

All worked back in now. Kitchenered across the break.

I kept laying it out on that rocking chair, done at long last–and finding two more places where Parker had worked more loops loose. Fixed those, laid it out–two more. Flip it over–oh wait. And there’s this whole pattern-repeat area where he’d pulled row after row in a row, open wide and say ahhh…

Five o’clock was running in my direction fast and I so wanted to be able to tell them that Parker’s blankie was finally on its way back home.

Four thirty-five I pulled back out of the parking lot.  Tuesday they get to open the door and the box will be there.

A bunch of us went out for dessert tonight together with an old friend who is about to move across the country after lo these many years here. We wanted a last chance to sit and talk and enjoy her company before she goes off.

She just got married.

The groom’s first marriage was to our oldest.

We wish them all the very best.

My brother and his daughters are coming in two weeks. They are driving from Colorado. We shall tour the Aquarium with them. We can’t wait!

And it dawned on us tonight that that means the yarn room–you know, the one with all the projects for book one and the successes and rejects and hmm maybe I should improve on this ones let me think about its for my long-delayed second book idea, plus the yarns to go with, all of it has to be emptied and put somewhere else–and not in the other two bedrooms they’ll be staying in.

Oh goodness.

Not to mention the fact that a friend was desperate to get rid of her late grandmother’s hospital bed as she closed down her house for selling, and it happened to be between when a doctor sat me down and explained to me just what that scan showed, trying to prepare me for the news, and when the biopsies came back–and they were negative. By that time we’d already helped the friend out and taken the thing off her hands on the grounds that it looked like I was going to need such a thing.

And having not gotten rid of the old twin bed in the yarn room yet, we simply put it upside down on top, mechanics-side up. Where else you gonna put it?

I wondered if we should pass it along now that we didn’t need it and my husband thought bluntly that given the last ten years… Yeah, might as well keep it so we have it when we need it.

Or not. We could figure it out later, there was no hurry.

But in two weeks…

Which is why I was sorting socks. Makes sense, right?

(Edited to add: there is no basement. There is no attic. Not in this California Eichler.)

It had been awhile since a good Trader Joe’s run, and it was time to stock up on the honey mints that I reward myself for treadmill time with, bags of frozen fruit for making crisps with, organic sugar too, dark chocolate salted caramel peanut butter truffles. And ginger cookies, one of the few worth buying store-boughts over, don’t forget the ginger cookies.

No we won’t eat them all at once. I promise.

I got in the checkout line of a middle-aged clerk whose cheerful face I have enjoyed for a number of years.  She was being given a hug by a quite young fellow employee about to leave–the job, the area, her friends,  on to her new life, and I waited, not wanting to interrupt nor put any pressure on them.

Ah my. Back to work now. And the older woman turned to me, emotions close to the surface, and asked, It’s been awhile. How are you?

I’m fine, I smiled, and you?

Good, thanks–but no really: how’s your health? You doing okay?

I so was not expecting that. But instead of feeling intrusive, it felt like a tap on the shoulder reminding me how good I have it now, and I really meant it when I said thank you. To reassure her, I gestured towards the two bags she’d just filled and told her, “When life is good, you buy the fun foods,” and she laughed in relief–and at the truth in the thought.

———

And while I was typing that, a small finch hit the window and was laying on its back a few feet away from me–I thought at first dead, but no: its tail quivered.

A towhee, a gentle, bigger bird, reminded me in that moment of that clerk as it eyed me quickly to be on the safe side and then hopped down straightway from the box and it went directly to the finch’s side and sang–encouragement, to my surprise. It was not a bird that posed any danger to the injured one, but I did not expect it to matter to it that the little one was hurt. Clearly it did. Get up, get up, the hawk might see you.

Then the towhee flew away.

The finch pulled herself to upright and watched me for awhile. When I blinked, she blinked back. I kept my eyes shut longer to try to encourage her to rest. She did.

Good. Not blinded by the impact, then–that’s the biggest worry.

And when she was ready, sooner than I expected, she too flew (I saw that wing tucked partly across her earlier, I’d have thought it was broken, but no) and was off and away and okay.

It’s been really bugging me for a week now that two-and-a-half-year-old Parker didn’t have his blankie back right away. I wanted it right out the door the next day and it just didn’t happen–I kept wrestling endlessly with how to find the most perfect way  to bring it back to its former glory. Overthinking. Using the shawl-knitting time to chill out about it, hoping that would get me back to it.

Rip it and knit it again, was one friend’s take.

I considered. It’s near the cast on.

So to take the easy out with that I would need to cut it off at the end of the tear and carefully undo two rows’ worth: if you’re frogging knitting from backwards, you have to pull the entire undone length carefully through the last loop of each row, it doesn’t just keep coming freely at those points like it does going the other way. Then I would use that two rows’ worth to cast off above the break, the blanket much shortened. Then I’d undo the original cast off at the other end and continue knitting on with the cut-off yarn.

That way I’d be ripping out a third+ rather than nearly the whole thing.

I kept picturing myself driving easily a hundred miles to get to all the local Bay Area stores that carry Malabrigo in hopes of finding a close-enough match to replace whatever might be too broken to work with.

And maybe I should have. But I decided to at least see first how it would look if I went for a simple repair. I spread the much-loved blankie out on the floor with the former loops now crossing the gap side-t0-side pulled a bit to straighten them out, and with a crochet hook caught each one on up, loop by careful loop in stockinette mode: plain, no dragonskin pattern.

Got all done, turned it over to the back to check–and there was a whole group of strands that had been caught sideways and upwards about ten rows’ worth. How on earth did THAT happen?

So I partially undid and tried again.

Well, it’s better…

Tomorrow, with a little more light again and a little more energy again, I hope to close the gaps, fix the last errant loops, and get it off to the post office.

Or maybe I just needed a break from it for a little while before trying to finish it tonight. So I came over to the computer and typed this.

Oh and. My Cooper’s hawk flew in while I was fussing over the whole thing and there it was!  A U-turn just past the birdfeeder, wings and tail spread wide, maybe a dozen feet away. Wow!

Just can’t growl at wool when the feathers fly by like that.

Last Sunday I finally saw her only as we were pulling out of the parking lot at church; Richard turned the car her way so I could ask. From the other side of the car I held up my needles and the stitches I’d done so far and asked her if she liked the color?

For who? she puzzled. It didn’t immediately sink in, and then she was stunned and overwhelmed: Oh, anything! Any color! Thank you!

She gave me a great gift in that moment. She gave me back that sense of, this is why I do this. To make people feel that loved. What all that yarn is supposed to be doing, not sitting around wondering what it wants to be when it grows up. About time I really got back into it!

And so I kept an eye on how long it took me to do the long rows, how many of them I was going to need to do to finish this thing, and kept at it till finally last night at about ten pm it was finally done and laid out to block. I wove the yarn ends in first thing in the morning.

And then I hedged my bets: I wore a shawl in a different color silk to give her a choice, and she duly admired it but knew I had knit that light pink silk one expressly for her and she’d clearly been hoping all week to see it again very soon. It was hers.

I can’t give back all that she’s lost in recent years, much less whom she’s lost. But I could give her a warm, soft wrap around her shoulders any time she needs to feel one there.

She just has no way to know how many more people will be blessed because her appreciation ran so deep. I know what knitting can do, I shouldn’t have needed that–but I did.

(Old pictures of shawls I knitted from my book, with Marguerite’s red a mixing up of two different patterns.)

Dale from my childhood popped in with a comment on the post about our meeting up with her little sister and her husband. Cool!

When I was in  kindergarten, the grades were in checks and minuses. I got all checks–except one: I couldn’t skip. I could run, I could even walk without running (it was hard!) but I couldn’t get the hang of this heel up in the air and slide a little bit with one foot while the other does a little leap with knee held high, then heel up in the air/slide a little with the second foot while the first now does the leapy thing.

I had to go skip down the hallway just now for my muscle memory to re-teach my verbal brain how it’s done.

Darned if I could figure it out back then at all.  Besides, why would you want to constrict a good run like that anyway? But I was in school now, ergo one of the Big Kids (especially since I had two younger siblings) and this was what big kids were supposed to be able to do.

I didn’t like that minus.  And I sure didn’t like not having mastered the thing, especially when pretty much everybody else in my class had and if I didn’t get it down pat soon, who knows, what if my little sister just might before I did.

My Mom tried to teach me. I think even my Dad got in on it at one point–I do remember him cheering me on.

And then my sister Marian and her friend Dale made it their mission to not only teach me, but to make it fun, and so we did a hop skip and a jump together–no, no, okay, like this, here, let’s try it again–from the end of the living room, down the hall, got to the end, turn, okay, let’s try it again, you’re getting there, GO!

And I got it! (Took a few tries.)

The crowd went wild! We even did practice runs together a few times after that, and darn if it didn’t turn out to actually be fun once I could do it.

And then there was the time I was trying to learn to tie my own shoes. My mom tried to teach me. This idea that I was supposed to do the mirror image of her motions as she knelt down in front of my feet was just totally throwing me.

She tried. Marian tried.

Let’s try Dale! Dale was called upon, Dale came over, Dale (who I think is left-handed but I’m not) showed me–and suddenly it made sense. Totally nailed that thing.

See what she started?  Look at the loops-in-loops I can make now!

The doorbell rang. Cliff! And Don, sitting over in the car pulled in front of the house. Hi!

Cliff handed me a bag full of clamshells they’d been carefully saving for me, for which I am very grateful. It was so good to see them.

The raccoons, meantime, had been clambering for more last night, partying and carrying on.

Occu-pie! In spite of their best efforts as they wall streaked, we made light of their raids on the sus-pension system and held a clambake in the sun all day to celebrate; Apple’s shares tanked on the news, being all caught up in white tape, while Fuji’s stalkholders held out hopes of  a crisp increase in dividends.

Apple felt boxed in by the French regulators on their case, protesting proudly, Mais je m’apple…

Fuji raked in the green, adding last week’s fallout to this in hopes of their own sweet success.

I think I’ll clam up now.

Happy Fourth!

And my apologies for forgetting to say that in last night’s post. Yesterday shouted reminders that I do, in fact, have lupus, brainstem no less, and it was a distraction.

Today was better.

Learned something new today. To quote Wikipedia (slightly shortened):

“The most important sense for the raccoon is its sense of touch.^[52]  Almost two-thirds of the area responsible for sensory perception in the raccoon’s cerebral cortex is specialized for the interpretation of tactile impulses, more than in any other studied animal.^[56] They are able to identify objects before touching them with vibrissae located above their sharp, nonretractable claws.^[57] The raccoon’s paws lack an opposable thumb and thus it does not have the agility of the hands of primates.”

Whiskers on their paws? Curious. And they show a picture of one up in an apple tree. Bingo.

The paws on ours seem pretty agile to me; the little Tarzan both charmed and aggravated by figuring out how to pull the clamshells apart at the center to raid the apples. There were two clamshells that were still on the tree, still closed shut–empty. And bent open at the middle just enough for me to picture the thing going Yow! as it snapped to on its paws–but it did it again.

The others were left alone so far.

And so last night I experimented: I taped the clamshells shut at the center with clear shipping tape.

So far so good.

After checking on them tonight, I ate my very first homegrown blueberry ever, and although it was supposed to be a small wild blueberry and I expected tart, it was sweet and it was good; our heat wave probably added to the sugar content.

The critters haven’t discovered those yet.

(Edited to show off and add a link to my nephew, one of my sister Anne’s boys, playing a composition of his.)

Cast off or do another repeat, cast off or…

I knitted a long time today, grateful for all the comments on flooring–they really helped us narrow things down, thank you–while avoiding doing more looking until after dinner in hopes of getting this project knitted.

I think it really does need one more repeat.

The looking at flooring definitely does.

So I have a question to toss out there. I need the voices of experience.

When I was growing up, there was a rock quarry a half mile down the road that had been in operation since colonial days; we had a flagstone entryway, a great place for scraping the mud off your shoes–oh oops, sorry, Mom. I love love love floors like that. Solid and of the earth.

We have 20 year old vinyl flooring in the kitchen and halls and bathrooms, and it has definitely seen better days. So we’ve been looking. The house is a California ranch built on a slab.

One salesman told me his Linkwerks stuff was far better than plain vinyl; wears longer, is thicker, is in essence padded compared to, say, a stone floor.  He says.

Given that I’m someone damaged in both bones and balance and I fall.

But the materials cost is almost as much as some stone ones, so why bother? And I don’t want to repeat the disappointments of what I had: the vinyl had a lot go wrong quickly, and the tile entryway cracked in a small earthquake.

I liked some of the slate floors I saw online–some have smooth surfaces, some, irregular, but Saturday’s salesman told me that regardless, slate absolutely wouldn’t do around a grandson who will be crawling in a few months, that it chips and flakes and the little one could skin his knee.

Yeah, I wouldn’t have wanted to crawl on my folks’ old entryway for the hardness, but then at my age I wouldn’t really want to crawl on much of anything; I don’t know if he was just trying to upsell me?

One reviewer on Yelp said to beware of cheap granites vs good ones, without answering the question that immediately raises: how can you tell?

So my question is, what do you have that you’ve been happy with?

(Edited to add: our water table is too high to make wood work.)

There was a new neighborhood being built just outside the then-future DC Beltway, with California-style houses with panels of glass set floor-t0-a break about waist-high-to-ceiling, looking out on the woods; it was near a ten-mile-long park set aside as a watershed preserve with Cabin John Creek running through it. Frank Lloyd Wright had built his youngest son a house to the left and down around the corner. You’ve seen Calvin and Hobbes on their sled out in the wilds? Yes.

There was a crowded neighborhood near the DC line of “war boxes,” my mom called them, small starter homes for returning GIs that large families quickly outgrew. My folks had four kids in one bedroom there.

And so three families picked up together when I was three and moved to the quiet new neighborhood where there were miles of trails along the creek to explore that had been built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression, there were children to play with, parents who knew each other and looked after each others’ kids and you knew you couldn’t get away with anything–it was a great place to grow up.

One of those families was Wendy’s, and so I’ve known them all my life. Their house was the second door to the upper right of this photo.

She and her husband decided to come from across the country to take a tour of Napa’s wine country and it turns out they were flying in and out of San Francisco airport. He had an old college roommate in the Bay Area who wanted to see him, and I meantime offered to drive up to the airport to try to see them for, oh, maybe ten minutes while they were waiting to go through security or something but only if it would work out okay for them.

They had a better idea than that.

They were meeting the old roommate for dinner in Burlingame at 5:00, and Richard and I drove up to see them at 4:00. To show off our husbands to each other. To reconnect.

We all ended up walking a half block from where we’d met up to a place Richard and I knew would be a lot quieter: and so there we were, back in Copenhagen Bakery, buying those Chef’s Surprises again. (And now we know why they’re called that: the filling is almond and–whatever. Not blueberry this time; his was apricot, mine egg custard.)

We talked. We laughed. We all showed off pictures of our kids, our two grandsons (they’re not there yet), Wendy’s sisters and kids and her parents, and it just now hits me writing this that I forgot to show her pictures of my folks–the point being that it is amazing how, 36 years after I probably last saw her and childhood long left behind, I could have picked any one of them out of any crowd anywhere. It was so cool.

Part of me, part of you, always will be. So glad it’s so true.

She wondered, Do you remember running through our storm door?

Yes, I thought it was ajar and I just went to go push it the rest of the way open to tell Marcy who lived across the street to stop bugging us while you were trying to teach me a new game. I had just enough time to think I didn’t know that glass bends… (And then I stuck out my arm across the table.) Wendy saw the scars, proof of her memory of the story, and exclaimed.

I added, I always tell Californians it was a window (which it was, but) because they have no idea what storm doors are. (Flimsy screen-type doors, only with glass instead of metal mesh, to give you one more line of defense against the latest thunderstorm or hurricane.)

How long had I had lupus?

Diagnosed 23 years, why?

Her sister they think might have…

I’m so sorry. While being glad I was proving that life can go on, d* the statistics, full speed ahead!

Wendy had been beating some statistics of her own this past year and we knew how good we had it that we were able to get together. It was so good to see her. So good to see what a good husband she has, and such beautiful kids!

The college roommate and his family walked past the windows of the bakery, glanced in, saw us and the guy’s face totally lit up and then his kids’ did–just like ours had (and had stayed that way, and I imagine theirs did too). Peter ran to go throw his arms around them, Wendy staying for just one last hug and laugh of our own first.

I tell you. I could live off the joy of this day for a long time to come. Thank you thank you thank you, Wendy and Peter. Blessings on you and yours forever.

—

Edited to add–p.s. You guys are heroes all over again. I told them about the Caremark debacle in Jan ’09 and how you guys called, emailed, stormed the gates en masse, and in a life-and-death situation made that company pay attention and get me my Humira after all, after their employee had told me on the phone that they weren’t sure they wanted the liability of providing me with such a dangerous (read: newly approved very expensive biologic) drug and had refused to send it. Go you guys!

Someone recently asked me about my hand splints. I’ve mentioned them a few times but realized I’d never actually shown what they look like.

When my lupus was diagnosed I had severe arthritis in my hands–inflammation severe enough to worry about permanent damage as the swelling pushed the ligaments apart. And I could not take NSAIDs. I got sent to a physical therapist who specialized in hands.

Okay, hold your hand out, thumb up, pinky down: she taught me, never hold things in a way that will push your fingers towards your pinky finger in that position–always hold things with the flat of your palm from underneath. Think shopping bags, a pot filling up with water at the tap.

And she custom-made me my first set of these splints to wear at night to keep my fingers from curling up in my sleep. Heated the plastic, wrapped a sheet around each arm one at a time, measured, penciled, cut, folded back the edges so nothing would be sharp when it cooled and went firm again, then added the padded velcro.

They don’t go to the tips of my fingers because you want to be able to pull the bedding on and off or up and down or whatever, but by going to the middle joints and bending the palm parts slightly backwards, it positions the hands just so. Take old loose cotton socks and cut out the heels and toes to wear as liners.

I was eating with plastic utensils because I couldn’t bear the weight of metal ones for the pain. How I managed a two-year-old in diapers I’ll never know, but you do what you have to do.

She knew her job well and she gave me back the use of my hands, so much so that she gave me back my knitting.

And then her son took a job as a cop and she became a 911 dispatcher so she could always know how he was and I had to find me a new PT to make these. I’ve wished her and him well all these years, wherever they are now; she was the first person to tell me about the therapy pool that was open to patients only. That helped too.

The plastic ages over time and 23 years later, I’m on maybe my fifth pair. This set’s on its last legs–the plastic is beginning to shrink up around my arms a little and it could start to crack soon, time to make an appointment.

Best anti-inflammatory ever and you can’t beat it re side effects. Sometimes simplest is best.

(Meantime, the latest of Eric’s peregrine falcon photos here.)