Christmas party, dinner served, chocolate tortes consumed, an announcement made, a young friend unexpectedly grieved, stories shared of good friends and good memories, it ran late because it suddenly had to. G’night.

Sepsis.

Love your loved ones. Love your loved ones. Please, please, love your loved ones.

It was time post-op to see where things stood.

Got a new glasses prescription today from the optometrist I’ve been going to since our kids were little.

It has always amazed me how eyes are not a static thing: that they can change just a little bit from one year to the next, and then the changes change as you get older, from ever a little more nearsighted to noticeably less so but take off the glasses if you want to see to knit or read.

And then of course the recent surgery after two years of one retina being damaged but stable till suddenly it wasn’t.

Knowing how much I would enjoy it, at the end the guy said, Oh by the way, this is how you see this line now…and this is how it’ll look with your new glasses.

OHMYGOSH!!

He laughed for joy. That sense of discovery, of recovery, of you mean it not only gets even better yet but it gets that much better?! all packed into one word, and he totally got that. And it made him so happy.

—

(Title inspired by Jackson Browne’s Doctor My Eyes and his participation in Playing for Change with artists across the world.)

I love our flowering pear this time of year. In the low light of December every leaf is an exuberant Christmas light.

I saw the guy ever so briefly past the window. I went outside.

It was a mailman I’ve never seen before–tis the season for extras–and he looked to be in his 80s, a stooped old guy. That was a surprise. I picked up the mail he’d just left and hearing me, he turned around to offer one more thing.

Because you cannot risk leaving a to-be-cherished Christmas present out where someone could just walk off with it, is all I can guess, and maybe those last steps to ring the doorbell at the end of the day at the end of the route felt like a bit too much? He was clearly relieved to be able to hand it directly. He loved my, Oh cool! when I saw who it was from.

It held a single skein of hand-dyed yarn from Karida Collins of Neighborhood Fiber Co in Baltimore. She had taken a break and dealt with health and when she re-opened her business I’d ordered that one little bit just to cheer her on.

Clearly, whatever was in there was too valuable in the old mailman’s eyes to be left unguarded. Neighborhood. Fiber. Good things!

Karida’s going to love that.

I haven’t opened it yet. That mailman’s smile convinced me it’s for Christmas.

They sang happy birthday at church. They offered me (and other December babies) a (Safeway?) cupcake with a huge swirl of frosting decorated with sprinkles.

Topped, inexplicably, with a bright red plastic ring with a cartoon hero on it. Captain America? Something like that, anyway. And thus the text with this photo to the good folks next door: the cupcake had sadly met its fate (Richard and I had split it) but the good Captain lives on. I asked if there was any chance they’d like to let their three-year-old play with it?

She laughed and said sure.

And that is how I ended up next door when they had good news to share and were ready to share it, with someone they knew would be excited along with them.

So I need to finish the baby blanket that kind of went on the back burner so that I can launch into their new one.

That definitely worked out!

I untangled the two old dead strands of lights off the mango tree yesterday before running out of sunlight. It was a job. I got a single new string on today, wondering whether I should just think, hey, heat rises, or whether I should add a second. I didn’t want future me to have to go through that much trying to separate leaves and branches and lines again.

But the point is to take care of my tree so I’m probably not done yet.

For the record, blue lights are the least intrusive for nighttime. The only ambient glow I can find is through the camera lens.

I stockpiled when incandescent bulb sales were banned. All I want is the heat. There’s a whole market waiting in this climate for someone to come up with a safe non-light warming system for tender trees: old-style Christmas lights have been the standard off-label use for decades.  There are a lot of citrus trees around here. C’mon, Silicon Valley, you can figure out a way.

Clara Parkes asked today if there was a time when darkness, however one might choose to define it, had made the light more clear.

I answered with the following story from 2003. I probably said it here years ago but in case not I want to make sure my kids have it, so here goes.

—

I was in the hospital fighting for my life and a nursing assistant was assigned to me who was a mess. She was clearly depressed. She had a thick accent and hated that I had a hard time hearing her (hey, I have a hard time hearing anybody.) She hid her badge to avoid her name being reported for lashing out at patients.

I resented the fact that at a time when I was so ill and in so much pain I should be stuck with someone like her.

But I also had time, while there, to think about it. I couldn’t do anything about whatever her situation was–but at least I could say a prayer for her. It couldn’t hurt. Why hadn’t I even thought of it earlier.

The next time she came in was at a peak moment of difficulty for me and in spite of all my best intentions I snapped at her. Before she’d even said anything.

To my surprise she didn’t snap back–instead, she looked terribly, terribly sad and turned and fled the room.

I felt terrible. I was the one with the good life and support structure and I was taking things out on someone else?

The next time she came in the room the nurse who also happened to be her boss (I didn’t know that) also happened to stop by steps behind her. I apologized to the NA in front of her, and said, I was mean to you and you were nice to me in response. You didn’t deserve that. I apologize.

I later told that nurse that I was glad that the woman had had her there to witness my saying she’d treated me better than I’d treated her.

That’s when I found out the NA was already in the process of being fired for her treatment of patients. The nurse knew it was depression and had been trying to find a way to reach her and help her. And here the two of us were presenting the NA to herself as being better and kinder than how she’d been seeing herself.

I later went back to the hospital with a stack of handknit little items for the people who’d taken care of me. I assumed the NA was gone by then, but just in case, I had a hat for her.

She wasn’t. She saw me from down the hallway and came RUNNING and threw her arms around me! Wow!

She was saved by my having lost it.

It was a quiet day spent keeping my foot up a lot. I got up this morning thinking, Oh, that’s a lot better than I thought that was going to be. Yay.

And thank you all for the kind words and thoughts.

Meantime, it’s been 36F the last three mornings. I really need to get out there and replace the eleven year old incandescent strand on my low-growing mango tree. Removing it from the tangle of limbs and placing the new such that it doesn’t constrict its growth–I’ve been avoiding it.

To be honest, I think for a semi-irrational fear of getting ticks on my head. It’s not been quite, quite cold enough to kill them off.

See, this is why nearly-white hair is a good thing: you can see them, or rather, the tall guy will. Right?

My portion of my late dad’s art arrived today.

I had previously had a few paintings shipped to me and they’d arrived carefully cushioned inside thick cardboard boxes. So that’s what I was expecting.

After I’d pre-paid the shipper he happened to mention that it was not going to be delivered inside. The driver’s contract stops at our garage door. Although, I could hire their other guys at our end to bring it in for us.

Sure, how much?

My brain refuses to remember how much above $600 he said because I instantly said no. I could call in friends if need be; I could carry those boxes myself, even if it might take me awhile with a bad back. Could they give me a warning once they actually hit the road with them, since the delivery day was uncertain. I knew it was a twelve hour drive.

They did not do so.

This morning, there was their delivery guy in my driveway with three big wooden boxes just past the sidewalk. Heavy and nailed shut. Holy cannoli. And I thought I had it all planned out where the items were going to go. As if.

I walked back in the door with the guy’s piece of paperwork and said to Richard, who is limited by having once broken his own back, We’re in trouble.

Walked back out and shook my head as I read the weights Sharpied onto them: 207 pounds, 201, 109. Clearly, the boxes themselves were a great deal of that weight. Someone with the skills could easily rework them into furniture.

The young driver was blown away at being met by only this little old lady. He just couldn’t leave me like this. He insisted.

I had found yesterday (because I so seldom use them) that I was out of checks–that was stupid–and he’d gotten there before I had any chance to head to the bank for replacements like I’d planned.

He simply said, Pay what you think is right, and started working that first box forward, twist and push, twist and push.

Wait, I said, running to get the dolly. It helped for the first two, with me helping as best I could, but he thought it too small for the third and put it aside. The low raised step into the house was the biggest challenge. Even he had to stop and breathe a moment, but he did it, he got them all in just inside the door. I thanked him profusely and emptied out my wallet as he watched me searching for one last ten or twenty to throw in there, but at least there were quite a few. Richard added his twenty.

I’ve iced and stretched my back while praying for that guy’s all day long. He didn’t have to do that. But he did. I so much want him to be okay.

Richard got the drill out after dinner. He wanted to make sure everything looked good in there, and he removed all the nails along the tops.

Those guys did a good job protecting everything.

And then, immediately after saying out loud that I was going to have to be careful not to drop that heavy board from the biggest lid on my foot…

We know the drill by now: if I did break it it will hurt worse and more specifically tomorrow, and with that we did not go to Urgent Care. Yet.

What I most want out of those boxes is the painting that I had loved but that had had a several-inch tear in the canvas. My brother has the skills and he repaired it for me and touched up the paint there. You cannot see where and would never know if you didn’t know. That one means a lot. I want it on my wall first.

I think we’re done lifting for tonight.

(Ed. to add in the morning, I don’t think it’s broken. Yay.)

There was one more thing I’d been wanting to do since late summer. Michelle and I drove to Andy’s last week and this was one of the reasons why I’d wanted to go.

A Christmas card. A pretty little bag.

Inside, two small half-pound boxes of figs stuffed with dried peaches plumped up with honey, candied orange peel, and nuts. I look forward to these every December. They were so popular last year that I entirely missed getting any and I wasn’t going to let that happen again.

But also, since that surgeon had become an instant Andy’s fan with that first peach he’d shared with his wife, I wanted to make sure he knew what else that farm can do.

The second box was for his nurse.

The card read, One last thing…

He’d told me with great love, “I never want to see you again! For your sake” after finding no cancer and not having to do surgery.

I didn’t see him. Nor his nurse. That’s okay. The receptionist asked me if I was there for an appointment? and then took that bag with so much joy for them at someone coming back to say thank you. At her wonderful boss being recognized, and the nurse, too. She had no idea what was in there, but it was the being there that mattered. She made sure my name was in there for them before she let me go.

Her love on their behalf will carry me forward through so much. Just like theirs still does.

$395 later, we have a working dishwasher again. Yay.

(When the rent is too $!$!! high, so is everything else. The average for a one-BR 649 sq’ apartment is $3007 here.)

(Nighttime photo.)

It amused me no end and I went to take its picture. Where did I put my phone… And then I got distracted to something else.

There had been a pair of pomegranates hanging onto the tree that I could have picked weeks ago but I’d never gotten them past the critters long enough to see how long they should/would stay there if I let them. I had a small pop-up style birdnetting tent–not over them, trying to balance it in those branches was too fiddly, but sideways with the fruit sort of just inside the bottom of it and the top of the tent facing the fence: En garde! (Autocorrect added an n. I am much amused.) I knew they were accessible but the critters who could reach it didn’t have to know that from their favorite runway and I knew they did not want to be in a cage.

It worked!

Michelle’s a fan of pomegranate juice and on her last night here I squeezed the ones that had been kept in the fridge, and that was as much of that work as I wanted to do at the time.

I checked. The two on the tree were still there.

This morning she was back in Boston and some sheer curiosity got me to go outside to check those fruits again.

Picture a little kid on Christmas morning tearing open a present: the strip of wrapping paper still attached to the tape in their hand while the box falls away. That’s essentially what was left: two stems, each with a thin strip of the bright red outer rind.

While all of the rest was utterly gone.

I laughed. The timing! As if they’d only been holding on for her! How did something get to both of them among those thorns, how did it eat that much? I wanted to get a photo. Didn’t I put it–where was it? Huh. Whatever.

We were just sitting down to dinner when something just really nagged at me and I apologized and said, I have to know if I left that phone in the car, I haven’t been able to find it anywhere. He said Go ahead, and meant it, so I got right back up from the chair I’d just sat down in.

It wasn’t in the car.

It was on the ground in front of the passenger door for all to see where it had fallen out of my purse when I got out this morning.

Had I waited ten more minutes there wouldn’t have been enough light left to see it there and I might well have stepped on it going to the car door to look. I’m just glad it was still there.

Thank you pomegranate silliness…

Celebrating at Dandelion Chocolate this morning.

A day well spent.

Nighttime San Francisco Airport is always gloriously colorful this time of year as you drive in, from the towering trees to the rendition of the Golden Gate Bridge in holiday LEDs.

A quick hug, a rollaboard being pulled towards the brightly lit waiting doors, and we came home under the orange supermoon to a suddenly quiet house with happily planned leftover pastries for the morning to console ourselves by.

She’d made sure her vegan chocolate carrot cake in its pretty little box was at the top of her backpack. Right there under the zipper. With a grin.

We were on our way home from the airport a week ago at a quite late hour with all three of us utterly exhausted when he realized in horror what he’d left on the plane. He got out his phone and filed a report. We expected never to see it again.

My phone, not his, got a voice mail yesterday–go figure. Maybe because the flight had been booked with my name first? Southwest’s baggage claim had it. Would we like to come pick it up.

YES!

Michelle drove, I came with. She ran in to retrieve it; being able to hear in a noisy airport is a good idea.

And so I got out, walked around the car, and sat in the driver’s seat, expecting to be told at any moment to move along.

If you’ve ever priced portable cpap machines (it was out of pocket) you know why it turned out to have been locked away among the valuables. That required the supervisor, who had stepped away moments before we pulled in and was suddenly nowhere to be found.

I was a ways past the last door out of the building, facing the longterm parking, and it was the least busy I have ever seen that terminal. Nobody would want to pick up their person from where I was if they didn’t have to. And they didn’t.

At long last one of the traffic enforcers walked up to my window. I told him what we were doing, and that if he needed me to circle around the airport awhile I’d be happy to. He nodded, looked down the road behind me to gauge how much in the way I was–ie, not at all–and told me that if arrivals picked up I’d need to move on but for now, *shrug*, and with that he turned and walked back towards where incoming cars would actually want to be.

She came out the door at long last, cpap triumphantly in hand, we switched places again and she drove away as I wondered how much being a white-haired older woman in an old car had played into all that. Maybe the guy wishes his folks would give up the keys: maybe he didn’t want me on the road when I’d had the good sense to let my kid drive me there. Maybe he just saw a chance to be nice when it didn’t hurt anything to.

We were trying to get every minute out of the visit before she flies home tomorrow.

A huge thank you to Southwest for tracking down that machine and getting it back to our airport and us. The writing on the ID tag had rubbed off.

The info is back on it now.

(Edit: he just showed me the covid vaccine card with his name on it in a zip pocket. So it did have that to confirm it for them. Good.)

No water coming out of the air intake at the top of the sink? It’s the dishwasher, not the pipes.

Got that scheduled.

Off to the clinic, where I told the nurse dilating my eyes, My calendar says Dr M followed by a quick check by Dr. R but only Dr M shows on my online appointments and I did see R a few weeks ago when there was a problem. Will I be seeing both?

Oh yes, she assured me, we always have you see one and then briefly the other when you’ve had the two surgeries done in tandem like that.

Dr. M came in, was pleased with my progress, went to go and I confessed to having knit each of them a hat. And that I’d then kept on going, so, choose a color?

There were five (there was also a dark blue), with a sixth color on the needles.

He loved the dark green stripes. He was thrilled.

That was fun. So I waited for his colleague to come in.

And waited. And knitted. And waited. Eight rows.

A different nurse came in, flustered, not sure how I would take the awkward news that I’d wasted my time and saying, You don’t have an appointment with Dr. R. He’s seeing you in March!

That’s fine, I assured her. I explained about having confirmed with the original nurse but it’s no big deal–just, could I ask her one favor?

?

Could you take these to Dr. R and ask him to pick one? (I figured she could interrupt him at a more knowingly timely moment than I could.) Meantime I would go to the waiting room to get out of the way.

That instantly changed everything, and when she came back to me she was radiant.

I would have sent her off with one, too, but I was afraid of a contrast between that and the unknown nurse who’d given me understandable but wrong information that perhaps had tied up their room, and I let the thought go. Didn’t know her name, didn’t want to take the other one’s time chasing people down again.

Still wondering whether I got that right.

But she was already showing me that making him happy had made her happy. She made it be enough.

(Mark my calendar. March. Two nurses. Maybe more. Be ready.)