A grocery run.

A young couple with a baby girl of about 15 months, absolutely adorable. Proud grandparents. Ukrainian, was my guess, along with the dad who was clearly their son, while the mother of the baby looked to have Californian ancestors going way back.

Sometimes I see too late where my deafness trips me up: it wouldn’t occur to me to begin speaking from behind someone or where we weren’t directly facing each other and expect to be paid the least attention to because I wouldn’t hear someone speaking behind me. And so, I brushed the older woman ever so slightly on the arm to get her attention and handed her a particularly cute finger puppet. Whoever the knitter in Peru was, she put a lot of time and color into that bright bird.

“I’m a grandma too,” I smiled, offering it to her–

–while her face and body froze in abject horrified fear. Which did at least lessen to uncertainty when she saw the little toy and then followed my glance towards her beautiful granddaughter.

“Happy Birthday,” I added, still smiling, and got out of their way quickly to make it clear I wasn’t trying to demand anything whatsoever of them.

Her daughter-in-law translated.

Ohhh…!

Next time I glanced their way they were so much more relaxed than even before I’d approached them: smiling, laughing, enjoying this precious time together while the little one is so little, and oh so much better than that initial moment.

Which was such a relief.

And I got to see how much the daughter-in-law rejoiced over being able to make everything okay for her mother-in-law.

They will always have that.

There’s a book club being put together by a friend who moved here in the last year.

She announced what the first book was going to be, so of course I ran and looked it up.

Twenty-four hours later and here it is: “By the Second Spring: seven lives and one year of the war in Ukraine,” by an American who had grown up there and has a PhD in history. You know I couldn’t pass that one up.

The first thing I did was to look for a list of chapters, hoping for names, but right after the title page there it was, a list of them. I knew there wouldn’t be someone I knew–but you just never know… (Thinking in particular of the gerdan artist who trusted me with photos of the shelling damage to her home inside and out and whose town has now been evacuated.)

I didn’t want to start reading yet. Not at this time of day. I didn’t want nightmares tonight; I wanted time after the first dose of the book to sift through my emotions and make peace with what I would encounter inside.

And yet.

I opened to a random page.

There were two mug shots and a poem.

Quoted in part:

Oh human, I cannot believe your life is

just about looking into my cell?

you stand in my heavy sorrow, my aching heart is filled with your misfortune

because you are just twice as sad as I am.

I have myself, and you are just a shadow

I am the good, you are the dust, decay

we are both prisoners…

I closed the book. Tomorrow I start.

Yesterday two pigeons flew up to the peregrines’ nest ledge, canoodled a bit, and checked out the digs in the box. Heyyyy–nice spot. They came back again today for awhile.

Momma Peregrine showed up a little later, went into the nest box–and put her head down and started sniffing around where those brazen wingrats had dared to trod.

She and her mate had to reclaim their box! And stand on the ledge and show the world just exactly which apex predators own this spot thankyouverymuch.

Their four young are not yet great at this hunting thing so the parents are still making sure they get enough.

And now they know there’s a Doordash delivery just begging to happen.

The misoprostol wasn’t so bad this time–it probably helped that now I knew what to expect?

Note that one Texas newspaper wrote that it is a felony to distribute it in Texas now. That boggles my mind. There are a lot of incumbents there who ought to be charged with practicing medicine without a license.

I have a niece in OBGYN training there and was told a year ago that her colleague didn’t want to learn how to do D&Cs because of abortion. I told my in-laws about accrete, with its 7% fatality rate, where the placenta grows past the uterine wall and bleeds dangerously at and after birth and how a D&C saved the life of someone dear to us two weeks after her baby was happily in her arms.

I had a D&C with a miscarriage years ago at 12 weeks along two weeks after they’d lost the heartbeat. I had no idea at the time that the doctor was risking my getting sepsis by not doing it sooner.

At age 66 I had a D&C as part of today’s procedure to take a closer look for endometrial cancer after all the biopsies and ultrasounds.

I got pretty pictures to take home along with post-op instructions. And the hopeful news so far is that things looked good.

Our first week in California in the late 80’s, someone at church invited me to come to a baby shower she was throwing for another member because, as she told me later, she figured that was a good way for me to get to meet people faster.

Hah! I was prepared: the Toys R Us in New Hampshire had had a clearance baby outfit for all of twenty-five cents, just get it out of our store. Nobody had wanted to buy light cotton baby clothes during a New Hampshire winter. I even knew where the moving box was.

I asked Karen, the expectant mom, if this was her first?

The room erupted in laughter and kidding. And no she did not finally get her girl but a baby boy to go with his six older brothers and my outfit was light blue. Perfect.

Her oldest was in high school. A really nice kid.

Soon I was asked to be the Compassionate Service leader. Sure. I’d never done that before and wasn’t sure what all was expected but the woman who’d asked me…didn’t quite know what to do with me either and so she did nothing. No phone calls, no guidance. No meetings. No inclusion nor decision-making. It may even be that she’d entirely forgotten she’d asked me; I didn’t know how at that age to ask a much older woman a question that could put her on the spot. We’re all volunteers here anyway.

Well then, I’ll just make it up on the fly all by myself, I eventually decided.

Our house came with multiple rose bushes.

I delivered a number of roses to a number of women who’d looked like they could use it but there were more flowers and a feeling like I wasn’t done yet.

Hmm.

I figured, every teenager needs to know that an adult who doesn’t have to cares about them just because they are, and ended up calling Karen and her oldest and explaining what I was hoping to do.

He was all for it and his mom thought it was a great idea.

So I went and picked Robert up and then he guided me to the homes of the teenagers in the ward that he thought could use a rose and a hello to cheer them up. I would drive and he would run a flower to the door and say the ward wanted you to have a nice day. Anybody who’s struggling with their classes, or life, I told him, or anything. You know them; I don’t yet. So you tell me where.

Mostly, I noticed, we ended up at the homes of the girls, and he had me as an excuse in overcoming any teenage shyness.

One particular girl… I never mentioned to him that sitting in my car as she opened that door I saw just how much it meant to him to be able to do this unexpected nice thing for her.

Her older brother flew into town this weekend. He is the only person I knew when I was diagnosed with Crohn’s who had Crohn’s. From childhood. A survivor who showed the way, and kept in touch with me via FB, and there he was! Seeking the two of us out and making sure we didn’t miss seeing each other.

Because his old buddy he’d grown up with had finally done what his mom had long thought was just never going to happen at this point.

Robert and his bride look gloriously happy in all the pictures and their loved ones in church today all were, too.

She was worth the wait, and so was he.

Because sometimes a picture of a pomegranate seeing itself in various stages of itself is just the thing.

Congratulations, one person told us back then, You picked the hottest day on record in Washington, DC.

Which was topped thirty years later at 99 to our 98. It took that long. But at the time, we were like, Oh. It’s hot? I mean, yeah, I guess it is but, um, we kind of hadn’t really noticed.

Jokes about how maybe I should stand on the low stone wall along the garden pathway near the temple’s doors so that I could get up into the same picture as him and his family.

The skunk raiding the marshmallow off his campfire stick right over the fire on our honeymoon in the Shenandoahs with its tail brushing his arm as it sat back and savored the thing–with his face pleading, Just don’t laugh. PLEASE don’t laugh.

His consolation prize being that the skunk sided with him over me: a long slow roast over my burn it fast and crunchy and blackened and then reach for more while he’s still working on three marshmallows ago.

The hair stylist in Indiana who couldn’t cut my hair because she was husking.

What the heck is husking?

How do you not know what husking is?! She’s helping bring the corn harvest in.

Oh.

George Winston’s December album playing softly while we turned off the lights and with our babies in our laps, watched the snow fall (and fall and fall) in New Hampshire to the music as each perfect silvery flake danced and sparkled in the moonlight.

Our oldest remembered, and took that album off to college.

The monochromatic boredom of white snow, grayed parking lot snow, more snow. And how pretty and quiet and peaceful it was. Along with the how do you shovel snow so you can pick up your husband from work and leave your kids alone inside but how do you shovel snow with them outside in weather that cold? You can’t take a baby out in zeroF for an hour+ while trying to watch the toddler while trying to get this done.

Somehow I got it done, or enough, anyway. I don’t remember how. Naptime? I just remember I had to, so I did.

The househunting trip in Spring in California, going straight from 72″ in 17 days to green, glorious green and flowers everywhere.

The kid who left me speechless by saying, Mom, I don’t think I could ever call anything on the East Coast a forest.

Say what now?? Why??

Because no redwoods.

We have got to get these kids an education… We flew us all home and played tourist in DC.

Taking my sister’s boys to where the sun sets as the ocean waves goodbye, laughing that yes that feels like you put your dawn on backwards in the morning.

The day we drove past the high school, knowing there would never be another Back To School night for us.

The knit night at Purlescence where I took my cell phone out of the shop for a minute, needing it to be on speaker and wanting to hear my son and where he could have a little more privacy. Then walking back in the shop, holding my phone out to my friends, and saying, This is my son. He’s calling to say he’s engaged!

The whole shop burst into applause and cheers. As well they should. Such a profound gift to our family Kim has been.

The arrival of grandkids.

The feeling, within five minutes of meeting my daughter’s boyfriend, of, I don’t know who you are. But I HOPE you marry my daughter.

He did.

The arrival of their two.

The missing them. The treasuring every moment with them when we are there with them. So much love.

Our younger two, hoping for those blessings too but entirely blessings themselves as they are. So proud of them. All of them.

The gratitude beyond words at this dear, dear man in my life who made all of this come to be with me and that he gets to still be with me and I still get to be with him, well beyond the time we once thought I might have left.

I got up this morning, picked English Morello sour cherries from the tree that he’d driven me over the mountains to Santa Cruz for and had helped me pick out in happy anticipation of moments to come just like these, let them soak in their sugary filling mixture for awhile and then put the pie in the oven to bake while I headed to Andy’s Orchard. Richard got off work, checked the pie, and had it cooling and waiting when I got home with the first peaches of the season and the newest Candycot apricot developed by the guy who gave the world the Anya: the Yelena.

Just an ordinary day. But one that gives a meaning I love to the new-to-us number of 45.

Yesterday I bought some mangoes at an Indian grocer because I knew that even if I didn’t find Alphonsos, that’s a place where they’d be likely to have good ones because they would definitely know what one should be. Which they did, although from Mexico and very fibrous. But the flavor made it worth the trip.

I felt conspicuously white and clueless looking curiously at a few labels of things that I had no idea what they were, but a little exploration is good for everyone. Foreign travel without the airfare, and you can always ask questions. Banana flowers? Think the size of a large butternut squash in the shape of a giant half-opened banana with peel pieces attached, all in a purplish brown. What on earth would you do with it? I only saw the one, so I left it so it could be appreciated by someone who wanted it.

Thinking of the waitress who once quickly slapped a banana leaf-wrapped sandwich-type entree out of my hand, exclaiming, No eat!

Oh. The leaf?

Yes! No eat!

I was glad she let me know!

No nonfat milk there.

So today, a quick trip to Trader Joe’s so we could have our hot cocoa in the morning.

An Asian woman who looked vaguely familiar, and apparently I did to her (quick, which parent from Back to School Nights twenty years ago was she? No idea) decided I was a friendly face and asked me a question.

Between her accent, my deafness, and the complete unexpectedness of it it took her three tries before I got that what she was asking was, “What is a good wine and do they have it here? Where would I find it?”

“I don’t drink,” I half-apologized to her. “I have no idea.”

She laughed (and then I did, too): “I don’t either!”

And with that, whoever she was, we smiled and went our ways, having each found someone a little bit more like ourselves than we knew.

This song. Thank you, Sly.

The box in her hands was very big and awkward and it looked heavy. I said, Here, let me get that door for you, and ran a little ahead to the post office entrance and then made sure she went ahead of me with that; all I was sending off was a couple of hats. (Still working on the blue, the gauge was way different with a finer yarn but I wanted my cousin’s granddaughter to get to match her grandmother and it was time to get those off.)

Such an ordinary interaction on an ordinary day. It wasn’t till quite a bit later that I realized how fortunate we were and how quiet it is here: I didn’t have to try to bodily throw my privilege between us to try to save her from masked random men on the street claiming to be ICE, none of that, and I can’t imagine….

We could simply. have. a. nice. day. You know, be in America. With a shared smile at having met in the moment.

The car had to be smog-checked. The first time we ever got that notice I exclaimed, But it’s a brand new SULEV! (Super Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle.)

But it does still have a gas engine, however small.

I looked up the usual place and prepaid online.

The computer auto-filled my landline number onto the form and I didn’t notice in time. Which they auto-texted to to confirm my payment and appointment, and obviously that didn’t work.

Well that’s a nuisance, so I typed into my cellphone the time of payment and the order number so I would have that info to prove I was me and headed on over.

The young guy running the place by himself wasn’t sure he could make that work; he asked me, sounding a little nervous, had I printed it out?

I had not, I’m sorry. (I was thinking, since when does his generation expect a print-out? Too funny.)

He wasn’t sure he could make that half-off price work and was clearly a little afraid of how I might react.

I told him, Hey, I’m the one who didn’t catch that auto-fill in time. If I have to pay full price than I pay full price, no biggy, I just need to get it done. (Thinking, before the state deadline next week. Before minor surgery next week with anesthesia but no painkillers because I’m allergic. Before I have to deal with all that. I was just so glad that I’d finally kicked myself into getting this done.)

He was visibly relieved.

My heart went out to him. I wondered how many customers… It’s not his fault his bosses charge one price online and twice that in person if you skim and see and expect that but just show up without paying first.

From there he got the work done and went over the DMV’s paperwork I’d brought with me, making sure I would save the certificate that the car had passed inspection till the state sends their sticker–the whole time treating me like his favorite aunt. Like we were old friends.

I thanked him and we both came away with our day much better for those few minutes of making sure my old car doesn’t fart at the public.

Our friend Dani stopped by two days ago with some Alphonso mangoes–a real sacrifice on his part. One whiff and a long exhale and the thought, Now THAT is what a mango is supposed to be. Thank you, Dani!

Then I took the sad little wannabes from Costco that had been picked too early, chopped them up with a bunch of green onions and threw them in with some peanut satay sauce: playing vegetables was the best they could attain to.

Dani’s were the real thing. Peeled and devoured.

So my thought was I’d sprout the seeds from his. I know he doesn’t have space nor sun but maybe he’d love gifting a baby tree to someone who does. And maybe I just want to see what they do.

Mangoes come mono- or polyembryonic. You want the multiple embryos if you want one just like the parent whose fruit you ate, while monoembryonic is a genetic potluck–so of course the Alphonso is a mono type.

Googling ensued. Videos were watched. One person said let the pit dry for two days and then cut the seed covering here with scissors and pull the seed out.

I tried that. It was every internet hahahaaayouactuallybelievedthat?!! result.

The next video, the guy got a gouge going in that woody thing and then took needlenose pliers to try to slowly, forcefully, hopefully, with great effort, manhandle that thing open and off.

The camera cut away and they did not show you all of what he had to go through, but there it was. Voila. Seed.

My scissors had gone, What are you trying to DO to me! Back into the kitchen gadgets drawer.

My pruning shears went, I’m not going to try it, you try it! Okay, you tried it. I won’t do it. So there.

Huh. Well I do have those long-handle tree pruners where you pull down the string that pulls on the lever that moves the blade that cuts the limb a dozen feet over your head and hope you have a good helmet on; maybe I could manipulate that blade up close while pulling on the string way over thataway out of reach without, y’know, cutting my finger off or my skirt in half in the process. Dunno how well that would work for a precision cut on such a small piece. Where is that thing, anyway?

Remember the old Life cereal commercial, Let’s get Mikey to try it! He hates everything!

Yeah, well. Around here, Mikey seems to have gone into hiding. And that’s probably a good thing.

The New York Times ice cream recipe called for six egg yolks. Thus a pound of strawberries met its fate along with a pint of cream.They call for either a half tsp of lemon juice or a half tsp of balsamic, and who squeezes a whole lemon for a half a teaspoon? I had some Bistro Blend raspberry balsamic from the guy who used to sell that top-notch brand at Stitches West. Unfortunately, the pandemic eventually did the company in–but if you can find anything like it it went really really well in there.

But the leftover egg whites.

I went looking for this almond meringue recipe but then didn’t really want to double it. So before I forget what I did since I was totally winging it:

3 c almond flour

2 3/4 c powdered sugar

1/2 c melted dark chocolate, random bits added till the semi-liquid got up to there

1/2 c melted butter

1/8 tsp salt

I started by whipping those 6 egg whites with a tablespoon of sugar to the hold-a-peak stage. Then I mixed the butter and chocolate into the almond flour/powdered sugar bowl and folded the egg whites in.

I ended up laying it out in a large flat rectangle on top of parchment paper on a cookie sheet. 350F, 25 minutes.

It was very good. It would make great cookies, too. I didn’t realize till afterwards that I was riffing on my chocolate hazelnut torte (and it was a lot simpler to do.)

Then the timer hit 4 hours on the cooling strawberry ice cream mixture and into the machine it went. Because we needed a second big dessert on the same day, right?

Actually, third. The NYT says to strain the cream mixture, and what that left us with was essentially candied scrambled eggs. Which was as weird as it sounds. (Where’s a little kid jumping up and down to take it off your hands when you need one.)

The ice cream? Definitely esteemed-guest-worthy, too.

One of this year’s fledglings parallaxing at sunrise today. Raptors bob their heads before taking off to gauge the distance and trajectory of what they’re aiming for–but this one made me laugh.

And it made me remember.

I wrote about it at the time it happened 15 years ago and I’m sure I’ve mentioned it here at least once since. It was such a powerful experience.

Today fellow knitter Clara Parkes asked on her Substack, If there were one thing in nature that you could become one with, what would it be?

There were fun answers, beautiful answers, and here was mine. Since it’s behind a paywall, I thought I’d share it here, too, where members of the falcon community can read it:

I was on the camera crew for a season monitoring the peregrine falcon nest high up on San Jose City Hall. I would love to be able to spread my wings and coast on the wind like one of those magnificent birds.

As I sit here remembering: one of the chicks at first grew big enough to explore the concrete HVAC ledge outside the nest box, its feathers for flight beginning to grow in, no longer a ball of white fluff.

And then it moved more slowly and after a day or two, quietly passed in a back corner of the nest.

The parents fed their other chicks and soon they were teaching them how to not just fly but transfer food mid-air, how to hunt, how to dive at over 200 mph, all the peregriney things.

And then the father came back to the wooden box the UCSC biologist had installed. It had a layer of gravel to mimic the rocky cliffs of nature. He stood there facing the remains of the one that had perished for some minutes while I at my computer, hand hovering over the mouse, waited to see what he might do next.

And what that was was something that had not been observed before in that species, from what I’ve been told: he bent way over towards his son’s body and then with the top of his head, the most tender, vulnerable part of his own, pushed it down, down, to give a burial to his boy where it would be left undisturbed.

It was astonishing and profoundly moving. Love. Love is the entirety of the universe. I want to forever be part of that love.

It’s that time of year again: wake up, pick enough cherries for a pie, pit them, strain the juices back to the fruit, freeze in happy anticipation of good times to come, then go take a shower so you won’t walk around an impromptu redhead. The tart cherries ripen at the rate of about one pie per day.

And on a side note. I am quite sure the photographer did not notice, not when she took the picture and not when she posted the picture on the real estate listing. This is outside that house’s kitchen door.

Picture #30.  Look at how nice and cozy that thing is in its corner, waiting for lunch.

This is a long read but a good one by a Constitutional law professor and the then-President Rex Lee of BYU, a man held in high esteem in the Mormon community a generation ago.

At some point in his first term, someone called out the new Senator Mike Lee on the discrepancies between some of the stuff he was spouting and his dad’s scholarship on what the Constitution actually said. His dad had passed not long before.

Lee’s terse response was, My dad was wrong.

The Deseret News, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, posted an editorial today denouncing Lee’s vindictive, deceitful, and cruel posts on X that one could only describe as gloating towards the targets and survivors of the assassinations in Minnesota.

When Senator Tina Smith, who’d been on that hit list, wanted to ask him why he’d done that, he put his phone to his ear to fake a phone call and ran from her. She cornered him in the cloakroom to just, plain, talk about this and why he had done this, calling out to his sense of decency as if he had one. But that famous old-fashioned “collegiality of the Senate” tradition of the ages: she claimed it and offered it and he let her explain to him why what he’d said was so painful because he knew it would be front-page news (again) if he did not.

Lee often justifies himself by claiming he’s an upstanding member of the Church. Yeah, I’d love to be a fly on the wall when his bishop asks him if he lives a life of integrity in all things?

But here’s the thing: if the Church excommunicates you, they never say so publicly. Your choices are between you and G_d.

Nor can I remember any time when they’ve denounced someone publicly.

But that editorial did and they demanded he apologize to his victims.

And if he does not do so, and as publicly as that X post was, then anyone somehow still wondering about him has their answer.