There was a larger crowd than usual tonight. People turned out; I think we all had an extra need for that sense of community. I got to hold a two-week-old baby wearing the tiniest, finest little handknit socks, to see (among others) a friend who’s been away at grad school, another who’s almost done with her cancer therapy whose presence I have so keenly missed.

She was wearing a pretty handdyed hat knitted by Kelli. Kelli hasn’t been able to knit for I think a year due to severe inflammation in her hands. But. She wanted to do that for her anyway, and so there it was.

Richard explained a little more today about yesterday’s having been weird: there had been reverse-911 robocalls to the Cupertino/Sunnyvale area, so the daycares knew before the school officials had arrived to find out; thus there were a lot of them that simply shut down before the workday started. (Note: the man was found this morning, and he died in a shootout with the police without the loss of any more lives other than his own.)

And so, in the midst of the grief and scare and loss of the day, small children were at the office doing small-child type things: being cute, running around, playing, finding joy in each other’s company and charming everybody while keeping Important Things from getting done, no doubt. New things to explore! New faces to meet! Cool!

And then tonight at Purlescence, surrounded by my friends, I got to hold one of the newest of the new.

I had an obstetrician a goodly while ago who had a poster set prominently in his waiting room, so that it was the first thing you saw when you entered his office suite: “A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.”

The next vote on funding CIRM again is soon, the ten years are almost up. So much has been done, so much needs more time.

———

“Wait–so you drove right into that!?”

“Well, not in…”

“That’s in. Mathilda goes to that part of Cupertino. If I’d known that’s where it was, I’d have called you. If I’d known that’s where you were going to be…” He shuddered, blaming himself, which he totally didn’t deserve. With everything else going on, he’d forgotten today was the day and he’d had no idea where the place was.

“I didn’t know till I got home. There was a helicopter right above me, I’ve never seen one that looked like that before.”

“That was it. They were looking.” And not just with one helicopter.

——–

Today was the day the Parkinson’s Research Institute in Sunnyvale held an openhouse re its stem cell work; I got a personal invitation from Chris Stiehl (whom I met at a Lupus Research Institute day),  the man in charge of patient advocacy within the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, the taxpayer-funded initiative to entice top researchers to work in California to potentially find cures for many diseases.

And I have a childhood friend with young-onset Parkinson’s.

Many of the attendees were a large group of high school students on a field trip. There were tables, displays, passionate people ready to show and answer and inspire.

The director of the project answered any and all questions, including mine. She told me in an aside of her great hope to spark a desire in these kids to go into research, to foster a love for science so that they could go out and change the world. There was so much that was so close; we so badly needed more scientists. She said she herself had stayed here expressly because of CIRM.

I told her that one of my children had had a high school biology teacher who had inspired her to follow in her footsteps, and thus her doctoral thesis in viral crystallography was recently published in (and she recognized the prestigious journal.)

The woman was very pleased. We talked about how good it was that finally, finally, research is beginning to be made available not just to those who subscribe to the terribly expensive periodicals; she explained to another woman with us, while I nodded yes, that it could cost $30 just to read one article online.

I didn’t wait for the walk through the lab, though I’d have liked to have seen it; I’d been on my feet for awhile and decided I’d gotten what I’d come for and headed for home.

Where there was that large helicopter flying fairly low over the freeway and then off towards the foothills. Didn’t seem to be monitoring road traffic. I had no idea.

Richard, meantime, came to work to find people in the parking lot talking about the man not far from there who’d shot his co-workers early this morning and fled, shooting and carjacking others in his path, as it turned out. Their kids’ schools were on lockdown. What do you do, what do you do. (And no they haven’t caught the guy yet as I type this.)

Then he told me the other reason it was a very very hard and weird day at work, terribly hard for everybody.

That Steve Jobs had passed.

My heart goes out to all those families.

I remember when Steve cold-called my husband and tried to armwrestle him into coming to work for him at NeXT. Richard didn’t take him up on it; a good friend did accept an offer there, though. Silicon Valley is a small place. It is a measure of Steve’s quest for perfection that being asked to work for him was the highest compliment one could offer an engineer.

Rest in peace, Lehigh Plant workers. Rest in peace, Steve. Thank you for being passionate about making things that worked with utter clarity, simplicity, and grace. Every person who has ever touched a computer since the first time you did owes you: you changed the electronic world and demanded to the end that it be made better.

I can only imagine what your kids will accomplish. Maybe someday one of them will be the one to find a cure for pancreatic cancer.

If only there had been one already. Let’s get that research funded and let’s get it going.

When I got up this morning, there was an upturned finch just outside the sliding glass door. I waited for her to scramble around and get on her way.

I puttered about while every now and then checking on her; mostly, she seemed to sleep, a good response when you need it. Still breathing.

A few hours later I scrounged up a small stick outside the front door, trying not to alarm her, and then returned to the back one, remembering what the peregrine folks taught about birds having a reflex to grab on with their feet; I tentatively held it just above hers, but that was as far as I was going to risk it: first, do no harm.

Nope. Not going to straighten out that way.

The morning gave way to noon when the female Cooper’s decided it was time and swooped in as if to land on the back of the patio chair–whereupon the aggressive gray squirrel stood up high and chased her off his territory! She swooped left, he charged at her (from the ground again, while I was going, As if!), then right again, and then the much-larger hawk went oh forget it and hauled off into the trees, where she disappeared as if becoming one with the branches.

About an hour later I finally made out a large wing as someone preened in there. Different spot. The squirrel was still grazing fallen seed below the chair.

Wait, said Richard later, you got the squirrel to go away by feeding it? Isn’t that, like, broken? I did, though, I threw some nuts out there to make it have too many and want to go hide them, but that was so much something it didn’t expect out of me that it didn’t see but the one that landed right at his nose. So I opened the door again and threw more, and again till he finally got the hint and grabbed the loot and ran.

I was afraid I’d scared the hawk by intruding into its outside space, if only with my arm. It held back.

Finally, the finch woke up and tried hard to roll itself over and finally get away.

That did it. Incoming!

It was the male. Coopernicus landed on the far side of the patio from me and eyed me warily.

I was ten feet from the finch, inside of course. I held very very still.

We proceeded to have a game of Mother May I. He hopped one step sideways. Sideways? Sideways.

Doves copy my blinking patterns, I’ve learned, it seems birds are clearly attuned to eyes: I closed mine just long enough not to be a challenge to his authority (I hoped).  He hopped one step sideways closer.

And, with a gait like a kindergartner learning to skip, raising his wings ever so slightly with each bounce, once more.

The finch saw it and its tail bent over hard, trying: Penelope Pitstop on the train tracks. (My dad’s old Army buddy, whom we met once in Carmel when the folks were here, was a Hanna-Barbara…producer, if I remember right.)

Another sideways hop. Stopped. Eyes steadily on mine. Mother May I?

Yes.

One or two more like that and suddenly, Got it! His huge wings spread wide right in front of me and he flew with it in his feet to the fence.

Nope, too many squirrels here. Exit: stage right!

I was never one of those moms who could come up with great creative Halloween costumes out of random things at hand. Year after year, we winged it. And it was never in the budget to spend $50 times four kids on storebought flimsy plastic ones they could wear for one night to beg for candy and outgrow by the next year and then stomp their feet over and refuse to be what Older Sibling was last year.

Etc.

So why is it that now, when the pressure is totally gone, I look at the piece of plastic that Costco links juice bottles with, finally wrestle the darn thing off, look at it and go Wait–cool! Harry Potter’s professor’s eyeglasses! (Give me a second, give me a second, what was her name…) Just add pipecleaner temples at the sides and you’re good to go! Or, or, make it gold somehow: Steampunk!

Someone lend me a kid, quick, my grandson’s not big enough yet.

(p.s. Just to clarify: I see this as good for decorating a pumpkin’s face and to get some ideas going.)

Listened to Conference today again; it’s a two-day multi-session thing. (The Sea Silk project got finished.)

Quentin Cook, one of the last speakers, started to tell a story.

Okay, back up: he first made the point that bad things happen to good and bad people alike and those who would judge the ones that bad things happen to, just don’t get it.

But it is amazing how all the personal tributaries that flow into the Mississipi River of the lives of all of us eddy and tumble together. As soon as he started into his tale, I knew exactly who he was talking about: I’d read the biography by the man’s son about his father. Then he named the name. Yup.

There were six young Mormon missionaries nearly 100 years ago whose missions to Great Britain were ending at the same time and they were going to return to the US together. With much hype going on about the world’s greatest ship, the fellow named Alma booked passage for them all on that one.

And then one missionary simply could not make it that day and was going to have to ship out a day later alone. The chance at a trip of a lifetime, gone.

Alma said no way no how are we leaving you doing that long trip by yourself; you’re going with us. We’re just going to have to re-book our tickets and that’s that.

But, but!

No buts, we’re going together.

Which is why they weren’t on the Titanic.

Which is why, nearly 100 years later… I have the best daughter-in-law anybody could ever ask for and an adorable little grandson who has totally stolen our hearts.

Alma, Kim’s great-grandfather, was generous to the one who was disappointed.

Small choices matter.

They don’t stay little…

My cousins John and Dan and Dan’s wife Leslie and their boys came from out of town to stop by for a few hours on their way further south. It is amazing how fast other people’s kids grow up, and it was wonderful to see them. “Richard (the younger) has a baby?!”

Leslie’s mom is an avid knitter?  Who knew? I told her my friend Gunilla Leavitt just bought  The Golden Fleece in Santa Cruz and I bet her mom knows her. I sent them off with a copy of “Wrapped in Comfort” for her mom; family gets extra privileges and all that.

We listened to Conference, good put-up-your-feet-and-knit time. Almost finished that Sea Silk.  Smiled remembering that as a teenager I used to babysit the kids of one of the speakers on the occasional Friday evening back in Maryland; they were good kids. He’s a good and kind and loving man.

The wildlife: this morning when the other squirrels left, my little injured one came out of wherever she’d been, I saw her, she caught the nut deftly in her mouth and immediately did her funny sideways lope to her new hiding place, tucked that conspicuous tail remnant away and disappeared so completely that it surprised me all over again. The others came back; the others left; only then did she appear again, getting seconds and ducking  immediately away under the patio again and safely out of sight. She’s got it all figured out.

Costco, later: I quite enjoyed getting people to smile back.

Meantime: a sample table. People waiting their turn, when, this time it was an old Russian woman who saw that the little paper cups of food in the meat department were going to be all gone by the time it was her turn and she simply shoved her way through the crowd to get to the front.

Given what happened two weeks ago, when she shoved him–“Wait,” I asked Richard afterward, I having stepped away to go get the milk and having completely missed the scene, “some little old lady shoved YOU? You’re a pretty formidable target!”–she did, he said, she shoved him out of her way. By taking him by surprise from behind, I’m sure.

He immediately firmly told her (and the man is not soft spoken) that she was being rude, that all these other people were waiting their turn and she could go back to the back of the line like she was supposed to and wait her turn too.

She was astonished. Nobody had ever told her no like that before, apparently. She responded in a thick Russian accent but clearly she’d understood what he’d said.

“So did she go to the back of the line?” I asked.

She did not, but she did at least wait till he’d gotten his and turned aside.

It’s a start.

If you can’t be a good tree squirrel, be a good ground squirrel. That seemed to be today’s thinking.

We had a weed tree spring up that had pretty branches and we let it be although it was right next to the patio. Canopy is a good thing, right? While I was in and out of the hospital two years ago, it was the last thing anyone was paying attention to.

One day in this Spring’s early growth, though, I happened to walk outside and do a doubletake: when had the edge of the patio gotten lifted up like this! What would it do to the house, and soon, if this kept up. It was a non-native species that offered no support to the wildlife anyway, the birds didn’t even deign to land in it nor did the squirrels touch more than the trunk, much less did any of them gain any sustenance from it; it had to go.

My little black squirrel showed up in the late morning today, daring to come out even earlier this time. A walnut for you, m’dear. She was a little more skittish, a good sign of increasing health. Even her tail was groomed now.

And again, as she munched the second walnut quietly on her forearms, a large gray squirrel approached to challenge her for it.

She ducked under that patio square. I did not know she could. But she’s a tiny thing and she had it all figured out and completely disappeared in a space I thought impossible.

The challenger, after she left awhile later, came over and sniffed around there but would not could not climb in there himself. Nuts. He’d missed out again.

Meantime, one shawlette in one skein of Sea Silk, half done, practically knitting itself. It’s amazing to my fingers how thick it feels after baby alpaca laceweight!

(Ed. to add: the tree is gone, thanks!)

For the first time ever, this evening I stepped outside just in time to see both my Cooper’s hawks at once: soaring in a wide circle, surveying the neighborhood from above, their wings held wide to ride on the wind, the one announcing their territory with the other one backing her up (while some crows across the street dared not challenge their airspace but moved down among the treetops, trying to stay out of their sight). Breathtaking.

And more down to earth: she came back today.

She has clearly learned how to manage with how things are now; she didn’t fight it but simply rested on her forearms to eat the nut I rolled to her, but first took it over to the yard and off the hard concrete. Oh!

She had much more energy, though still clearly injured; she had kind of a sideways twist to her leap, a squirrel equivalent of trying to walk in super-high heels with her hips swaying, but leap she could now. A bit slow still, but yesterday I think I could have walked outside and scooped her up; had the wildlife rescue center still been open that till very recently was two blocks away  (their funding got cut), I would seriously have considered trying to get her there.

A much larger gray saw her with her second nut and interrupted his siesta to swagger down from the tree and try to steal it from her. She turned away from him; he came after her again. He saw me suddenly standing up, eyeing him: you leave her alone. This one’s under my care now.

He hesitated, then walked around in a circle as if somehow I wouldn’t follow his movements–and then he leaped on her in an attack, teeth ready to tear into her. (Quite a few of the bigger ones have torn ears; ears seem to be a target in dominance fights.)

But he leaped quickly away again as I started to open the door, and when he was far enough from her that I could aim it specifically, he got squirtgunned for it while she hid in the bushes and trees, up or down I do not know.

But she was clearly so much better than yesterday.  She felt better, she was better nourished, and she had learned quickly how to get by with how things are now rather than inflame the damage by trying to stand upright.

Watching her these last few days has been like watching a part of myself.

I finally sent off a note to my Dr. R yesterday, detailing symptoms we knew too well. It had been nearly a week of it.

He emailed me right back with a clear plan of how to start tackling this, starting with the simple declaration, “I’m sorry to hear this.”

I found a surprising degree of power in that simple declaration. Someone who knew every disease detail but also the potential emotional impact, someone who had hoped with us that the potentially-untreatable might be gone forever, someone who cared deeply and who KNEW…from hospital to hope, every single little thing…

It mattered to him. I knew of course it would. But those words were the most perfectly stated and the most caring rendition of that whole unspeakable everything, and with them, he made all the difference.

And now I could handle it.

I woke up today feeling like that little skunk-striped black squirrel that soon showed up out there: still limping but coping and more food down me and so much more energy than there was before.  I think I’ll be all right.

(Oh, and by the way, when I projected that stitch count to finish that shawl? I forgot to factor in the ruffle. 12,462 stitches in two days. I was determined to bring accomplishment out of the enforced downtime and I did it.)

I happened to pick up two bags of nuts at the bird center last week. Might as well divert them with a little food too occasionally rather than keep fighting them off all the time, and maybe they’ll stop stealing my neighbor’s tomatoes that way. They don’t usually even like tomatoes.

She looked like she was overdue for an appointment with the hairdresser, a skunk stripe beginning to emerge down the center of the black fur in a stark line down her back. Mange.  The tip of her tail has been broken off too for awhile of late and I’ve seen it red, I’ve seen it healing, I’ve seen it infected after that and the tail hairs are very thinned and end in a sharp V that makes it easy to spot her, but now it seemed scabbed over, at least.

She was eating quietly away at ground level, for once not trying to leap to the feeder for a shakedown attempt.

Yet I went to chase her away anyway.

Have you ever been reproached by a squirrel? This one with the white whiskers had been particularly obstreperous in the past, but she just stopped and looked at me, head low.

And then limped slowly away.

Oh.

I felt awful. And particularly so because I know what it’s like to have your balance get wrecked; squirrels do such cirque-de-soleil acts because they can balance so well by the flips of their long tails, and clearly, with hers damaged, things had suddenly not gone well.

I did not see her the rest of yesterday.

Nor today–till finally, in the afternoon, there she was, back on the patio alone in the heat of the Indian summer day, gleaning away at the time the others typically rest up and in the shade of the trees. She would have the ground to herself. Giving me, it felt like, a second chance.

I cracked open the door and she didn’t have the strength to run for it. I rolled a nut gently to her. She watched me. She ate it. I rolled her another, and it went past her; too far, too hard, not even for an almond, no. I tried again. Aimed better that time.

And so we communed a bit together, taking in each other’s measure, me offering her more each time she finished the previous. Nature says it’s Fall and solstice and one must eat much, and she was trying her best. Nature also says look out for hawks, and she glanced skyward a few times and seemed to shrug, eh, whatever.

She kept turning, trying to get a comfortable position. Facing me finally, I saw what I was expecting by then: her hip bone was splayed way out on one side, out of socket or broken I do not know, but I saw her try to straighten up to a squirrel pose but fall down in slow motion onto her forearms, again and again and again, giving up and just eating resting with the nut and her nose against the ground, but deciding to be determined and picking herself up and trying yet again. She hurt, she would do what she had to, but she was not going to let it get her.

There–put the left hind foot way forward to brace, okay, that worked.  She finished that hazelnut upright; I rolled another; she had to figure out all over again how to get the tail and the hip to work out right, and clearly it was hard and discouraging.

And one must put away for the winter too. I rolled one last big nut, thinking she couldn’t possibly eat one more bite, and I was right; she wanted badly to hide it, bury it, do the little squirrelly thing of faking out the bluejays and making and patting over ten holes to hide just the one nut.

But she just couldn’t. She turned back the other way: okay, tree time then.

She tried to go up and started to fall. I held my breath. She was going to DO this. She tried again and made it to the nearest limb. She caught her breath or resolve or something for a minute or two, and then climbed carefully higher where there was a wider limb she could better rest on.

That one hind leg kept giving out on her, but the better perch helped a lot. She couldn’t sit up but a moment–down again, down on her forearms, and that walnut became just the thing to make it all better; she held it and nibbled at it, unmolested by jays or hawks, full and having just a bit of dessert, watching me.

And I felt like I’d redeemed myself. A little.

In our built-up city… A week or so ago our school district backed off and said they weren’t going to interfere with the developer’s plans for putting ten (at least it wasn’t 23 anymore) houses on the daycare site next to our street.  A subject on which I have gone on and on.

Tonight, they announced at the school board meeting that not only were they interested in buying it, they had entered into a formal agreement towards doing exactly that. From the developer–a little late, but hey.

Let the soccer games on the suddenly-available field begin. Our grandchildren will have room to run after all.

(There’s a meeting set for public debate before the offer is to be formally signed.)

People spoke up, people showed up, and people kept speaking and kept coming, and the city finally heard.

I had an errand to run. It didn’t even walk, much less run (sorry, Cheryl, hopefully tomorrow). I was glad instead for large swaths that can no longer be inflamed.  It was a good day for putting up my feet and knitting, 5985 stitches’ worth.

I have a shawl that I made a few years ago that was different from anything else I’d done, in a way that I wasn’t sure at first I liked; it simply was different, that’s all. I threw it in a ziploc, I threw it in a corner, I didn’t remember what I hadn’t written down and my notes were a total mishmash that I guess made sense at the time. Sort of. I guess it was one of those I’ll get back to it that, till now, I didn’t.

I started it again last Wednesday night. I got the first 20″ worth figured out, written down, tested, knit, and the last of that part done today. It all came out exactly right and written down exactly so now. I am very pleased.

But what was in my notes after that point had no connection to reality–clearly, I’d tried it, chucked it, and riffed. I puzzled over the original while thinking, this shouldn’t be so hard; can we defuzz the brain a bit here? At least I hadn’t let myself give the thing away, knowing somewhere down deep that it was the only representative I had of what, now, I think is a really cool idea.

I took a break, I answered some email, and that’s when it hit me–I knew suddenly how I’d done what I’d done. I grabbed the older shawl again, grateful for its wooly presence, and after swatching, checking, writing, knitting, checking, correcting, knitting knitting knitting–

–I’ve got it. I wanted to enough finally that finally I’ve got it. I am terribly pleased with myself and with it. I can’t wait till the day I get to show Lisa Souza what her sapphire baby alpaca laceweight is now.

Another 5985 stitches and I’ll be casting off.

I finally got to listen to what Lynn was referring to re Brother Uchtdorf’s address.

He said we are all known and remembered to God, and offered the metaphor of the forget-me-not flower, his favorite: it is not tall, it is not as showy and splashy as some, it is a quiet little flower, down to earth, blooming quietly away at the job it does best. Five petals, plainspoken but with a beautiful color.

Cool.

(Favorite old pictures of my own favorite flowers, showy and grandstanding and all.)

“Go in a half hour?”

“At shove o’clock on a Saturday?” Eh. Sure.

Rather to my surprise I actually quite enjoyed today’s Costco trip: we ran into our friend Lisa, and then a mutual friend spotted us, one of Michelle’s friends growing up, and he asked after Michelle and Lisa and I asked after him and it was a grand old reunion over by the apples and pears.

And you know? I was feeling a sense of gratitude towards every single person who was trying to be careful not to block much less cream anybody nor put their cart where someone might back into it. People were looking out for people whom they didn’t know, constantly, even if on some level it was hidden. The intent to do good was there, visible all around for the seeing.

It was such a balm. I got one woman to look up and laugh by catching her eye as I oh oops! and moved my cart out of her way. She’d looked harried and distracted before that moment; I saw her smiling at the next person as she went on by.

I think that’s the thing I keep learning over and over: it’s the bad events that remind me how important the little good things are. As if I’d somehow forgotten. Or maybe, didn’t remember enough. Today, at least, I did.

Wonderful time old friends new friends old memories laughed over went way too late see you tomorrow!

With a random August picture of Parker thrown in.

There were maybe three times today all day when a small random flock–finches, towhees, titmice, juncos–flew in and grabbed a snack, quick, and scrambled out of sight.

It was very odd to have it so still out there. Even the squirrels barely showed, and when they did their behavior was very subdued: Don’t squirt me bro!

I didn’t see the hawks, but I have no doubt they were seeing me.

I had things to get done. Two packages to get off, one with the four hats going off to Vermont for flood relief, a card tucked inside each with a quick note of what yarns it was made of, who dyed the one from Vermont, and that Judy Sumner had given me it; I wanted to convey a sense of we’re all in this thing together. (I tucked in a few soft sweaters, too.) And this time I insured it.  Because…

I went home after talking to the postal clerk and found an actual place on the USPS website where I could send a message saying, this is the tracking number, this is the date sent, and a Kid Seta and cashmere Rabbit Tracks scarf in red disappeared after Aug 30 on its way to Germany to a recently-retired Army vet who served in Afghanistan. (I wanted them to feel a sense of responsibility to honor one who has given and served much; I certainly do.)

I went to Purlescence tonight, got to see Jasmin and Gigi and a whole bunch of people and talk and listen and soak in the yarny essence of everything and just in case, looked and found a pretty close match on the Kid Seta. I’ve got more of the laceweight cashmere. But the hesitance was in the thought, if I don’t buy it the original will show up, right? Just a little more hope a little longer.

At one point, Kay walked around the room handing out copies of Piecework Magazine’s new Knitting Traditions issue. We were all thumbing through it, reading it, admiring things in it, when Kay, who had by then sat down and was doing likewise, exclaimed suddenly, “Ohmygosh! That’s Ruth!” (She may have said “Ruth’s” with me missing the s.)

Wait, what? I didn’t see any pictures of…

Sandi (sitting on floor, left and front) came over and apologized for having forgotten to tell her it was in there:  Ava Coleman had an article in there on christening gowns, and as an example showed the beautiful lace gown she had knit for her granddaughter.

Ava happens to be Sandi’s mom (correction and thank you Kathy: her former mother-in-law–I knew that… It’s just that she’s the only mom to Sandi I’ve ever known, and they’re such a natural fit of caring, talented, knitterly people.)

Now I got it: that wasn’t someone’s following the same pattern as… That WAS Ruth’s!