So the plan was, turn in that last final of the semester and then go into surgery that day and the baby would come three weeks later, by which time Richard-the-younger would have recovered enough to be really helpful.

Which means he had his ACL replaced Friday and you know how the rest of that story complied with their plans.

We were at the grocery store this afternoon when we got a text from him: in the ER. Suspected blood clot. MRI in a moment.

He did not respond to his phone.

We called our other kids and went home and waited to hear, fully aware of what a blood clot could potentially do to a father of four days.

I can’t tell you how glad I was when the phone finally rang: the swelling and the pain, yes; blood clot, no.  Good thing he took it seriously, though, because you just don’t mess with what that could have been.

Unto us our son is given.  And his son, in time for a Christmas that merits a lot of thankful celebrating this year. And with the way things turned out, Richard gets to spend a lot of time sitting holding his newborn.

Who likes to hold onto him, too.

And on a side note–it has been raining in California. A lot.

UPS, at least around here, decided that it would be cheaper this time of year to buy some bicycles with trailers rather than rent extra trucks, and to hire people (often college kids on break) to deliver the extra loads of packages that way. Stay in shape, earn a little money, and put a smile on the face of every person you ride past.  We’ve had the bikes deliver to us twice now that we’ve seen.

This morning nobody was in a hurry to dash out into the downpour to get the newspaper.  I finally opened the front door in the afternoon to–

–and there, tucked right against the door, out of the rain, were two packages.

And our newspaper between them.

It was so wonderful, while my husband and I were saying our prayers together last night and this morning for each of our kids as we always do, to be able to say not just “and the baby,” but, “Parker.”

Huge feet on a baby is supposed to say he’ll be a tall one. Given his 6’9″ daddy, this will surprise no one.  I can just picture Parker teasing his father someday by looking down at him and calling him “Little Buddy” right back at him.

(It’s amazing. One day, and he already looks older.)

Today, my mother turns 80. Eighty years from today, our grandson will too. Welcome, welcome to the world, little one. Happy, happy birthday, Mom.

Phone call 1 am: Kim’s water had broken. 4-something am: my husband texted as to whether there were any news yet? The phone rang a few minutes later, saying Little Buddy (his name so far) had arrived about 30 seconds ahead of that text.  5 lbs 7 oz, 18″. He’s a preemie, but not by much and all is well.

Note that I had given my son the hat the hospital in New Hampshire sent him home with when he was born, and I do believe that is it on his son’s head.

(Ed. to add, Nope–they’re still making the same generic hospital hat 26 years later.)

“I need some blog inspiration here.”

Her face lit up. “How about you say you picked your daughter up from the airport and that very night she cooked a delicious dinner of such and such and then the next night she cooked such and such and the next night she cooked such and such and it was all really good and the next night she cooked such and such and tonight she and her brother together cooked a really yummy dinner! Clearly, I raised my children right!”

“Can I quote you?”

“YES!” she exclaimed in delight, the biggest grin on her face.

A little water, a little waiting. And now you can see the slight shimmer to the woolly Malabrigo Sock-y goodness, the depth of the pattern, and oh by the way you can pull it through my wedding ring–and it’s a blanket.

Or will be, in about a bajillion more knitting hours.  Carrying it to Nina’s annual Christmas party and showing it off to her was fun but doesn’t seem to have added any length to it by just admiring its lacy looks. (The chocolate torte that came too was nowhere to be found when it was time to come home again. I think it entered the nibs-less protection program. Or ran off with the ChocolateNess Monster.)

Right then. Back to work.

Tiny yarn, small needles, a large stitch count, and after all the knitting I did today, (which, granted, given the season and the children home, wasn’t what it might have been) it is measuring officially one inch shorter than this morning.

Sometimes, knitting acts like a cat.

A squirtgun effect will make it behave.  I will go rinse it and set it out still on the needles to dry, a quasi-block.  Let’s see if we can get Socks here to stretch its paws a bit.

———-

p.s.  For those who’ve known the Provo Tabernacle and haven’t heard yet.  I have fond memories from college of the incredible acoustics in that building: of being in the upper balcony facing the front and my neighbor’s adorable little elf of a four-year-old being so ready to be done with sitting quietly up there. (There was no air conditioning. Lots of people. Heat rises.)  She leaped to her feet in the middle of the meeting after one early speaker said the magic word Amen, exclaiming in a voice that carried around the entire interior, “We go now Daddy?!”

And now the building has left the elves.

His plane was late but that just meant I could go to Knit Night and afterwards go help pick him up, too. (Saying a prayer along the way for all those people in all those cars (six?) with all those rescue crews at work in the other direction on the bridge, it looked like at least one of the cars totally spun out in heavy traffic–slow DOWN, people, the weather is bad, it’s not worth the speeding! ‘Tis the season, you want everybody to be able to celebrate when you get there!)

John’s home, John’s home!

Michelle’s home, Michelle’s home!

We were both saying to the other, I was going to pick up some soy milk for her before this, I don’t know why I didn’t get around to it earlier. We hated to keep her from getting to go straight home after her long day.

And yet.  The outcome was that after talking yesterday about superb teachers–the traffic to the airport was terrible, we were late getting there to pick her up, which means that when we stopped at the grocery store on the way home, we just happened to be there right at the same time as Ginny. Who is the best kindergarten teacher ever and who taught all our kids. (I asked for her specifically all four times.)

That was as perfect a way as I can think of to welcome our daughter home. Talk about old times! And new, and we did.

Ginny is someone who, last I saw, had a small enclosure set up in a corner in her classroom: streamers hanging down to create what she called the butterfly room. The children raised Monarchs in there, and when a child needed some time to calm down, they could go in there for a moment to be still and have the butterflies they’d fed and watched and cared for land on their arms, their shoulders, their heads, alive and peaceful and colorful, eye right to eye.

And then when the proper time in the year came, the children released them to fly free.

Every Monarch they might ever see for the rest of their lives, they could wonder if it was descended from one of their own and feel a kinship to it.

And we claim Ginny as ours forever.

I mentioned earlier the passing of Smokey, and after quoting his love Jan’s words, this happened the next day. Cool.

What I didn’t mention on the blog, I did yesterday to Jan and to Smokey’s oldest daughter.

The 13th would have been his birthday as well as mine, and thus was the day of his memorial service. We got to see old friends from back in the day, it had been way too long… PAM!!! Pam, who had had no children yet when we moved here, who had latched onto my babies and adored them as we adored her. SO good to see you! And you, and you, and…

But what I said to those two members of Smokey’s family, with more detail here, was this:

My husband’s first job out of grad school was in a town near New Hampshire’s southern border where a couple of high-tech companies had started expanding into to escape Massachusetts’ taxes in the Route 128 corridor.  The town was growing fast and was a mixture of old small-town New England and young professionals from all over.

The old folks voted down things they didn’t want to pay for: kindergarten being one of them. Instead, the schools there tested a small child coming in for the first time to see if he could do the things you’re supposed to learn in kindergarten–and if not, or if he froze up in front of the stranger doing the testing, he got put in Readiness, which was kindergarten by another name. There were eight-year-olds in first grade there!  How does a child recover from that?  They don’t.  And that was a third of the children. Shyness could tank your path forever.

There was a memorable School Board meeting where some guy proclaimed all public schooling as being (slamming his fist on the table and shouting) COMMUNISM!

We invited the folks next door over once for an evening of Scrabble, and were stunned at being turned down with, “We don’t play that kind of game like you educated folks.” The woman went on to tell me that they were discouraging their kids from going to college.

And this was where my children were going to grow up? Nice people around us, make no mistake, it’s just, we grew up in the part of the country with the highest number of PhD’s per capita and high expectations on the children. Lifelong pursuit of learning is just something you do.

We moved here near Stanford University just before our oldest turned five.  I told the two women yesterday that now, she’s finishing her PhD, a researcher with a dream to cure malaria. The others are  in their own graduate paths, the last in his undergrad, inspired to pursue his own area of science by a gifted middle school teacher.

Smokey had not only offered my husband a job in Silicon Valley; he had changed… everything. (They were nodding; they knew what the schools here are like: the pressure, for good and bad, for everybody to be the next brilliant scientist or engineer to change the world. The co-author of the high school biology textbook was my oldest’s actual teacher, passing on her love of the subject and inspiring her to follow her footsteps. )

“Everything!”

Jan was thrilled.  His daughter was nodding, going, “All these stories I’m hearing! All these people he influenced! I never knew…!”

And thank you Mom for all the hard work! 52: Life, the Universe, and Everything, and a perfect 10 on top. This is going to be a great year!

The question asked today at church was, and the teacher was asking for our personal stories here, “What gift are you most grateful for? Not necessarily some material one.” (Making it clear that a material one would not necessarily be excluded, either; it’s the meaning of it that matters.)

What do I have to say for myself, I thought.  Well now.  Starting at faith and family and friends, there are so many more moments than one could ever begin to say.

I offered the story about the great surprise of my first amaryllis bulb, sent to me at my freshman college dorm just before the start of my first-ever set of finals. It was a birthday present from my dad.  He had always given my mother an amaryllis for her birthday; mine is a week before hers.  With that package, he was declaring me an adult now and his full faith in me and I totally bawled when I opened it.

But what I didn’t say to that teacher was, the intimacy of her question reminded me all over again of how infinitely grateful I am for the skills of the surgeons and everybody else last year.

And for the doctor who walked in my hospital room seven years ago needing terribly for me to live. And so I had to.  Everything else after that only came and only will come because he cared so deeply in that moment about someone he barely knew, rather than trying to shield himself from pain when all seemed lost.

I cannot WAIT to hold my first grandson next month!

The cheerful, tiny Bewick’s wrens are some of my favorites of the bird world.  One of the things I’ve been doing lately is keeping a small suet cake inside and breaking a little off with the edge of a spoon, taking it outside, and smushing it into crumbs on a wooden box out there where they like to go check out whether the woodpecker working away above on another cake in a holder left any gleanings yet; it’s just a step or two outside the glass door.  I often make two little taps with the spoon as if to call them to dinner, hoping for a little Pavlovian effect. I can play woodpecker too.

Today I was still at the smushing stage when, to my surprise, one of the Bewick’s swooped by in an arc right past where I was bending over, then quickly away to the edge of the patio, waiting expectantly.  Then swooping in to eat as soon as I stepped back inside the door.

And here’s the thing, the most mindboggling thing to me: as it zipped by, I HEARD IT SINGING.

Not the whole song, just a flash of cheerful loud–loud!–notes that disappeared fast between its motions and mine and the near-instant distance away. They’re not only cute–but wow, what a voice!

To the engineers at Sonic Innovations hearing aid company, if you ever see this, thank you for giving me a memory I never expected, with a now-110 dB hearing loss at 8Khz, could be possible again. Wow!

First: there’s a local couple, Tuck and Patti–our family sat under the trees listening to them giving a free concert in front of City Hall once back when our kids were younger, their way, they said, of giving thanks to the community that had believed in them before they were successful.

There is nobody who plays guitar like Tuck. And Patti’s voice!

Being a dedicated Birkenstock wearer, I always got a kick out of her High Heeled Shoes blues song. And this, courtesy of my husband, is what made me think of it. Comfy looking, huh? Something to heel all that ails a body.

The other thing today:

I went to Purlescence to knit among friends, having missed them last night and being in terrible withdrawal. Not to mention, I couldn’t wait to make a delivery. Richard had helped put me up to it. (“I think they’re down that aisle, dear.” –Thanks!)

I walked in the door and handed a certain someone a wrapped present (oh good, she IS here).

She did this furtive quick glance to the sides, because clearly I was just handing one present only and only to her. She whispered, “Should I open it?”

“Yes, sure, go ahead.” (Thinking, don’t you dare not, I’ve been in too giddy an anticipation for you not to.)

The tag read: Because sometimes, that’s just the way the cooking crumbles.

Huh?  She held it down out of sight of the others, carefully working at the paper,  trying to peer through the growing crack at the seam as she gently tugged, the wrapping finally coming off for her to see–and she screamed! Threw her chair back, leaping up, just screaming with laughter, holding it up and showing it to the others and exclaiming, “This is the. BEST. EVER!!!”

Last week, she’d told us all of going out to dinner with her husband and being given a dish with so much more food than she could eat and that was just totally inundated with bacon. Ooh, bacon! And there was so much!  She took the leftovers home.

She woke up in the morning looking forward to that bacon (you know? I never did hear what the rest of the dish was. I don’t think it mattered.) She got up in just so much anticipation of walking into that kitchen downstairs for the rest of it, but her husband, who had had to leave for work earlier than her, had eaten it.

All of it.  Gone.

She told us this last week with an I-know-this-is-silly look and tone of, this was almost grounds… (for pouting, yeah, that’s it. Pouting!)

The wrapping paper fell away.  And she saw: a giant Costco package of cooked crumbled bacon.

I told her as I was walking out the shop door later and she reached to give me another hug before I left, “Best. Response. EVER!!”

Nina and I braved the southbound traffic tonight and went to Green Planet in Campbell.

Going around the circle at their Knit Night, when it was my turn to show off my knitting, I had nothing except the project in my hands. The post office had beaten them all to it.

But boy, have I got a long way to go yet!