By the way, Sue, if you read this, my oldest goes by her nickname Sam on my blog, in case you read back a bit.

Sam happened to call Sunday night, and I told her I’d seen Sue.  Sam told me what I’d already written here, because it was so true, that Sue had held everybody and everything together during Theron’s illness; she would dearly like to see her again herself sometime.

I’m all ready to spring for her plane ticket from Vermont.

Meantime.  Being hearing impaired can be entertaining.

My mom is an excellent cook, as are my daughters; it skipped a generation, but meantime, Mom’s here and it’s fun to have her playing in the kitchen–and to her it is playing, like I play with yarn. Always a new idea or ingredient or recipe to try out.

Which is how I parroted back to her the phrase I’d heard tonight:  “Would you like that wombat with sour cream?”

I think every good punster needs a hearing impairment to help keep their skills up, don’t you?

When my oldest was in high school, a dozen years or so ago, there was a young band and orchestra teacher, Theron Pritchett, in his second year there.  His enthusiasm for music and his love for his students was such that his classroom quickly became the place to be, and the number of kids signing up soared.

Then he found out he had cancer. When he said they’d taken a 15-lb tumor out of his stomach, everybody went, Where?  I mean, the guy was tall and thin to begin with, but afterward it was like his shirt could blow right through him in the wind.  Fifteen pounds!

But it was apparently self-contained, they were very sure they’d gotten it all, and he was relieved to be back at work with his kids.  Mine absolutely adored him.  He was a good one.

I was sitting in my daughter’s next concert at school when an unexpected mental image came to me. I’d been spinning some 90’s (Bradford count) merino.  Now,  I didn’t know at the time how rare it was to even find a wool that fine to spin.  Where I got it no longer has it.  It was seriously soft stuff–the micron count was finer than cashmere. I had a baby blanket in mind to make with it, but as I sat watching Theron conduct and the kids play up on that stage, I pictured a different project entirely and I absolutely knew that what that wool was for was for making him an afghan to wish him well with. To try to convey how important he was to all the parents in the high school music community as well as the kids.

I did a fair bit more spinning, two-ply skein after two-ply skein.  I wished fiercely that I knew how to knit lace.  Had it been a few years in the future…  I could picture exactly how I could have used lace leaf patterns and a faggoting stitch for a trunk to knit the idea of a Tree of Life, but at the time, it was simply beyond me.  That fervent wish later helped propel me to sit down, books and needles in hand, and start to make myself finally work through and learn what I’d needed to know then.  My first attempt at one repeat of Dutch Elm Leaves, in Theron’s memory, took me over an hour to do across 15 stitches with two mistakes I couldn’t figure out how to fix.

And look at me now.  But this story isn’t about me.

So, instead, for his afghan, I sketched out what I had in mind and knit up that tree in a combination of knit and purl stitches gansey style.  When I got done, you could see it if you saw it in light that let the purl stitches shadow across just a bit; otherwise, it was just a white blanket, but very nice.

I don’t have a picture of it. What I really wish is that I had a picture of Theron with it.  He loved it and was fairly blown away; and then the thoroughly delightful exclamation of disbelief I knew was coming: “You SPUN the YARN?!!”

Memory says that band enrollment tripled and that that was when the school hired a second teacher to help handle the load.  Who was Sue.  Whom I got to see last night at the concert.

Shortly after she arrived at the school, I spun and knitted her a scarf–triangle and in angora, if I remember correctly.

Theron was there when I gave it to her.  She was totally thrilled and stunned.  I got to watch the grin on his face as she exclaimed the exact same words he had, “You SPUN the YARN?!!”  He told her about his afghan in great delight.

Then the day word came he’d relapsed; it was hard.  And yet I want to say: my daughter marveled to me at the time at how the kids across the high school came together, how they stopped judging each other the way teenagers do but simply saw each other as fellow travelers.  Life is short; treat each other well.  Theron had a positive influence far beyond what he knew as the kids reached out to each other in their grief.

Sue was one of the small group of friends who played a deeply moving rendition of  “Amazing Grace” at his funeral.

Where I met Theron’s partner and introduced myself as the one who’d knit his afghan. He told me Theron had asked for it and had kept it on the bed with him his last week.  I loved that.  I loved thinking that the love I had tried to knit into it had comforted him.  That comforted me.

I am so glad I got to see Sue last night.  I am so glad we went!

I should write about this tomorrow when it’s not so late and I’m more coherent, but… I didn’t think I was up to going to hear the Peninsula Symphony play tonight, so I tried to give away the tickets Don had given me.  Didn’t work.  I figured well, then, maybe that means there’s a reason I should go other than the fact that I would certainly enjoy the music.  And Mom, who’s a musician, wanted to go, and I wanted to take good care of her like she’s been taking good care of me.  So hey.  She and I went.

My kids had a band teacher in high school they adored, and it turns out she plays in that symphony.   I managed to snag her afterwards and catch up a little; it was so good to see her.  It’s been way too long. I am so glad I got to go and that nobody else accepted my offer of those tickets!

Which is kind of a different take on it than earlier today, isn’t it?  Good people make everything worthwhile.

And Don? Thank you for those. I pictured Amalie applauding and wished you could have heard it all too.  There was a tuba concerto and a bassoon concerto, and the players were clearly having the time of their lives; bravo!

Someone I was talking to sparked the memory of a would-be recipient of my knitting, a good while ago.

This was not long after I’d started spinning my own yarn but well before I figured out how to knit lace. I splurged on a closeout and spun up some angora, little bunny fibers flying all around me as the wheel turned.  Achoo!  (A side note: I was curious, having been taught that adding twist to create yarn means adding friction to the fiber to hold it together–and the answer is yes, you can spin enough twist into angora to make it feel as harsh as burlap.  Don’t.)

Other than the burlap bit, I spun it into a fine two-ply, enough to fill an Ashford bobbin to the max; then I knit it  into a simple triangle shawl.  Or rather, more a large scarf, done thus: cast on three, knit (or purl, as the case may be) into the front and back of the last stitch of each row till the thing is the size you want.  Use small yarn and big needles for a faux-lace look.  Tadaah.  Take a small hair elastic, crochet tightly all around it in the same yarn to completely cover the elastic, and run it up the long ends of the triangle to hold the thing on and in place in the front.

So. I was wearing it while we were out and about.  Fluffy, soft, simple, not fancy; I was quite proud of it.

And an old woman I barely knew saw it.  She announced I was going to make her one too. She was going to pay me. Twenty-five dollars. That was a lot of money, you know! When could I have it done by?

I managed to recover from my astonishment without bursting out laughing.  *I* knew it was handspun and the time involved, and knowing that pure angora at retail cost a dollar per GRAM in store-bought yarn…

She was adamant and would not be dissuaded. I offered to teach her how to knit.  She already knew how; didn’t want to.  Twenty-five dollars. That was a lot of money, you know.  When could I have it done by?

Waiiiit, waiiiiiiiiit, whoa…

We managed to progress to her offering me the (I could just picture old scratchy acrylic from the 60’s) aged gold yarn in her closet to knit it with. I reiterated my offer to help her knit it herself.

She did finally give up after she made it clear that I was impoverishing myself and really missing out. Twenty-five dollars. That was a lot of money, you know!

Part of me kind of wished–still wishes–that I had it in me to be generous enough to surprise her with her own scarf, and in angora, too; that was one person who I knew would like the thing if I did.  If only.  If only she’d shown the least humility. But she just didn’t have it in her.

And neither did I.

That’s both an exclamation of delight and a note to self. 

Meantime, I was knitting something subdued and quiet and…suddenly I felt like, color. I need color! I put the one project aside and grabbed the Lisa Souza’s Mardi Gras merino that had come in the get-well basket from my Purlescence knit-night friends in January.  I’ve started it in the Carlsbad scarf, a simple pattern that is good for showing off an extravagant color display like this.

This is the yarn that, while I was in the hospital, I kept thinking how good it would look on that day’s nurse. Then the next one. And the next one.

There’s enough yarn for two scarves, and it’s a total toss-up where they’ll land, but at least this one will go to Stanford Hospital.

(Meantime, this Hercules amaryllis opened today, one of the bulbs Dad gave me this past Christmas.)

Alison’s health is not the problem right now, but our ADSL provider, Speakeasy.net,  is the problem.  They are  dropping a large percentage of all the packets coming to or from our house.  They are not willing to acknowledge the problem, but with this current level of service she can not get to any webpage, or email server.

Fixing requires them to first acknowledge that there is a problem.  We are still stuck at admitting the problem exists.

The blog is not affected, just her access to it.

I’ve had the experience before of knitting something, giving it away, and then totally forgetting later that I’d made it.  I’ve found projects stashed away I’d forgotten starting, I’ve seen people wearing scarves that answered my inner question as to whether I’d knitted for them yet–oh, right, right, that yarn, I remember that.  Maybe not what I made with it or just who it went to, but the yarn, yes, I almost always remember working with whatever yarn when I see it.

But this one really threw me.  Some of the women at church were throwing a mystery-dinner party tonight, and Christina showed up wearing a gorgeous open-front circular shawl, borrowed from someone else for her costume. She didn’t know who’d knitted it and had just assumed I probably had.

I was stunned. There’s no way I could have made that in that colorway and not remember it, but that was definitely my pattern.

Turns out that someone I didn’t know was now a knitter and that I didn’t remember they’d bought my book, if I knew, had made a sweeping, gorgeous Julia shawl from it.  And I’d had no idea.

But I couldn’t be absolutely sure it wasn’t something from my own needles till I’d eyeballed its yarn up close: that sealed it. Nope, I’ve never knit with that one. That’s someone else’s knitting.

Christina was trying to wrap her mind around the fact that I had to see the yarn to know that, at the same time I was wrapping mine around the covert knitter who didn’t tell me she’d succombed to my addiction.  It was pretty funny.

I need to work in the ends on most of these scarves (or, as my mother calls them, yarn necklaces); it won’t take me long.  It’s been, finish knitting one, dive into the next, finish knitting the second, dive into the next, over and over–I was trying to get a lot done before I just couldn’t stand it, I had to finally go start that black cashmere shawl.

The black shawl has now commenced.

Which didn’t stop me from casting on Amanda‘s Huarache yarn today while waiting for the dentist. You can never have enough lace scarves on hand when you’re planning on going back and thanking your nurses; I’ve got a long way to go.

Meantime, a few years ago, I woke up one morning after a night of heavy storms to see a bright blue sky out the clerestory window.  Empty expanse.  It took me a moment to puzzle out what was missing: a tree had blown over, and the green branches I was used to waking up to were simply gone.  (The red berries are on the heavenly bamboo it had been growing next to.)

We had someone cut its carcass up and haul it away for us, but for whatever reason, they left the overturned stump that was still within the long raised flower bed.  Huh.

Having grown up in a house in the woods, I knew that old wood is good for all kinds of wildlife. My folks had had a towering dead tulip poplar that the then-endangered pileated woodpeckers loved.  Bugs would eat the dead wood, and high off the ground, those huge woodpeckers would go after the bugs, spectacularly so: you could see chunks of wood going flying and the whole neighborhood could hear one hammering at work.  Go check out the tree trunk as well as the birds in that link.

You’re not going to get that same effect from a stump on the ground, but you go with what you’ve got.

With our recent rains, these mushrooms on the stump have grown around and through the leaves of the heavenly bamboo, swirling their colors and dancing round and round for sheer joy at being alive.

My photos haven’t been embiggening since a recent WordPress update.    I’ll ask my blogmeister about it, but I want to give her a little time: she and her family bought a house last week.  Meantime, my flowering pear, the one we once thought we were losing, has burst into bloom in the last few days, throwing up its arms to the heavens in celebration of spring, and fuller and healthier than ever.

Anybody know what the name of this is?  And what wildlife might particularly like it?  The bare branches in front of it are my Fuji apple tree, ready for a little springtime too.

Meantime, here’s an amaryllis’s equivalent of gray hair, the color of the flowers in the older stalk (two weeks old!) a lighter pink at the back, and in the second stalk, newly opened, bursting out in color.  Same plant.

Here, this shows the contrast a little better.

Now that you have that earworm singing away…

I had an amaryllis outside with a bud that was just starting to open when the stalk got blown over.  I expected it to recover and come back upright, but no; its reaction was, fine with it; bloom where you are face-planted.

But since the flowers were hiding on the far side of the picnic table where nobody could see it from inside the house, I cut it and brought it in where it could brighten up the room and not just keep to itself.

Meantime, today, Nancy, instigator extraordinaire who talked me into taking handspinning and dyeing classes years ago, stopped by today with flowers and chocolate.  She’s also the one who knit the circle shawl for me to give away to whomever that turned out perfect for one of my doctors, who loved it.

Two trailers before we get to the main show: first, a thank you to Judy Sumner for the gorgeous yarn that had me catching my breath and going ooh, feel this! to Mom and Richard.  It’s 13.5 oz  (!) of silk/merino from Ellen’s Halfpint Farm in Evening Shadows, a colorway I particularly like.  Judy, I will try to knit this into something worthy of such generosity.  Or several somethings, at that yardage.

And a shoutout to Edgepark.com:  boy, could they teach my health insurance company something about customer satisfaction.   My supplies came. Already!

Now, on to the blog–

I had to laugh at Momo Fali’s comment, because I once did just a quick run to Costco for a couple of gallons of milk, it being all of a mile away, and the clerk stopped and stared at me: he had to give me change for my five.  “How did you DO that?!”

You build up a certain immunity.

Another Costco moment: I once went with my younger daughter pushing me in a wheelchair.  Never again on a Saturday; you’re lower down than the tops of the carts and people just don’t see you.   Bumper carts in the funhouse.  But the priceless moment was when Michelle parked me for a moment to run go look at something just as a young dad did likewise in front of us, and I suddenly found myself looking right up at a two-year-old boy carefully strapped in.

Who had the most befoozled look on his face as he stared down at me, trying to take it in: there’s a GROWNUP.  In a STROLLER.  Being pushed by a KID!!!

Utterly nonpsychodegradeable. Poor kid. I smiled and waved hi and he had no idea how he was supposed to react, it was just beyond him.

Scene three:  Costco again.  On a day when it was raining, when I still needed a chair at the time but no way did anyone in the family want to take the time standing in the heavy downpour to get it out of the car; Richard let the kids and me out in front of the entry to go use the store’s scooter instead, hoping there would be one not being used. There was.

Well, now, this was kind of cool: it had a horn (although calling it a horn is kind of like a chihuahua calling itself a Great Dane) that sounded like the RoadRunner for when people are barreling down on you. Meep meep!

The problem came, though, when we were at the far end of the store. The scooter died.  Totally. The gauge said the battery was fully charged, but it was as stubborn as an Iditarod dog in the hot Arizona summer: ain’t goin’ nowhere, dude.  After a few moments of trying, Richard gave up and went to go ask someone.

The manager came over, checked it out, and figured out the problem: “It’s thrown the deadman switch. It doesn’t think anybody’s there. You don’t weigh enough. Try putting your purse in your lap and a 25-lb bag of rice or something next to you on the seat.”

Not that I wanted any rice… We made do. And the thing roared back to life.

I tried to run after our longtime mailman Monday afternoon and was surprised to find my legs not quite moving as fast as I was telling them to–I nearly splatted forward on my face.  Oh.  So I called after the guy as he was walking away, he stopped, put my bill payment in his pack with a smile, sure, lady, no problem.

I went back inside marveling at the disconnect between brain and attempted movement–and marveling too at the fact that I simply hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t doing that anymore when I walk.  For a month, I’d had to be mindful of my steps to make sure my legs kept up the pace or my expectations slowed down to match them.  How soon we forget, the instant things seem to be normal again.

Today.  Out of milk and orange juice, we decided we needed a quick trip to the nearby Costco.

To Mom and Richard’s surprise, I offered to tag along. And I went.

The Trader Joe’s store where I found myself abruptly giving out last week, where Sam made me go sit down fast, is a small store.  Costco, on the other hand, is huge.  We walked aisle after aisle–I hadn’t been able to go in nearly four months.  It was like a novelty.  An adventure.  Plus I was having to look at the foods on display with new eyes: oh, that’s good stuff, oh wait, I can’t eat that.  That? No. Not that. That. Another week left on the post-surgical modified diet; having had one blockage and NG tube, I’m being real careful to avoid a repeat.

I did it.  I walked Costco.  I did it!

Next time, by golly, I might even try to run down one back aisle when nobody’s looking.

Granted, John and I have been friends for 22 years.  But still!

Six years ago, I called my audiologist after getting out of the hospital with what had been, up till then, my worst Crohn’s flare.  I was having  a hard time hearing and was wondering about my hearing aids .  John’s reaction, not knowing I’d been ill, was to ask me if I’d lost weight recently; well, yes, thirteen pounds.

He told me, That’s it, then; you lost weight in your ear canals and your earmolds no longer fit properly. They’re not transmitting the sound well enough.

“I lost weight in my EAR CANALS?!  How useless is THAT!”

He laughed.

So here I am.  I lost twenty-five pounds since Christmas, have managed to get eight back in the last month by working hard at it, and I’d been thinking I was just going to have to wait and simply be deafer till I get back to normal.  New earmolds are a SeaSilk two-skeined shawl each, and I knew this was temporary–there’s no chance I’m going to stay this thin.

My deductibles and co-pays are a staggering $8800, besides various hospital incidentals and not-covereds, etc etc.  (I know.  At least I have insurance. I have no right to complain.)  But I felt I just couldn’t afford to go get new earmolds on top of that.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on the phone with my insurance company and with vendors, trying to straighten out how to get ostomy supplies, which are by prescription only and not something you can just go buy off the shelf; but I got the impression the company doesn’t seem to be popular with a lot of vendors.  (Yeah, I could tell them a story or two myself…  See why I wrote about forgiveness?)

I ‘ve been finding I have to walk with the speakerphone on over to my mom so that she can help me figure out what the person at the other end is saying, and ohplease don’t let them call me back while she’s out on a walk. I kept thinking, what on earth will I do after she flies home?

I got frustrated enough after the last call to phone John’s office. Uncle! I had to get at least one new earmold, even if it’s only for a short term and I never make use of it again. I had to be more functional than this.

John and his office knew what I’d been going through this time and have worried and done their fair share of praying.  And John knew why I’d put off coming in.

He told me he was making me new earmolds, and that that was his gift towards my getting better.

What do you do with a friend who makes your eyes leak like that.  When could I come in?

How about right now?

And so Mom and I went off to Los Gatos.  One ear had too much wax for an impression, the other was clear, so John and I both got our way; one earmold, at least for now, coming up.

Oh, and those ostomy supplies? The vendor promises they’ll be here by Friday.

The first speaker at church today spoke of the love of God, how it took her awhile to find that He could so easily forgive the paths she’d taken in her teens–that He was just waiting for her to find that in His love, she could forgive herself and finally let go of any power those mistakes had had over her. She could move forward now.

The second spoke of forgiving others who had given offense. Then, tears springing to his eyes, he said he once felt he had offended God by his actions and had prayed for forgiveness; then he tried to describe the response he felt so strongly and for which he would forever be grateful, but for which there are no human words:  God loved him.

And I knew, listening to him, remembering, that an experience like that comes with the knowledge that we are required to go forth from there and love others absolutely, unconditionally, and with all our hearts as well.

But we are all still human. And it’s a challenge.

Forgiveness with an open heart is a willingness to let go of the parts of the past that you didn’t want to have had happen, in order to live the future you would give anything to be able to have.