So. Suburban Correspondent and I exchanged a few emails offline with me giving her a little more background story: my daughter had had surgery at 18 months and the plastic surgeon had had us put paper tape, available on scotch-tape-style rolls at the drugstore, on her incision site 24/7 for six months minimum to keep the scarring way down.  Granted, she’s 22 now and that advice is a little old by now. But it also means I can affirm that given how large an area he operated on and how small and faint her scar is–and the fact that her father grows massive scars when he scars–the doctor’s advice clearly was good.  Suburban Correspondent’s little one had just gotten stitches, so the topic was of interest.

Suburban’s husband Larry teased her about taking advice from her imaginery internet friend. And so our pair of posts ensued, with her insisting I really was real; I’d written this!

The kicker of a follow-up is that my husband was then up in the night with a migraine and did not turn on the light.  Light hurts. Light might wake up his wife.  Darkness, yes, darkness good, light bad.

Unless you happen to turn around in mid-stride, misjudge, are taller than the average doorframe–we replaced most of the doorframes with non-standard ones for this very reason–and you smack your forehead.  HARD.

So, hubster puts some tape on it like the plastic surgeon said long ago, whatever he can quickly find, which happens to be the superduper deathgrip stuff rather than the flimsy paper variety, and goes to bed rather than waking me up to take him in for stitches.

Somehow sometime he took that tape back off.  I guess his forehead bothered his sleeping self.

I wake up in the morning, and dude!  Not only is his face Frankensteined, but he’s got two faint rows of white (glue from the tape) embedded in his skin.  You hit the wall so hard you sank the paint off the wall into your forehead?!

So I reminded him, 24/7 paper tape, hey Frankenstein, you know, you gotta keep that scarring down.

And I got this rolling of his eyes and a not on your life! reaction back.

I guess the moral of the story is, I can tell an 18-month-old in friendly terms that she IS going to wear that tape, end of story, and thus it was.  But not someone that much bigger than me. And hey, Larry–it really did happen.

And the fact that no way no how will he let me photograph it to memorialize it forever on the Internet is all the more proof that he’s real, too.

Suburban Correspondent, it seems, got into a discussion with her husband.  True, I tend to sign my comments on other people’s blogs and appear on my own as AlisonH.  But if you go to this page, there you go.  I am a real person.  I do have a full name.  One connected to a few other writers (hi Dad!); remember this post?  After I wrote it, my niece got married in New York City.  I wasn’t able to go, but Janet Asimov came, and my brother emailed me afterwards to say that if he and I live to be 80, he now knows exactly what I’ll look like, that the family resemblance was very strong.  (I should be so lucky–Janet’s beautiful in the pictures, and I look forward to meeting her.)

Yes, Suburban Correspondent’s husband Larry, I would say I make an occasional foray out into real life.  Anybody out there who can vouch for me on that?

I teased Ann at church today: I liked her red necklace.  I told her it looked like she’d brought her own snack to church, just to make sure she didn’t get hungry–it looked like a string of licorice.

Ann, sweet elderly lady that she is, guffawed.

I know her grandson and his wife; they have two little girls, one shy, one I can sometimes get to laugh or smile back at me.

I know Ann’s daughter, although, not so much; she visits often enough that I’ve had the occasional conversation with her.  It would take me awhile to think of her name.  But Phyllis knew it, and we know each other certainly by sight and by friendliness, and as Phyll and her husband were bringing us home from the airport Monday night, they mentioned that the woman’s husband had very suddenly very unexpectedly died.

He did *what*?  Ann, I could see; she’s of the World War Two generation and pretty frail. But her thin healthy son-in-law?

Ann’s daughter was there in church today, and I went up to her and told her I’d heard and I was so sorry.  She hugged me back.  I told her we’d been away–Baltimore, Vermont…  that I’d only just found out.

Where in Vermont?

And it turns out she’d been where we’d been, just a month ahead of us.  Burlington, the Ben and Jerry’s plant, the teddy bear factory and the Lake Champlain Chocolates next door.  And, get this, she got to eat one of those cider doughnuts over at Cider Hollow.

I haven’t been where she’s been in her loss.  But somehow it was gratifying to her that we’d been where she’d been when she was having a good time.

The guy on the phone at the San Jose Mercury News misunderstood me while I was requesting a vacation hold and jumped the gun by a day, and so, the Wednesday that we left on our trip, it felt like we had no tangible proof that there had been an actual election held the day before.  The BART tax? The city’s decades-long fights over library bonds, with the latest version on the ballot?  Had they passed?  (Extending the BART trains needed 66.67% to pass, and earlier this week it was at 66.67% with a few thousand ballots still to go. It made history as the first to ever hit that actual number dead-on before it went to the provisional and absentee ballot counting. It’s now at 67% and solid.)   Hey, Michelle, Mitchell Park Library will get its rebuild after all.  You go, girl!

But you know what I most wanted to see.  In print. In real life. To make it feel real in a way a computer screen just simply cannot do.

And so when our plane landed in Baltimore late that night, as we waited for our luggage, my sweet husband went looking for a newspaper and came back with a Washington Post, our hometown paper, and handed it to me.

And even though we all already knew, that paper made instant friends for me out of every single employee of that airport I encountered from that moment on.  Sitting in a wheelchair with it in my lap, I’d started to read but stopped almost instantly, unwilling to miss what was suddenly happening around me: people were coming closer, glancing at the headline and picture and smiling as they nodded their heads knowingly at one another.  It was amazing, watching bored, tired, semi-stony-looking faces light up and strangers treating each other as old friends: them, me, the few among those looking for their suitcases who happened to look sideways to also notice–in all the elections I’ve ever been a part of, I’ve never experienced anything like the camaraderie that this one has inspired.  That was just the start.

Coming out of Stitches, again in a chair, the best way to get to where Karen’s car was was to wheel through a hotel, and an employee rushed to get the door for us.  But before we’d reached the outer door, somehow we had all gotten into a conversation that started with his asking if there really had been a whole convention of knitters–we’d been?  There was?  He thought so!, and quickly became about the election a few days prior.

And then that black man told us two white women that the thing about the election that had struck him was that people had voted for the candidate (he didn’t have to say who) based on who he was.  “He’s such a good man,” I answered, thinking, “the content of their character” and how pleased King would be to be overhearing us speak and at how easily we had all fallen into that conversation, how easily we had all instinctively known we would be glad to be in each other’s company in that moment.  At the undercurrent of joy.

What I have needed to say and have been looking for the words for ever since has been this: yes, this country has a lot to get fixed, economically, health care, so many choices to be made re the use of money.  But we have chosen to jettison our wariness of one another.   And it shows.  We have chosen to see the best in each other across all divides as well as in choosing this one particular candidate.  The symbolism spills into a sense of goodwill that is transforming day-to-day encounters among strangers.

The Washington Post’s online edition briefly marveled the Thursday after the election that someone was hawking a pristine copy of their Special Election Edition from the day before on Ebay for $400. It was a good day to be a newspaper. They quickly printed up a bajillion collector’s copies, just as they had special-editioned my late-printed copy bought Wednesday night.

There is great pride in feeling I own a piece of this. I voted for the man.  I voted for my fellow man in a way I could only guess at and hope for before election day, but now I see it.  In real life.

Tina over on her Blue Moon blog wrote about how essential it is to have time alone in order to let the creative juices have their space.  Time to oneself to contemplate in.

Time with friends is essential to the soul as well.

I don’t get a whole lot of Karen time or time with my other friends back home–and I missed two of them this round–but I’ve usually managed to get back East once a year, and it does wonders for me; California is home now, but can never be so on quite the same level.

My quiet Potomac and the Canal are part of who I am.  This is where I contemplate best.  These are some of the loveliest spots on earth to me.  Here is someone who took far better pictures (and at a better time of day and year) than I did; enjoy!

A few more pictures:

This is Jill at Kaleidoscope.  If you ever want to support a really nice LYSO, and you’re shopping online, and you like really nice yarns and soft yarns and quick delivery, I highly recommend her and her shop.

And I had to throw in this Ben and Jerry’s shot just for fun.  Euphoric stuff indeed.

Saturday night two weeks ago after Stitches was over for the evening, Karen and I went to the Boogie Knights concert benefiting the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Tommy Fund.  Kate in the middle here sang.

(Okay, I have to do the designer thing here and add, Karen’s wearing the original Water Turtles shawl–we looked for more turtles at the Canal, but it was just the wrong time of year, I guess; Kate’s wearing her Kate shawl, no, the pattern’s not out yet, and Deb is wearing her Michelle shawl. Deb and I wrote to each other and compared notes and supported each other as our kids were going through their teens, and my Michelle is the same age as her Kate, so knitting that pattern for her seemed just the thing.)  Note how the lights above them look like a halo glowing out from their heads, centered particularly on Kate’s. I quite like that. It fits.

Okay, this one’s for my family: this is what the old homestead looks like now that the remodeling and painting is complete.  It’s built into the hillside; from the back, there’s California-like high and long window space all across the back looking out on the woods.  The house has been turned into a small private assisted-living facility in the middle of the neighborhood by the woman who bought it.  If I were elderly and infirm, looking out on those gorgeous woods every day is exactly where I’d want to be.  There’s now a large wooden deck out the living room with sliding glass doors stepping out onto it.  Perfect.  I debated knocking on the door and telling them about the cute chipmunks under the carport who will cautiously take peanuts out of your fingers if you hold still a very long time, and the raccoons, turtles, foxes and deer in the backyard.  But I let it go.  I have quite a few memories of possums landing in the trashcans and unable to get back out: you should see the teeth on those things.  Dad would tip the can over on its side, whack the bottom with a broom to make it unfriendly in there, and go back inside where we would watch till the thing waddled out of there.

A few photos from the trip, with more to come:

Amanda aka NHKnittingMama.

Karin, who gifted me with the black baby alpaca that became my friend Amy’s shawl, holding Lucy, and Kristine, Lucy’s mother, who took Jennie some Ben and Jerry’s emergency room medicine.

Paula, wearing her spindle-spun Blue Jay shawl in an absolute perfect imitation of the original, color-wise, with Sue, and that cute tall guy standing behind her.

Joan, who lives in Vermont and whose blog is called knittingbytheocean.  My daughter, when she moved to Vermont, described it as being like California without the ocean (and with real weather), so Joan’s blog name has always made me chuckle.

My sister Carolyn, who met me at JFK Airport during our layover on the way home.  It took her as long to get there as it took us to fly from Vermont, even though she lives in Manhattan.  She scheduled her son to fly home to coincide with our stop and we had a wonderful, albeit all too short time together.  But at least I got to see her!  And I did not risk missing my flight this time, given our four-hour layover.  I snapped this picture as she was answering a call from him saying his plane had just landed.

This is a shot my childhood friend Karen took near the Potomac, looking up at Swain’s Lock at a point where there’s an overflow release for the C&O Canal.

The spot where I fell through the canoe, several steps away and looking the opposite direction from the above picture. Yes, that’s straight down.  I knew you’d all want to see the spot.

Fell into bed at home at 2 am Eastern time, woke up early here waiting for the sun to hurry up and rise already.  Got some catching up to do.

Our grandcats were so funny: they were not allowed in the room we were staying in at our daughter’s for fear of them getting into the knitting and who knows what all else.

Unfortunately, the wireless mouse to my husband’s laptop got left out, never to be seen again, at least not before we left.   I was seen playing with the mouse so it must be important, so away it vanished into the night.

Eve the kitten has gone from a tiny little thing from the last picture I saw of her to being fluffed out now into a beautiful black cat with longish hair and large round green eyes that Sam said make her a perfect Basement Cat.  She’s got a small tuft of extra-long white fur immediately above each of her claws, making her look like a totally soft fluffball of innocence–which didn’t stop her from rolling her eyes at me at one point, glancing upwards while narrowing her eyelids.  Stupid human, just wait till *I* have opposable thumbs! I will open that door *myself*!  My guffawing at her for it did nothing to mollify her. 

Eve tends to follow Anya, the older cat, and copy her.  I left our door open at one point.  Eve was hanging back this time.  Anya came barrelling down that hallway pell mell, trying not to be thwarted this time, and skidded out while trying not to splat into the bed, then did a 360 around it on the slippery newly refinished wooden floor, claws and limbs flying wildly.  I was out of her sight inside the room as she came running and got to hear her coming and then watch her ballet act.  When I laughed, there was the usual cattitude of licking a paw and “I didn’t do that” after I picked her up and escorted her back out.  Too funny.

And when I read a newspaper page on the floor, both cats promptly sat on it, totally covering  up the article.  Sam laughed and said that was classic cat, right there.

But would someone explain to me Anya’s need to lick my pink wool and silk skirt?  Gently, as if it were a kitten. Curious.

I was afraid I would forget my Tuscan cheese from the Cabot factory, and I did, but that just means Sam and her husband get to enjoy it; no complaints there.  I deserved that. I went to the fridge to get it just before we left for the airport after they left for work, let temptation get to me, and swiped a small spoonful of the Ben and Jerry’s Creme Brulee instead.  (Oh. Um.  Hi, Sam!)  That’ll teach me.  But it was definitely a freudian slip, because I knew how much they would love that cheese too. I looked up the local suppliers here of Cabot cheese this morning, and the number of stores within ten miles made me laugh–welcome home to northern California where everybody’s a foodie!

Now if only I could get someone here to start making apple cider doughnuts. I hadn’t ever heard of those before you all said something, and now I have to either find some here (not likely) or try making a batch myself.

A little Cabot’s on the side would go nicely.

Thank you all for the kind words yesterday!

The Ben and Jerry’s plant was full of Ben and Jerry’s whimsical and colorful cartoons, both 3-D and painted on the walls; even the tubes in the factory were painted in lavender and the like, a very cheerful place.  The tour guide clearly enjoyed giving out the free samples at the end.

From there, we went to the Cabot’s cheese factory store, the Lake Champlain Chocolates factory store–their hot cocoa is enough to get me back to Vermont right there–and a brief glance into the teddy bear factory next door just out of curiosity.  Later, running an errand, our daughter asked if we wanted to take the short route or the scenic route. I laughed and answered, This is Vermont: it’s ALL the scenic route!

Which is true.  I can see why she and her husband fell in love with the place so fast. It is just so gorgeous everywhere you turn–and this is with the trees bare for the winter, pretty much.  Lacy bits of very white fog drifting through the peaks everywhere, black marbled granite to either side of the road as you drive, pine trees offering some green among the endless tree trunks and bare limbs of the highly forested views… Beautiful.

And then we took them out to Butler’s for dinner at Essex Inn last night, the restaurant of the New England Culinary Academy. I can just hear all the Vermonters swooning.  As my father once put it, How many meals do you eat in your life?  Now, how many do you remember?  That was definitely one for remembering–and then the head chef came out and greeted us at the end of the meal: he’d seen our son-in-law go by, a friend of his, and came out to say hi.  We got to thank him in person for the exquisite meal.  And then after he left, an extra dessert mysteriously appeared at our places: the best dark chocolate truffles I have ever tasted, bite-size cheesecakes, tiny chocolate cookies.

He didn’t have to bribe us; sure, Vermont, we’ll come back!

Home tomorrow.

Yesterday was the signing at Kaleidoscope Yarns in Essex Junction; I’ll add pictures in here when I get home.  My fellow bloggers came: Karin drove all the way from Albany, NY; Paula came from Massachusetts; Amanda and her husband and son and then Sue, who sometimes sends me New Hampshire pictures since we used to live there, came from New Hampshire; Joyce was missed; Kristine and Joan came from closer by, and my mind is being terribly ungracious and blanking on someone–I’m sorry!  Jill hosted us with warm smiles and homemade bread and cookies.  Books were signed, stories were swapped, and a great time was had by all.  I would add links if I knew how to open a second window on my daughter’s Mac.

It’s humbling in the extreme to have people–old online friends, to be sure, but still–take that kind of driving time and make that kind of effort to come to let us meet each other in person. I hope I lived up to their expectations, while feeling like, no, I really can’t do anything as wonderful at all as they did by comparison; but I am so, so grateful they did.  Thank you everybody, and thank you, Jill.  

Off to tour the Ben and Jerry’s plant in a few minutes…

 

Greta and I are old college friends who hadn’t seen each other in 17 years, and we arranged to meet at JFK Airport during a layover.  I left my husband guarding all our carry-on stuff–and my Kaffe Fassett coat, to top it off, more than any one person should have to carry–while I went out of the security zone to have a chance to catch up with my old friend. I carefully kept my ID and boarding pass with me, taking only my purse. I promised him I’d be checking back through in time to spend the last full hour with him so he could go buy lunch, take a restroom break if he needed it, etc etc.

All well and good, till… I got a not-quite-frantic-yet IM message from Richard: they’d just changed our departure time to 45 minutes earlier, ie boarding quite shortly, and they’d changed our gate to one further away.  He’d had to move everything, and I needed to hurry NOW.  Oh goodness!  How can they do that!  Gotta run!  Greta waved goodbye as I tried to go back through security.

The boarding pass had been in two pieces barely connected.  Somehow between stuffing it in my purse and then stuffing it in my pocket for handy grabbing, I’d lost the top half.  No good.  Can’t let you through, so sorry, lady, no the flight won’t wait even if your luggage is on it, sorry.  I got sent way over to the luggage check-in to get a new boarding pass (they let me go to the front of the line–thank you JetBlue.)  Then back to security.  Everything was far enough away that I was running.  Which gets too dramatic, with me suddenly in acute need of air and my heart not happy about it.  They grabbed me a wheelchair.

The wheelchair lady was in absolutely no hurry.  She’d seen the original boarding time and couldn’t understand my hurry, and nothing I could do could talk her out of it.  I tried to take a deep breath.  In the end, I got there with just a couple of minutes to spare, but it was just too close.

And then the flight was so turbulent there were no snacks nor bathroom breaks allowed.

Richard forgave me, but it was a near thing for a few minutes there.

But I did get my Greta time.  Yay!  Was it worth it?  You absolutely betcha.

Note which spouse is typing this.

My old Knitlist friend Soozie works at Inez’s Stitchery in Kensington, maybe a half mile from my in-laws’ house and yet I had never been; you have to go up a long flight of stairs, and I hadn’t really been up to that the last few times home.

This time I went.  And of course Soozie wasn’t there, but the woman I met (forgive me for blanking on your name) was a sweetheart.  Then around the corner to the post office: a shawl needing mailing that was ready to go.  Done.

Then I called Karen, she came by, grabbed me, and we went to Swain’s Lock, our usual haunt at the Canal; we got there about 4:30 and walked a ways down the towpath and back.  It was hard to remember not to go too far; I do love that place.  There was not another soul in sight on that path.

Coming back, there were white swans glowing in the fading daylight in the quieter waters between the near bank of the Potomac and an island; I wondered at first if they were snowy egrets like mine near the San Francisco Bay, so we walked to the river’s edge to see more clearly.  Karen had called it from the start.  Swans.  One languidly reached down into the waters for a little dinner.  Glorious.

The flash announced that my camera had an ego that was just sure it could capture the scene.  Me, I’m not so sure.  Like my email at my main address, it will just have to wait till I get home next Monday before I’ll be able to see it.  (That’s in case anybody’s wondering why I’m not answering something you sent; sorry about that.)

We went to where I’d fallen through a canoe.  The last shards had long since floated out to sea.  I looked at that embankment and went, I stepped off THAT?  *THAT*?! (Oh, yes, it was definitely the place.)  My stars.  No wonder you were shaking your head, Karen!

I think she quite enjoyed my disbelief.

Occasional-commenter Laura came by this morning, and the three of us had a grand reunion.

Laura was a college friend of ours; she was the roommate of my husband’s cousin, and then her cousin married my sister.  Small world.  She grew up on the opposite bank of the Potomac from us, quite nearby as the Baltimore Oriole flies.  We ran into her randomly in Oakland one day about fifteen years ago and have stayed in touch ever since.  She and her family moved back home to Virginia a few years ago.

She surprised me with a copy–which she signed for me–of her delightful new children’s book, “Mrs. Muddle’s Holidays.”  Cool!  Thank you!

Later in the afternoon, my knitting friend Robin, who lives in my hometown and whose brother lives a mile from me in California, came by.  She took me over to Woolwinders, a LYS in Rockville where they had a Michelle shawl up on display. Cool!

A woman came in, Tina, who was gobsmacked by my Kaffe Fassett coat and asked and tried it on and twirled around in it.  She ran to the mirror, telling me how much she’d been wanting to make a Kaffe Fassett, scrunching it up to her face in sheer joy that such a thing of so much color existed.  I have to say, that coat looked much better on her than me–but not enough to get me to let her keep it, much though she would have loved that.  Then she found out who I was, and her excitement over that–she’d been checking my book out of the library over and over and had decided she simply had to buy it, and wow, here I was!  On a day she never ever comes in to the store, she said, but today she did, and she was just so ecstatic over the whole thing.

Let me tell you, I would happily spend the hundreds and hundreds of hours it took and write another book just for moments like the ones she gifted me with.  Many thanks, Tina!  And to Robin for letting it happen.

And to Laura for her own book and for staying friends through the years and the distances.

Tina twirled and hugged the coat one more time–and another and another–before she let us go.

Yeah, I’d say definitely yes, new friends are really cool too.

Karen picked me up this afternoon and we meandered: first, we drove past the house I grew up in.  It’s been sold and remodeled.  It’s lovely, but it was an odd feeling–after 44 years of my folks being there, it’s definitely not home anymore. We drove past the driveway going down to the Frank Lloyd Wright house around the corner, too, where you could just see the outline of the ship-shaped roof through the winter-bare tree trunks.  Wright’s grandson lives there still, an elderly man who a few years ago welcomed his neighbors by special invitation, including my parents, to a tour of the insides, right at the edge of a nature preserve and overlooking Cabin John Creek.  Like all Wright buildings, it blends right into its landscape.

Then Karen took me past her daughter Amy’s office, where Amy did a really cool braiding job on my hair.  In my Kaffe Fassett coat, my Begay turquoise necklace, Birkenstocks and handknit socks, and my ready-for-a-wedding braids, I felt like I looked like a Californian somehow in the air that was finally beginning to chill.

Karen announced to my surprise that we were going to Cunningham Falls so I could see the falls this time when it was no longer a drought. Oh GOOD! I’d really wanted to do that, but I wasn’t going to ask; it’s way out there in the Maryland mountains, on the opposite side of the road from Camp David.  COOL!

The woods near the falls were surprisingly open to the sky, with tree trunks on the ground, many of them sawed into chunks.  What happened to my park?! Turns out a tornado had ripped through there right below the falls.  More water in the falls now, but fewer trees in the forest.  I look forward to going back to see what changes and rebirthing comes there next, to see what tree varieties grow up in place of the old.

Catoctin? I asked Karen?  Absolutely! And so the two of us turned north a mile or two and went to Catoctin Mountain Orchards, where my family had picked fruit every summer growing up, weighing our boxes before and after we went through the strawberries, the cherries, the you name its, stooping low for hours or, better yet, climbing ladders up into trees with our parents’ actual permission to be up there.  They have a large roadside farmstand now.  I bought one of my daughter Michelle’s favorite foods, their homemade apple butter, and talked to the woman about shipping it home for me.  I’d once hauled an extra suitcase back to California filled with their jars, very heavy, wheels or no wheels, worrying about breaking glass and sticky jam; I had no desire to do that again.

She had no idea about any of that.  She showed me the chart with the shipping charges and warned me that that was besides the cost of the bottles themselves.  Yes, I understood that.  Karen and I hemmed and hawed over a few other purchases–I got a gorgeous matted 8×10 photograph of the falls in the Fall for $25 to take home–and the elderly woman felt the need to tell me twice more just to make sure I understood what costs I was about to be in for.

Yes, thanks.  I got it.  Twenty for the shipping: “Well, yes, those jars are heavy!” I explained to her that I didn’t want to haul them through not one but two airports.  I didn’t feel the need to explain about me doing airports in wheelchairs, about how happy I was to let the UPS guy do the work.

But more to the point, I wanted those jars home safely. My daughter had just had a major health scare last month, she was coming home at Thanksgiving for some doctor time, and I needed to do something to make it all better.  Catoctin Mountain Orchards apple butter was exactly the right thing, and I couldn’t wait to see her face light up.

Sometimes, it’s knitting that I do to try to get that effect.  But I can be flexible.

(ps And then Richard, Karen, Amy and I went out to dinner afterwards and got The. Best. Waitress. in the entire state of Maryland.  I made a point of telling her manager how much we’d enjoyed her as we left.  And if she reads this–THANK YOU!)

Stitches East was, as always, a glorious overload of friends, of yarn, of being surrounded by creative people–I’m not sure where to start, so for right now while I have a rare moment with a computer, forgive me, I’m skipping to what followed. (Besides, how much can anyone put up with me gushing over people gushing over…yeah.  Me neither.  Although, it *was* fun!)  So.

Last night after the Market closed, my friend and fellow knitter Kate was singing in a band, the Boogie Knights, doing a benefit not far from there for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society in memory of her brother Robbie.  I lost a sister-in-law to lymphoma myself; my friend Karen and I very much wanted to go.

But in between we needed to grab a meal.  We were in a section of old Baltimore where there was just absolutely no parking.  We spotted a Subway sandwich shop and decided that that would do the deed just fine, if only we could get to it.  After a time or two around the block, I finally said, Here–you stay here in the No Stopping zone so you can circle again if a cop waves at you while I run in and order quick and run back out.

Great. Go for it.

And so my cane and I hopped out of the car and straight up into the door of the shop (don’t fall on those steps!) and stood behind a few people in line. I hoped it wouldn’t take too long.

I had a few moments to observe.  There were three people working: a middle-aged man, I’d guess Mediterranean/maybe Middle Eastern (I was trying to place the accent), a late-20’s Hispanic woman, and a petite, pretty (I think she would have been surprised to hear me say that, but she definitely was) young black woman, who avoided eye contact and looked terribly beaten down as she pulled out and replaced several empty stainless-steel canisters of sandwich makings with full ones and reached for and cut and filled the rolls to order, while the other woman stood still, muttering at the other and rolling her eyes, swishing a little lettuce off the counter into the trash.  Watching their interactions and who was doing the actual work, my heart went out to the younger one. The fellow was ringing up the purchases at the end.

I managed to catch the black woman’s eye and smiled as I placed my order; I apologized a bit for my deafness when I didn’t hear her questions about specifics.  She started to make Karen’s and my sandwiches.  I lost my balance and grabbed at the counter edge with my free hand.  I was wobbling fairly constantly on my cane–I was jetlagged, I’d just done two full days of Stitches, I was hungry and exhausted and I was more unsteady than my usual.

And yet.  There’s something very strengthening about feeling needed.  I definitely felt needed in this place in this moment of time.  I silently prayed for all three of these people working together and tried to live up to that prayer and make a difference to them all by simply being nice.

And the young black woman responded to that. She started looking me in the eye too.  She straightened up just a bit.  She started smiling back, a bit faint, but hey.  And then the other woman lightened up, too.  The man gave me a warm smile that went beyond that of oh good, another sale tonight.

Just a few minutes together.  The whole feeling of the place had changed. I thanked the young woman who’d prepared our dinner: a crab sandwich! I was home in Maryland again!

Karen was still there at the curb, no problem there; I hopped in and we went looking for Kate’s venue, eventually found an actual parking spot, grabbed it, and sat in the car and ate.

And it dawned on me and I said to Karen, You know?  Just every now and then, it hits me that it’s totally okay that I was in that accident.  That young black woman knew that I, too, had been through–well, something, anyway.  She could relate to me as a fellow traveler because my life too had clearly had some hard times.  And she and the others were just so much happier when I left than when I came in–it all works out. It really does.

We went to the concert.  It was absolutely fabulous.  The music, truly, but also…We all knew the cause we had come together for and the parents and sister we were there specifically to honor.  Bob. Deb.  Kate.  Robbie’s family.  It mattered to each one of us in the audience that we were there for them, and they were wrapped in overwhelming love at the end.  As well they should be.  As well they should be.