Well that was a surprise, as I looked up and saw the worker. Had no idea that was going in.

And then the double take: how did they do that without there being any hammering sounds? And it’s not just me, Richard didn’t hear any either. Curious.

The first San Jose peregrine falcon eyas of the year hatched today, three more eggs to come.

Remember the two guys in our House race, Simitian and Low, who got the exact same number of votes for second place and so we had three winners in the primary? Someone not currently affiliated with any of them paid for a recount and it was decided today.

But not till after Low had thrown a fit, calling the person paying for it a stooge of the guy who’d come out #1 because they’d had connections in the past, and when asked, Is it not democracy to make the effort to find out who the voters wanted the most?, continued to call doing a recount a corruption.

Well well well guess who came out ahead by five votes after that recount? Egg, meet face.

Personally, I think he found an effective way to make sure Liccardo stays in the #1 spot come November. Real leaders don’t bully.

That distinctive wide, low swoop caught the edge of my sight and I stood as I turned to see if maybe I could see it way over into the neighbor’s yard.

But that’s not where it was. It was perched right there on top of my birdnetting tent.

I looked at the Cooper’s hawk and it looked steadily back at me for about half a minute. It was an adult, a little paler at the lower front than its (grandfather?), Coopernicus, who used to come people watch from time to time during breeding season. Including, memorably, one time when a mourning dove fluttered down off the awning right in front of him and how do you describe a bird doing a double take as he did this sudden, ‘Scuse me, my young’uns would love some of that. Whoosh!

With the tall redwood and silk oak trees gone now that they nested in it was a joy to see that they’re still in the neighborhood.

“Ginny?!”

She stopped in her tracks and exclaimed, “I thought that was you!” as we threw our arms around each other.

I was at the clinic for my follow-up to see if they needed to do retina surgery yet.

That department has always been busy in the extreme when I’ve been there, with an employee lounge turned into an overflow waiting room, but at that particular moment there was a single person in the original waiting room and the receptionists were waiting for anyone to show up. One of them called over to me with a smile, Name? Birthdate? so she could check me in without interrupting the joy any longer than necessary; it was putting a smile on her face, too.

We caught up a little bit and then they called Ginny back.

Since I wouldn’t be interrupting any other patients, I turned to that receptionist and explained, My kids are 36, 38, 40, and 42 this spring, and she was the kindergarten teacher to all of them.

Kindergarten! Wow!

I waited my own turn, sitting there remembering the time I’d attended the funeral of our favorite fifth grade teacher, gone far too soon. Ginny had been there. At one point after the service, a 6’9″ young man was helping the family move a tall easel covered in flowers to where they wanted it for their luncheon, and he spotted us talking and came our way with it.

“Alison,” Ginny said, “You need to step out of this man’s way.”

“Ginny,” I said–“That’s my son Richard. He’s coming to say hi to you!”

“OHMYGOSH! Ohmygosh, he’s not little anymore, is he!”

I wished we’d had more time. I always wish for more time when I’m with her. Soon enough they called my name. Did some tests, dilated my eyes, talked to the doctor and the med student tagging him for the day, came back out, and once again as I approached the desk, needing to schedule the next followup, she was coming out, too.

This time we had about fifteen minutes to ourselves. It was glorious. And you know a retired kindergarten teacher would love hand knit finger puppets and she did.

Both her kids had had twins, all four grands were born the same year, college is coming up in a couple of years, and everything is all at once for everybody. She asked after mine.

She had retired, then she had subbed, then covid, then–

–Parkinson’s, and she couldn’t risk falls around the little kids now.

“Oh I’m sorry!”

“Yeah,” as she looked me in the eyes, “I am, too.”

But she knew I knew about living with…stuff, health wise, and I think it helped to be able to talk about it to someone who simply understood and that you just go on with what you have the best you can.

She had put those finger puppets on and she kept them on and we laughed about flamingoes in her lawn and they were still on as they called her back to finish her appointment; we said our goodbyes.

Her one kid who lives a plane ride away is coming with her family next week, the other is nearby. There will be a grand time and Ginny will be surrounded by love and by teenagers, who are such interesting people to talk to, always.

This was our teacher who’d built a little enclosure with hanging beads, ’60’s hippy style, with the monarch butterflies inside it that she had had her students raise. If a kid was getting angry and full of feelings he didn’t know how to deal with, he got a few minutes to calm himself in the butterfly room.

Where the rule was you had to be absolutely still so as not to scare nor injure these delicate, beautiful creatures the kids had put their hearts into seeing coming to be.

The orange and black monarchs would peacefully land on their shoulders or head or arms or everywhere, wings gently folding and unfolding.

It was Ginny’s cure for Nature Deficit Disorder.

Oh, and I got to tell her when I came out: they told me things looked better than they’d expected and for now I don’t need to do surgery.

Because I knew that when you’ve struggling with a new diagnosis, when hope seems a difficult thing, borrowing a piece of someone else’s helps.

You know how when you’re going to meet someone that someone you love loves, you hope you’ll instantly love them too and that they’ll do the same for you? And then–you do?

And then you just fervently hope?

I told my kids earlier this year, She’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her. He’s clearly good for her and good to her and she for him.

On a side note, he also happened to love the hat I introduced myself to him with a little while back. For all the hundreds of hats I’ve knit, I’ve never made any other quite like that one, just different enough with its gansey motif in a dark denim shade.

He was wearing it when they showed up today and told us their happy news together.

Her mother would have been so thrilled for them both.

—

2000. The fierceness all over again of missing her as I typed this took me by surprise. But we could be there, and they let us be, and that was high honor indeed.

We were given the honor of being invited to our neighbor’s senior piano recital, to be held at a lovely old church.

We surprised them when we said we knew the place well: our son had had his organ recital there. The acoustics in that building are amazing.

The daughter, heading off to college in the fall, plans to minor in music.

Not only was she a joy to listen to, but her every movement conveyed the sense of what the composer was trying to offer to the world. She is *good*.

We told them our son had minored in organ performance and had played the Mormon Tabernacle Organ for his final.

It felt like passing the baton to the next generation and saying, You’ve got this.

So when you only have ten skeins because that’s a Malabrigo dye lot and you want to make a baby blanket and you know that any kind of openwork will stretch the size/yardage ratio nicely but will also get tiny fingers caught in it–you know that really, it ought to be a solid knit. Also because (hopefully) it is going to be a favorite and loved and dragged all over the place in one hand with fingers in the mouth with the other.

On the other hand, this is going to be a Texas baby. Maybe the yarnovers aren’t such a bad idea.

My brain is having a hard time picking just one pattern. Actually, I am thinking of one, but it’s a right twist/left twist that will shrink the amount of coverage I could get out of those 1000 grams.

The mom wants gray. Anyone got any baby-boy favorites for a solid color blanket?

I caught the rabbit nibbling on my sour cherry blossoms.

Then for several days it avoided this strange new thing.

Today, not so much. And it kept going back in there! Hawkproofing, what’s not to love, right?

Meantime, I had this moment of, hey, that’s it: the infamous white beam! And the gray grooved interior wall in the living room! Ours was exactly like that, only a fair bit darker of a shade in a shaded room, terribly depressing, the only thing I really didn’t like about this house. It took us six years to get rid of it and it may be why I dislike gray on walls so much. Our contractor nailed wallboard over ours, but anyway, here’s a listing that takes me straight back to when we first walked in the door here. Same builder, same floor plan. This one has not been changed much.

Picture number 18. See that white beam connecting the refrigerator side to the oven side?

Eileen, DIL of the then-owners, was in the kitchen, phone in hand, as we and the realtor came in. She saw Richard’s forehead matching up with that board and said to the person on the other end, Oh, THESE people aren’t going to buy this house!

What she also knew was that the master shower had been remodeled to be short enough for her Japanese in-laws. The shower head hit him near bellybutton level, and the stall was small enough that he couldn’t fit in it to kneel down under it.

Within a day or two we had a telescoping shower head. Later, the stall became part of the hallway to the new master bedroom and that beam in the kitchen was the first thing the remodeler took away.

So it was kind of fun to explore our pre-remodel house in those pictures without having to actually live in it again.

My Stella sweet cherry. It looks like it’s going to be a good year for it again. There is an Erva cage protecting its trunk from the rabbit in the bushes.

I had two apricot seedlings last year whose growth tips got killed by a heat wave not long after sprouting–they didn’t make it past two inches tall. But I knew from experience that if I just kept at it, winter would hit the reset button and they would grow normally this spring. A leaf or three was enough till then.

And they did, they are making up for lost time. It’s so gratifying.

Yesterday I saw a couple of leaves along the branch on one that seemed…odd. But they were too small to really see and I figured just let them grow and show themselves, I mean, typically you get a tiny new leaf tip and it grows out to a whole new branch when they’re at that stage.

This evening there were a lot more of them and it definitely demanded more attention.

I squinted. I got close. I found myself keenly aware that the retina surgeon is next week. I took pictures so I could embiggen them, but the camera kept focusing on the actual leaves and the breeze kept moving the thing and this was the best I could get.

I stayed there with my face right in it, trying to see–when suddenly the teeniest, tiniest clear wing went up. I went after it and found myself with green bug squish on my fingers.

There it was. I knew I’d better deal with them fast before they spread. But how? I didn’t have any Safer soap.

I ran in the house and grabbed a Kleenex. I very very gently held it around that fragile little branch and slowly carefully killed the lot of them. What was either black bug poop or bug eggs showed up against the white tissue as well. As far as I could tell I got everything.

I walked around the outside of the house to the city’s lidded compostables bin to get rid of it to try to make sure there were no escapees, then went over my four other apricot seedlings ages 1-5 years but found no trace of the little monsters.

Dr. Google says green aphids.

I am getting me some plant-friendly Safer soap from the local nursery pronto.

Our parents were three thousand miles away, her kids were off at college, and Alma became our kids’ surrogate grandma when we moved in.

When our youngest was born a year later, she was insistent that she was going to come take care of the kids whatever time of day or night it might be while we went to the hospital, so at 10:30 pm that Sunday when I said I was two minutes apart she came right on over.

As I told her daughter today, we have been grateful all these years that we so lucked out on who we got to have as neighbors.

Richard hurried home around 2:30 a.m. to thank her and relieve her, bearing the news that we now had two girls and two boys.

About 8:00 a.m. she was ringing the doorbell to come take care of the kids again so he could go off to work.

Going to work that day had not occurred to him. Nor his boss. He had been going to sleep in a bit but who was he to argue with someone being so kind–and he could see that from her generation, that’s just what you do, and so he dutifully got out the door and went off to work for a few hours.

He never told her he went and found a cot there and snoozed under his desk for a bit.

Alma and Jim had a big, old plum tree and freely shared of their harvest. (My kids would later plant me my own Santa Rosa tree as a Mother’s Day surprise.)

One year there was enough that I made a batch of jam and gave them two jars.

Jim thought this was great!

And so I ended up coming back to their door with I think it was four more jars, which is how Alma found out that his eyes had lit up at the first two and he’d gone back out to the tree and when she wasn’t looking he’d shown up on my doorstep with forty more pounds of plums. Forty. He’d slightly staggered coming up my walkway with that big bag. And you know they had to be processed quickly because the ones on the bottom all nice and ripe like that were definitely going squish under there.

Not that I said any of that out loud but she instantly knew.

JIM!

The two of us laughed and then she did too but somehow they never gave me quite that many again even if it was fine with me.

The last few pounds were pureed with lemon juice and thrown in the freezer, but I did it, I got them all done.

There was the time I walked next door a moment with toddler #2 in tow, and when Alma opened the door he promptly chatterboxed her ear off.

She listened in amazement, and then turned to me and said, He really does talk when his big sister isn’t there!

Jim’s beekeeping. The hive that swarmed and were every bit as peaceful as I’d heard described. They were in a cloud just above and next to my mango tree by the fence line. I surprised myself at suddenly wanting to inspect its flowers just then and they all but invited me to come join them in their life dance in the air. I suddenly understood why people would keep bees, and I will forever be grateful for an experience I can only describe as glorious. I would never have known.

So many years of good memories.

Jim passed a few years ago at 86.

Last night, just after I posted here, I got a note from their daughter: her mother had quietly passed away. She had been so fortunate to be there with her when she did. She knew I would want to know.

I knew the day was coming but the reality is that I cannot fathom not having Alma and all her love and shared memories right next door.

We exchanged messages and love and then by light of day today threw our arms around each other.

She travels home tomorrow and I will so much miss her, too. She and her brother are so much like their mom and dad. The best.

I laughed till I cried: Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post, brilliant satirist that she is, taking on Taylor Swift’s new album via a chat group of dead poets. That link should share it from my subscription.

To borrow a sample and add another link in case not everybody was an English major or minor like *cough* some people…

William Carlos Williams:

i listened to the songs that were on the album

forgive me

Dylan Thomas: Shut up plum thief

In photos and stories a couple dear to us gave a presentation tonight on what it was like to be the volunteer presidents of a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in central Africa these past three and a half years, arriving just as Covid was starting up. They already spoke French, and with the legacy of French colonialism there they were able to fit in pretty quickly linguistically.

They told stories of wonderful people. So kind. So generous.

You could not get medical treatment unless you paid in advance. They had a missionary who was in a motorcycle accident and found him in the hospital: in that country where almost everybody had almost nothing, someone had found him, brought him in, and had paid for his care, which surely would have been a serious financial struggle to do. They did not know who.

They told how they realized that they could make a huge difference in the lives of the African-born missionaries serving under them by getting them lessons in speaking English: those who did, their earning potential went up by 30-60% after their missions. The need for education was so great. School was only for those rich enough to pay for it.

And so they set up daily online English sessions. With the Church’s help, they added college courses as well. You might not have a bachelor’s yet, you might not have an associate degree yet, but if you had a certificate verifying that you had finished a course in (name that subject) you were already way ahead in the job market.

But the human brain being what it is, the story that will probably stay with me a long time is of how when they had to drive between the two cities, there was no rule of law out on the road. But there were plenty of people who saw white people who had a car and thought $$$ and they would stop them, pretend to be cops, and demand a bribe in order to be allowed to continue.

It is illegal for a US citizen to pay a bribe. Period. Not that they would anyway because all it does is make it worse the next time.

So Todd would just talk to them, being his sweetest self, actually caring about them personally, hail-fell0w-well-met, determined to live this religion of brotherly love he believed in, till they gave up and waved them on by.

There was one time when that did not work. The men were determined and working themselves up into serious anger despite his best efforts at deescalation. In our friends’ most intense moment of silent praying, suddenly some random guy they’d never laid eyes on before rushed to the scene going, Hey! Leave those guys alone, they’re my friends!

And they did!

On the return home there was no one and their path was clear.

And on their return home to the US he just got offered a job to help expand that BYU Pathways program to more areas like that. Education, education, education.

4/20/2024 is the same backwards and forwards. His birthday number is, too.

Aid approved at long long last by the House of Representatives for Ukraine’s survival was the best present he could have asked for.

We went to a barbecue at a friend’s, where I offered a young mom a hummingbird finger puppet and found out it was her daughter’s third birthday. Everybody sang the song to the both of them as she happily waved her new pet bird way high and I’m sure to her it was singing, too.

I came home and planted future-8-foot-high sunflower seedlings at the fence line in celebration of the news of the day, back there where it turns a corner.

We were enjoying some old rock classics after dinner; I was finishing off the last of the blue on the afghan, there was the occasional comment back and forth, we were enjoying each other’s company on this fine spring evening.

And then Black Magic Woman came on.

That one always, always, I said, takes me back to that guy at the Stanford clinic in Redwood City.

He raised an eyebrow in question.

I was working on Mathias’s baby afghan, I told him, the one in the pattern with circles surrounded by contrasting colors and then more contrast at each edge: all those balls of yarn hanging down. I was well into it and it covered my feet. You were having some testing done that was going to take a long enough time for me to declare that one a portable project for the day because I really wanted to get it finished.

Just before you came out there was a guy being wheeled past me by a couple of family members and he had them stop a moment. Right in front of me.

He made a point of looking, really looking, over the expanse of afghan, the needles in my hands, and then up to my eyes, which he held in his for several heartbeats.

And then again with slow deliberate motion to make sure I understood how he much he meant this, he raised his whole arm in an emphatic thumbs-up with an exclamation point at the end, nodding.

Then he glanced over his shoulder at his family affirming that it was okay to move on now and they did.

It was one of the great compliments of my knitting life and I will never forget it.

And the guy was, if not actually, then a dead ringer for Carlos Santana.

Richard considered that a moment.

“Well he does live around here.”

My columnar apple, not that it has anything to do with the rest of this post.

Wear casual, my sister-in-law told us last week: the groom is going to be wearing shorts. They expressly said they want it casual.

I don’t want to dress fancier than the bride, I told her, it’s not my place, and so the peach-and-cream outfit I’d asked my neighbors about stayed in the hotel and my plain cotton skirt and top were just right. A Ukrainian gerdan was my only dress-up and hey I wear those everywhere.

I thought of a family member whose introduction to Thanksgiving dinner with her future Arizona in-laws was paper plates at the picnic table outside; we’re all used to what we’re used to.

But for her sake I was pleased to see the bride wore a beautiful white gown. No frou-frou, no train, just a classic v-neck knee-length dress in a very pretty fabric. She got to look her best on her day, while making sure their friends were comfortable being themselves. It was for them. She was just a deeply likable person, and I thanked her for making our nephew so happy. And I thanked him for choosing her.