More Hope

Dear Bill,

We had a great Superbowl party last night. Of course, some of us just came for the chips and salsa.

Knitting:

I have so many knitting project going here that I’m absolutely disgusted with myself. (Where is my stability? Where is my loyalty?) I’ll comment on only one. You’ll remember I was knitting two little white cardigans with lace panels on the front–one for each of Bad Bill’s daughters. I almost finished the smaller of the two and hated it. No. I didn’t hate it. That isn’t true. I knew my daughter–the mother of the two girls–would hate it. Actually, maybe I did hate it juuuuuust a little bit myself, too. So anyway I downed a glass of wine and frogged the whole thing. In the moment I didn’t feel too well with it all but by the morning I was over it. So now I’m trying a different pattern. Here it is:

I think this is pretty cute and not so lacy.

Needless to say, this is a scanned photo of the book cover–the pattern itself (pictured) is called Mimi.

Which just happens to be the name of my sweetie husband’s very first girlfriend as it so happens. Long time ago, but I remember these things perfectly. No, she wasn’t French and no, she wasn’t that pretty–not in my opinion, anyway. Don’t be crazy. I wasn’t in the least biased. We’d been going out for months when I met her.

Now, where was I? Oh yes, so it’s knit on US#1 and US#2 needles. Don’t hold your breath. I’ll bet it’s already warm out in California where these two cardigans are destined to be worn. Better to make them big and aim for a next autumn finish.

Story:

You might have read my blog entry of January 24, 2010 entitled Hope . If not, you can just link back. One of the very nice comments left was from our elder son who lives with his family in New York.

He wrote: “Interesting. Wasn’t there also another story about something unusual that happened just before the moment of her death? You may not want to tell it. Or I may be thinking of someone else.”

He was right. Something amazing did happen just before this young mom died. Here’s the story. As I wrote, my sweetie husband (her pastor) and her own sweetie husband were sitting by her hospital bed as she struggled to breathe. She hadn’t been conscious for many, many hours and had been too weak to speak for days.

Suddenly the two men were startled by her sitting straight up in bed and saying, “Yes? Yes?”

Her husband leaned over and asked her if there was something wrong.

“Nothing!” she replied. “You said my name!”

My husband reached out for her hand and whispered, “It’s time, N. Everything is all right. Just go towards the voice. He’s calling you home now.”

She lay down and closed her eyes peacefully. In a few minutes she passed on.

So there we have another story, one that gives us even more cause for hope.

Love!

Momma

Hat Pin Discipline

Dear Bill,

Knitting News:

My sweetie husband and I were away for a couple of days. We drove up to Canada (“Why would you drive up there?” a cashier in the grocery store asked us on hearing of our plans. No offense, Canada. I like visiting you.) to see my ninety-four-year-old dad. He lives with my sister and brother-in-law just outside of Ottawa, and we found him just as usual–happy as a lark and fully informed about the stock market. One of the mornings we were there, my sister and I drove into the city and happened to drop into two yarn stores. I took advantage of these chance visits to do a little stash augmentation. Along with some fairly pedestrian stuff, two skeins of the following found their way into my shopping basket:

Oh yeah. You can see how that happened, right? Hand-dyed in Canada (and, hey, that’s another reason to go there!), 100% silk, and mighty expensive. Of course, it’s a dream to knit with. Here’s what I’ve started:

You can’t really see just how beautiful the colors are–gold, red, purple, orange–like a Michigan (or Canadian!) sunset. I’m knitting a wrap in a variant of the Old Shale pattern. And I’m doing it on US #2 needles. You knitters will understand by this last fact that it’s going to be a long-term, ongoing project–but the result will be stunning. Are two skeins going to be enough? I love a little a little suspense in my life. . . .

Story:

Here’s an amazing photograph of my grandfather’s (on my mother’s side) grandfather and grandmother (do you follow me on that?):

Yep, these are my great-great grandparents, Eratus and Harriet Howard. Eratus was a Methodist minister whose churches were principally in the Eastern Township circuit of Quebec in Canada. Country Methodist ministers in those days were moved from place to place every few years, which must have been fairly taxing for their families. Eratus did all his parish visiting by horse and buggy in the summer and by horse and sleigh in the winter. Often the roads were non-existent. It was said of him that nothing could keep him in if there was an ill person in need of his company or counsel. They were good people.

From the photograph, it’s interesting to see that folks had no qualms about whether or not to use animal skins in those days. Keeping warm was the priority.

Eratus and Harriet  were old-style Methodists. They were strictly teetotal, and there was to be no dancing,  no card playing, no frivolity. “Never be unemployed, never be triflingly employed” as it used to be said. There’s also the joke: “Why were old-style Methodists distrustful of sex? Because it was too much like dancing!” This couple didn’t dance but they had eight children.

Sundays were for attending church and reading the Bible. All day. My grandfather, who later grew up to became a corporation lawyer in Montreal, remembers staying with his grandparents as a little boy. There wasn’t a lot of fun to be had. During his grandfather’s long sermons he would sometimes get a little figity. His grandmother didn’t hesitate. Without a word she would remove one of the long pins affixing her hat to her piled-up hair. Then she’d simply hold the pin in her lap.

That settled the little guy beside her right smartly.

Love!

Momma

Hope

Dear Bill,

Knitting News:

Here is my latest finished knitting project.

And a close-up:

My kindly resident sweetie-photographer-husband took these pictures.

“Do you think it looks crazy?” I asked him.

I don’t think so. . .” he replied.

Wrong answer.

Here’s how you begin a scarf like this. You take some Koigu and you cast on 648 stitches. Yes. Because you knit this sucker sideways, you see.

And as you do this time goooooooooeeeeeeessssssss by. You can actually feel yourself growing older–it takes thaaaaaaaat looooooooong. Your whole life could pass before you. In slow motion. And, dudes, it’s time that you can never recover. Never. It’s gone. Added to which nobody can keep count for that many stitches. Not even Einstein could do it. Not even me. I tried putting in a stitch marker every fiftieth stitch–and even then I drifted in and out of stitch counting dazes.

OK, so then once you’ve reached 648 stitches you knit away on them for a couple of days, which might tote up to a row or so. And then, patient person that you are, you reduce them over a couple of rows to the 100s and then increase them over a couple of rows back to 648 again, and then for a couple of days you knit like a little machine–for a row, maybe two. And then you cast off all those multitudinous stitches and maybe watch a couple of movies while you do so.

I’m not saying this was a boring knit.

I’m just asking–how does it look? Was it worth those rows of 648 stitches? Perhaps my sweetie husband Jim said it all.  “I don’t think so.” But maybe it was.

Scottish Story:

As you all by now know–Jim was a minister of various churches in Scotland over the first twenty or so years of our married life together. I’ve told you quite a few funny stories from that time on this blog. Here’s another story–but this one isn’t funny.

A wonderful, cheerful, good and bright woman was dying of cancer. She had everything to live for–in particular a nice husband and two little girls aged seven and nine–and she wanted to live. As in some cases of cancer there were times of better health and then worse health, up, down, up, down, and then finally no more ups. My sweetie husband and her sweetie husband sat by her hospital bed in the last hours as she labored to stay alive and then finally, finally, slipped away. The two children were with a neighbor at home, and their dad simply couldn’t face telling them the news. So, after a long bleak drive back together her husband called the girls and my husband took one on each knee. He explained softly to them that their mother had been very sick, as they well knew, and that no matter how hard she tried and no matter how hard the doctors tried, she couldn’t get well again. God had finally taken her home to be with him this afternoon. She was safe. And they were safe.

There was silence as the children absorbed this difficult information.

Then the younger one asked quietly, “Did she mind very much? Was she all right with it?”

Do you know, sometimes in the smallest instances the biggest things happen. If the sky had fallen in, it couldn’t have been more important than this very small girl’s question and her gift to the rest of us. Here her mother had died, and she was facing a life without her. To a great extent her world had collapsed–yet, her first question concerned her mother’s well-being and state of mind in having to leave this earth. The little child was worried, not about herself, but about her mother. That’s how much she loved. That’s how much she had been loved.

There’s a lot of bad news these days. There’s evil abroad, and certainly there’s nothing we can do to prevent natural disasters. Still, it’s important that we don’t lose hope. There are so many good people out there, too. I do believe God is working through them in the same way he works through each of us when we try to help, try do the right thing. Don’t despair–just keep your hand on the plow. The earthquakes of this world–both the natural kind and the emotional kind–won’t have the final word.    

Love!

Momma

‘Ukraine’s Got Talent’ Winner

Dear Bill,

This was sent to us by our daughter, Anna. I’m sure it’s sweeping the internet but for those who haven’t seen it, do have a look. Will write a proper post soon.

Love! Momma

“This video shows the winner of “Ukraine’s Got Talent”,  Kseniya Simonova, 24,  drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II.  Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch.

The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about $130,000.00

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.

It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears.

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house.

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye.

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million. “

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=vOhf3OvRXKg

Exactly!

Dear Bill,

My sweetie husband and I have had three very nice nights out.

First: There were  two movies we wanted to see–It’s Complicated and Invictus.

Me: “Perfect! It’s Complicated is a chick-flick for me and Invictus is a sporty man-movie for you!”

Sweetie Husband: “It’s Complicated is a chick-flick, it’s true, but  I think Invictus is more a human movie than a sporty man-movie.”

Me: “Humph!”

We went to them both on the same day, separated by dinner and a shared hunk of chocolate from the Chocolate Factory. Perfect! And my sweetie was right. It’s Complicated was fluffy and fun–who doesn’t like Meryl Streep?–but Invictus wasn’t really about rugby at all. It was a movie about forgiveness–yes, a human movie in every good sense of the word.

Dag Hammarskjold wrote that “Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.” There was so much that was broken and soiled in South Africa when Mandela became president. His urge to forgive and move on showed humanity at its very best. Inspiring.

On our second date night we went to Bonefish Grill for dinner–just the two of us. We anticipated it all day and got dressed up for each other. The food was great and the company exceptional! We love that place–especially the bang-bang shrimp.

Third: Last night we sat next to our son and watched our little grandaughter Isabelle (18 months) at her swimming class with her mommy. When it was over we picked up some easy food and went to their house to eat it. What a happy, fun way to spend time!

After dinner I was carrying little Isabelle about. We looked out the window into the dark. The trees were blowing in the wind and the stars were out. Snow glistened everywhere. The house below theirs still had sparkly Christmas lights up.

“Look, Isabelle! Look at the pretty lights!” I said.
“Pretty lights,” she whispered.
“Yes, they’re so pretty! They make me feel happy,” I said.
“Zactly,” Isabelle said quietly. And smiled.

Love!

Momma

Second Night in the Cottage Hospital

Dear Bill,

Knitting News:

I’m busy on the following. . .

It’s called Veronica’s Lace Sweater and was designed by Sami Kaplan. I’m using Bernat Baby Fingering, which is acrylic and only acrylic. Light, soft, machine washable and dryable.  The photograph is from the front of the pattern. I’m not all that keen on the hooks and eyes fastening it and will probably sew on three little buttons and make three little button holes instead. It’s meant for bad Bill’s younger daughter but we’ll see about the size when I’m done. I did a swatch and the gauge was right, but it still looks a little on the big side to me.

And now to continue where I left off in my last blog entry.

The Second Night in Peterhead Cottage Hospital:

I’d recommend anyone who hasn’t already read First Night in the Cottage Hospital to do so now in order to make what follows at all comprehensible.

On the second night I woke with a start after a terrible nightmare. It concerned the two children I’d left at home, not the newborn baby in the nursery near-by. I think this is almost a compulsory dream for a second- or third- (or more) time mom. I realized the minute I sat up that all was well, that the way I was feeling (miserable) was caused by separation anxiety and, even more obviously, by a post-birth hormone dive.

After all, my sweetie husband was at home with the children. What could possibly go wrong? On second thought I didn’t want to think too much about that.

I clambered out of bed with a view to getting a Tylenol from the nurse so I could go back to sleep again. The hall outside my room was quiet. Two more moms had come in during the day and delivered their babies. Their rooms were darkened. I tiptoed over to the nursery. I should explain that the nursery in Peterhead Cottage Hospital was just another room–not a very big one at that. I’m sure it was never very full, and in fact three babies might have been as full as it ever got. There were the three little cuties–my Anna (with her full head of dark hair) and the other two (completely bald and not nearly as cute I thought). Babies didn’t sleep in with their moms at this hospital. The nurse brought them when they required feeding. And where was the nurse? I wondered.

Hey, wait a minute.

No, really.

Where was she??

She wasn’t at her little desk anyway. I wondered slowly down the hall, looking more closely into the other moms’ rooms. Not there. I went to the end of the hall and looked into the operating theater. No.

Hmm.

There were stairs going up to the geriatric floor, and I was sure there’d be a nurse or two on duty there.  So, ever so slowly and painfully (and bravely), up I climbed to the next floor. The corridor there was also dark and quiet. I walked along it and back, peeking into the wards.

All the old folk were asleep or dead. No nurse.

Down the stairs again–and back to the nursery area, I went. Gingerly, I sat down at the nurse’s desk. And sat. And sat. It seemed as if there was no nurse anywhere. This was a little alarming. What, I thought, if my new friend the taxi driver dropped another laboring mom at the front door. True, I’d just given birth myself and knew vaguely what was involved, but I still didn’t feel by any means qualified to deliver someone else’s baby. (But if push came to shove–oh dear!–I decided I’d skip the enema–of that I was sure.) There was a phone on the little desk. I tried to dial out but there was obviously some kind of code number you needed to use first. I suppose they didn’t want the patients calling their friends, moms, husbands, lovers, the radio station, Hong Kong, and so on–in which case I felt, not unreasonably, that they needed to keep the dang desk manned, right?

And what if all the babies woke at once? Or what if one of the geriatrics came down here or had a heart attack? What if someone drunk or demented came in from the outside world? I seemed to be the only responsible party present to defend all the defenseless patients in the building.

I immediately fell asleep in the desk chair.

And was wakened by hurried footsteps coming down the hall. And stopping in front of me. It was a nurse. Well, holy smoke.

“Och, no! OCH, NO!! I wis sae hopin’ naebudy wud be up. We was all o’ us up on the top flaire havin’ oorsels a sherry party to say good-bye to ane o’ the nurses who wis retirin’. Please, PLEASE, dinna tell onybody I wasna here.”

“Um, could I please have a Tylenol? I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep.”

“Oh, aye! Shooooorely!!! O’ course, o’ course, o’ course. Let me gi’ ye ane and then A’ll tuck ye back into yer bed. Wha’ a braw wee babe ye hae, oncidentally! Really it’s the bonniest bairn A’ve aiver clapt eyes on. Here’s yer water ‘n here’s yer Tylenol. Right the noo–back tae bed with ye’. Here’s an extra blanket. There ye go. Aire ye comfortable? Jist ca’ if ye need onything. I’ll be richt at the desk. Sich an agreeable patient, ye ar’. None bett’r, I tell ye’. Sleep well, the noo!”

Never in my life had I been tucked into bed so firmly as I was that night. I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to. All the assumed medical responsibility of the last hour fell from my able shoulders, and I was asleep in minutes.

I had escaped from Peterhead Cottage Hospital’s version of the Twilight Zone.

Love!

Momma

First Night in the Cottage Hospital

Dear Bill,

C’est fini! My sweetie husband’s sweater for hunting! We’re still in bow (and arrow, of course) season, aren’t we? Anyway, here he is wearing it:

Why did I cut off my sweetie’s head? Because as soon as I ask him to model my knitting he can’t stop clowning around and putting on a male-model, pouty face, etc. This is serious, I tell him. But to no avail.  Here’s closer picture of the top of the sweater–a double-moss stitch:

Top of the sweater, yes, but still not top of the husband. Same reason as the first picture. I mean this is a blog with standards, right?

Pattern Facts:

Pattern: Oat Couture Port Orford. This is a great pattern, very easy to follow, and a nice change from raglan which requires constant counting.

Needles: US #6 and #8

Yarn: I made the same sweater in the same color for our younger adult son in Cascade 220 Superwash. This gauged as double-knitting and, of course, was pure wool. For my sweetie husband I used Plymouth Encore, a worsted weight, and a wool/acrylic blend. I feel like a knitting Philistine when I say that I much preferred the latter–both knitting with the yarn and the resultant project. Both nice sweaters, however.

Color: Hunter green. ‘Natch.

Another Peterhead Story:

If there can possibly be anybody new reading this I suggest you look back to a very recent blog: Heartburn December 29, 2009. That’s the last time I told a Peterhead story, and it will bring you up to speed. More can be found in blogs further back but I’ll leave it to you to locate them if there’s anyone who can be bothered. Which I doubt.

Yesterday, was our daughter Anna’s birthday. She was the baby with the gorgeous long, dark hair who was born in Peterhead (a fishing town way north in Scotland where my sweetie husband was a parish minister in the 1970s.)

I went into labor early in the evening of January 4 but thought I could probably make it through till morning. By the middle of the night I thought perhaps I couldn’t. You know how this goes. We had no family near, and my sweetie husband and I were loath to wake our neighbors. Our little son and daughter were sleeping soundly in their beds upstairs, so we decided simply to call a taxi to take me to the local  hospital where delivery was to take place–delivery first of me by the taxi, needless to say, and then of the baby by a midwife. Though it wasn’t far away, the taxi driver was far from thrilled with the prospect of taking this responsibility on. He volunteered to watch the kids while my sweetie Jim drove me over–but neither of us felt comfortable with that. I wasn’t feeling comfortable generally, of course, being in labor and all, but I also didn’t want the children waking to find a total stranger in the house. And even taxi drivers can be kidnappers, burglars, arsonists, and so on.

So, no. That wasn’t going to work.

Off into the night my new friend and I drove–and a few minutes later we arrived at the Peterhead Cottage Hospital, just across the common. Please see a photo of it below:

A small picture but enough to give you the idea. It has since been torn down and replaced by a more modern facility.

There was only so much medical stuff that could be done in this building. As I remember, the ground floor was taken up with rooms for general check-ups, routine appointments, stitches, and other small emergencies. The second floor had a sort of operating theater where babies were delivered, a small nursery for newborns, and a few rooms with beds for local moms to stay a couple of nights after giving birth. Above that was a floor for permanent geriatric patients. That’s as far as my knowledge of the place took me.

The taxi driver dropped me and my bag at the side door and left ASAP. Who could blame him? My sweetie husband had phoned ahead so a nurse was waiting for me. Alas, this nurse was a member of my husband’s church. Her son was our butcher (an unhappy coincidence). I was kind of hoping for a total stranger, but this was not to be. Those of you out in blogland who delivered babies around this time and before, will know that moms-to-be were prepped in a way that they no longer bother with now. I’m not going to go into details but perhaps it’s enough to say that it resulted in a visit to the bathroom where, quite honestly, your only desire was to left alone for a few minutes. No such luck. The nurse did what had to be done and then stuck by my side like lichen to a rock–chatting about my husband’s last sermon (ack!)–this until things had, so to speak, run their course. They were not happy moments for me.

Anna was delivered safe and sound the next evening. I was glad. I’d heard rumors of urgent ambulance drives to the big hospital in Aberdeen when deliveries in Peterhead hadn’t gone as planned, and an hour on a twisty cliff-side road in full-out labor wasn’t the kind of experience anybody would want.

That evening my sweetie husband brought the two older children to see their new sister. Colin admired and loved her from the start. Woody (bad Bill’s wife) asked pointedly if, for some reason, I’d been delivered of a baby Eskimo. Ah. Here was a teachable moment. I found myself trying to defend both how our new baby looked and how Eskimos looked (“. . . and, actually, they like to be called Inuit now, sweetie-pie!”) and getting into a fuddle of sorts. But no matter. We were all pretty happy.

I slept like a log that night. The next night, alas–not so much.

That story next time.

Love!

Momma

We Received an E-Mail From Guess Who

Dear Bill,

Happy New Year everyone!!! No better way to begin a decade than with a well-crafted poem.

*************************

We Received an E-Mail From Guess Who

Like a bird’s cry atop a  high redwood

Like a beacon shining from a hill

Like a lion roaring in defiance

We’ve heard from our hero, bad Bill.

Like a bugle heralding adventure

Like a victor who bears us good will

Like a marksman who hits the right target

We’ve heard from our hero, bad Bill.

We’re fed up with life and its adventures

There’s no hope of happiness until

We hear, with the voice of an angel,

From our hero, our knitting friend–Bill.

*******************

You’ll remember that my sweetie husband and I have two sons-in-law: Good Kevin and Bad Bill. This goes to show you that in spite of what some may say there is indeed a kind of synchronicity in the universe–and a modicum of fairness, I might add. What if we’d ended up with two bad sons-in-law? I leave you with this sobering thought.

Meantime here’s Bill’s e-mail from yesterday.

“Proving once again my versatility, I have created the world’s greatest knitted masterpiece.  You begin this blanket with casting on four stitches, increasing in each stitch to eight on the first round, placing markers between the stitches, then increasing eight stitches every other round, always doing a left raised increase before the marker. I started with dp needles but switched to an increasingly longer circular as it grew larger. It’s a combination of seed stitch and stockinette, which is really fun to work in the round–no purling. I finished with a four stitch I-cord. The yarn is Simply Soft acrylic, for durability and softness.”

Here are the two photos he attached. The first is called “Nearly There Blankie.”

The second is called “Finished Product.”Bad Bill is a busy attorney and we have to thank him for taking the time to share his handiwork with us (although I have to say, that blankie looks curiously like one his aunt Pat might make. No. Crazy thought. She’s a dear friend of mine. She wouldn’t try to pull the wool, so to speak, over my eyes.)

You’ll notice in the first picture Bill’s wearing a hat he also knitted. He’s just too modest to mention it. There’s a year to go before Thanksgiving/Christmas and I’ve chosen two more hat patterns that might keep bad Bill’s little hands busy and out of trouble till then. They’re both turkeys.

I’m kidding around with you here, bad Bill.

The second one is actually crocheted not knitted. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Oh me! Whoa–that was a good one! But both patterns are available on Ravelry for a small price.

If you make one of them, I’ll wear it to church. That’s a promise.

Love!

Momma

Heartburn

Dear Bill,

Well that was fun wasn’t it?

Three impractical resolutions for the New Year:

1. I’m never going to eat again. Ever. This will reduce our grocery bill considerably.

2. I’m going to leave the Christmas decorations up till Christmas rolls around again.

3. I’m going to get all my next year’s Christmas shopping done before 2010 even begins.

Sigh. I know, I know.

Christmas Present Update:

Before the day my sweetie husband said a couple of times (and he was in earnest) that what I really needed for Christmas was foul weather gear for our sailboat. This didn’t thrill me. For one thing, it seemed a little too sensible for a Christmas present. For another, I throw up when sailing in foul weather. This, he’d say, is another reason you need foul weather gear.

Right enough, under the tree on Christmas morning there was a large present for me. It was rather ineptly wrapped and was therefore clearly from my sweetie. I put on my game face and was ready to be delighted, whatever. I mean the truth is, I have everything I could ever need or want in the this world. Except foul weather gear, of course, which falls more into the former rather than the latter category if it has to fall anywhere.

But guess what was in the parcel!!!! Not foul weather gear at all, but this. . . .

Yes!

It’s St. Francis!

I simply love him.

Poor St. Francis has found himself, as we all have, trying to maintain his equilibrium in a rather difficult climate.

However, he’s patient and humble. Perhaps by example he’ll help me to be the same. My sweetie thinks he looks like he has Gollum on his back in this second picture. Very hard to be patient under circumstances such as this but he’s clearly managing. What a guy!

Knitting Update:

I’ve finished the back, the front, and one sleeve of my sweetie husband’s dark green Port Orford sweater–for hunting. Am just about finished the second sleeve so soon, very soon, I’ll be posting a photo of it. Just think of St. Francis standing quietly out in the snow, bad Bill, and exercise the same endurance with this knitting-picture delay.

Peterhead Update:

Well, it’s been awhile since I told a Peterhead story. For new readers–and there always seem to be more, which is certainly very nice–my sweetie husband was minister of the Old Parish Church in Peterhead (nicknamed the Muckle Kirk), Scotland in the 1970s. Peterhead was then a small fishing town north of Aberdeen.

Peterhead was the birthplace of our third baby (of four)– a sweet little girl called Anna. She’s now a wife, mom of three, and court probation officer in San Francisco. Things just keep moving along.

Right from the start she was remarkable for her great beauty and intelligence (of course) but also for her very long dark hair. Here she is at a couple of months old:

(Yes, the cardigan’s hand-knitted.)

Her hair was a source of astonishment to the residents of Peterhead. One of the things I loved to do with Anna (and all my babies) was take her for long walks in her pram. People would kindly stop and peep under the hood to have a look. Invariably they’d reappear with a look of horror on their faces and say,

“Weel. Whit a heed o’ haire!!! But ye must haeve haed sich sair hairtburn with this wee bairn!!!! O dearie, dearie me!”   (“Well. What a head of hair. You must have had such sore heartburn with this little baby, etc.”)

This always confused me and still does. It could be that they thought the genes, chemicals, and/or hormones that produced long hair might also produce heartburn. Could be. But what I actually think they thought was that inside our roomy bodies people were kind of Open Plan. As Anna swam around in utero she was more or less ex utero as well. She was wherever she wanted to be, as it was all kind of ONE. And when she wanted to swim towards my head, her hair would naturally float up my throat. Get it?

Echhh. This is gross. But I can come to no other conclusion.

A nice thing–whenever people passed a mother pushing a baby in a pram they would search out a coin and throw it in. It was a way of financially helping young families, even ones they didn’t know. A very kind gesture and much appreciated. As soon as we were out of sight, however, I’d quickly pocket the sixpence or whatever it was.

I had a fear Anna would eat it–then she’d be the one with heartburn!

Love!

Momma

Birthday Episode II then Straight on to Christmas!

What’s that coming, Oma (Dutch for “Gramma”)?

Is Opa (Dutch for “Grampa”) bringing in a cake?

Whoa!!! What a lot of candles you need, Oma!

Thanks, Opa. I’ll definitely have ice cream with mine.

And next comes Christmas. Hey, I love this time of year!