THE COUSIN’S GIFT

Once upon a time, a young girl living in Vancouver sent her cousin a beautiful blanket, made in Scotland. It was as soft as Scottish thistledown, white as snow on the top of the Cascades and lacy like spider webs in the early morning sunlight.

When the baby girl was born, on January 25th, 1971, her mother wrapped her up in that wonderful blanket to take her home. In a few months, when the California sunshine made a blanket somewhat unnecessary, and the realities of a casual, crawl on the grass and in the dirt lifestyle would have destroyed the blanket, the young mother washed it carefully and placed it in a drawer.

Through moves around California, over the seas to Australia and back again, from house to house to sailboat, the blanket was packed along. It found a home at the bottom of a sweet scented cedar chest and was only taken out to show the baby, now a toddler, now a little girl, now a teenager, the lovely blanket given by a cousin that she knew only by name.

Time turned for another 22 years and on 8/31/93, the girl in turn became a mother. Her daughter was born in a Sacramento hospital, and when the infant was ready to go home, her mother wrapped her in that same lovely blanket. The grandmother had stitched some of the cobwebs back together and carefully washed it, then gave it gladly to her daughter to bring another child home to a life’s beginning. As the early months passed, the young mother folded the blanket up, putting it away in a drawer for that someday.

The blanket stayed safe through moves to the far north of California along the Mad River and the wild coast, then across the Continental Divide to the land that Daniel Boone kept wandering away from. Leaving Kentucky, the blanket was brought along to Texas and finally, in a wide circle, returned to central California. The baby raced her way through time and grew faster than her grandmother’s eyes could follow. In the way that time is measured by women, there came the moment when she was awaiting the birth of her child. Those who know these things told her that soon she would hold a son in her arms.

The woman who would soon be a grandmother opened her drawer and pulled out the blanket. Gently she laid it out and saw that time had been kind to the soft fabric. She threaded new needle with snowy white thread and began to reconnect the few strands of spider-floss that would help cuddle the baby boy. She talked to her mother, sharing the experience and the long thread of memory and time that the blanket represented. And that woman, who had once been a young girl awaiting her own child, could see the threads of binding that the blanket had become. It binds her to the land where she had been born, through her shared bond with her cousin, and it bound her to the future, to the face of a child she has not yet met, but who shares those ties with the women who brought him forth through the ages. It binds her to her cousin who made a chain of caring with a simple gift of a small white blanket.

The rain has been pouring down with enough frequency that I haven't watered in about a month. This planter was installed in late March and filled with brand new seedlings. The heat makes things grow slowly but with the rain, I haven't lost a single plant. By next year, I expect it to look fantastic. When the weather cools off, I'll have the energy to stop being lazy and pull a few weeds.
This beauty is called Ebb Tide and should be a deep purple. The sun plays havoc with the colors sometimes, but this rich magenta isn't all that bad. It's the same color as my toe nails.

I just ran out to fill the hummingbird feeders. There's an ongoing battle for the feeders with the hummers trying to drive off each other and the goldfinches. The wasps are even meaner than the hummers. After hanging sugar-water bottles, I figured I could tie up tomatoes. Just as I was picking the 7 little orange tomatoes that were ripe, I looked down and saw maybe 10 mosquitos happily making breakfast on my legs. Okay - that's it - back inside for the Bactine and A/C. The tomatoes taste really good - now that I've stopped itching enough to enjoy them.


So much time flies by and it seems only yesterday I updated this. If three months ago is "yesterday" then tomorrow I'll be 90 and wondering where my life went.
The birds and bugs are happy denizens of the yard but Tim and I, Boris and Daisy, hide inside from the mosquitos. In the mid-Atlantic, people are crying over heat day after day in the 90's. Here, it's not so bad because temperatures are only up to 90.
This week, I even walked 4 blocks to lunch on Thursday and Friday - okay 3 blocks, but they were really long blocks.

The castle is undergoing major work. While I was in Dallas a couple of weekends ago, I asked the handyman to rip out all the carpets, baseboards, nail strips and the old flooring in the kitchen.
For simplicity's sake, I will just say that I make a better general contractor than Tim. He's nice - I woudn't have been. So now, we are in the state of finishing the removal. I believe there is a power-tool floor scraper in Tim's near future. Still, the concrete doesn't look too bad and the removal of the baseboards showed us some water damage that has stopped but needs to be cleaned up. Next steps are glue removal, floor cleaning, painting, polishing and new baseboards. Painting means the whole house, since we're clearing every room as we go along. Timetable? Oh, good grief. We've been in the house 4 years and the dead-mouse carpet just got ripped out. At the rate we go, I expect the floors to be cleaned of glue by the end of August. The rest - well, I get my left knee replaced in December, so hopefully before then.