Update: Awakening from the Iconography of Fairy Tales

[akirlu]

Back Gate at My Parents' House, San Jose

This gate was not there when I was growing up; there was only the eight-foot fence. I like the gate better. Now that the house is sold, the gate may soon disappear again, along with much of what my mother planted over the course of four decades in the same home. The new owners have big plans, and a toddler. Appearing and disappearing gates, and gardens: how very like a fairy tale. Fitting enough for a story that started with a poison mushroom, and ended, more or less, with a handful of beans.

I'm home, once again, and slipping back into the patterns of normal life in the cold, gray Pacific Northwest. It's as if all that Bay Area sunshine, jasmine, and citrus blossom were just a fever dream, and no part of waking life at all. Except that now I have another bowl my mother made, and a cutting from the cactus that outgrew the house, and from Karen, a handful of beans. Special imported French beans -- les Haricots Trarbais 'Alaric' -- which are the properest kind of beans for making cassoulet. And the cassoulet Karen made with them was certainly something special, though I don't know that the beans are magical, per se. Then again, I didn't have to trade the family cow for them. Besides, in my family, the tradition is to trade the family cow for enough money to emigrate to America, and that train left the station long ago. That's all right, I'd rather have cassoulet, anyhow. Nuts to you, America.

Also, I know time has passed because I finished another pair of socks. The marvelous green self-striping yarn produces such an impressive pattern that everyone thinks I'm a much more advanced knitter than I really am. At last, I knit a pair of socks that are small enough. And I have most of my very first cabled garment -- a left-handed wrist warmer -- finished as well. I also have the memory of many fine and rambling conversations with my several kind hosts. It was really very good to spend time with Lucy and Jon and Spike and Mike and Karen and Tom. Y'all rock, individually and collectively. I must try not to wait until something dire happens to visit the Bay Area again. There are all sorts of couches I have not test-driven yet. And I missed the Wisteria Party, dammit. Perhaps I'll try for July.

I got home safely Saturday afternoon. It should have been Saturday morning but United are bastards I just missed the 45 minute cut off for checked luggage, and I wasn't quite awake enough to think of lying about the need to check a bag, risking my pocket knife in the gauntlet of security, and just letting the airline check my second bag for free, at the gate. So they put me on standby for the next flight, and after a rather fraught 4-hour wait, I managed to get on the next plane for Seattle. I guess four hours of my time is probably worth not having to buy an new Wenger knife. I've paid as much as $60 for one of those. And I made a lot of progress on my cables.

Internet at home has been having fits, hence the relative radio silence on my part. With a new phone cord and a lot of brangling with support personnel in Hyderabad, Hal seems to have conquered the worst of the problem. We'll see tonight.