Last year I was on a trip to Alabama at this time and my cousin Michael sent me an email from California saying the blood tests were as bad as they can get. In Alabama I was visiting my grandma Beepske’s first cousin. They were double first cousins; their mothers were sisters and their fathers were brothers.  She was 92 so we spent a long time at appointments with doctors and in her living room sitting and watching the birds at the feeders. I was knitting furiously because I’m not wired to sit still for long. When I took some time to walk  in her neighborhood I searched for signs of life and could only spot it in the Mexican workers hired to do yard work.  In this unlikely place I think I was trying to understand who Beespke had been before her life got complicated. Life was complicated in Alabama too. She told me her family was concerned that I was there to take something. Of course I was, if you count the stories I heard and the lessons in embroidery. I recognized her fierce determination and it strengthened mine own. In a kinder moment, she said to me when I asked what Beepske had been like, “She was just like you. You could be the same person all over again.”