It is the little things, like
A serene late to mid-afternoon walk,
After a chilled morning of soft continuous rain,
The serendipitous meeting of “Karen” in Chuck’s parking lot. Who knew that my offer to return her grocery cart (saving her the return trip) would lead to an hour and a half conversation, so full of her imparted health knowledge; which included among other topics, the many benefits and uses of sunflower seeds, including the propitious proportion of protein, magnesium, zinc and other nutrients, the fact that it will help in the important job of cleaning one’s lymphatic system, and will even improve the health of your budgies (which she happened to have a few of), and many other interesting things which led to quite a long hour standing on opposing legs on and off, while still hand-holding the cart I intended to eventually return to the store with. Oh, yes, can’t forget the advice on getting the non-dairy yogurt (she is sure they are still selling it in Fred Meyers), the one in a small green container, because basically we need to cut out any dairy from our diet, and our skin and gut would be so much improved, which is evidenced by the poor health of the kids today, all of which is quite interesting and more so considering we just met, and yet the time comes to bring the conversation to an end and I head into Chuck’s, where I am barely into an aisle in the vegetable part of the store when I see Karen looking around the same area whereupon she sees me and comes over and starts up a conversation again, almost as if we had not dropped the previous one, only now the subject is to find where in the store they have placed the sunflower seeds that she talked to me about, which required asking one of the store attendents, and a successful search and find and a discussion on the merits of raw or roasted and salted or unsalted, and the additional search for the bulk hibiscus this store usually sells and the additional information that it is now harder to find this year which may be in part due to the fires in Hawaii last year, which brings the conversation around to the topic of climate change, and thoughts on general food distribution, by this time I notice we may be blocking the general flow of carts in this aisle and indicate as much and we part ways in Chuck’s as I proceed to try and get the one item I came to purchase, fresh Salmon, but there is a rather long line, so I head toward the front of the store, passing the egg and yogurt aisle and discreetly pick up the Greek yogurt I usually buy, but cover it with my cloth grocery bag, in case Karen is still in the store and should see me at checkout and start another discussion. As I make the walk back to my car, I realize it took an hour and a half to buy one item, and that whole time Karen’s husband was in the car waiting for her to return with a few ounces of bulk hibiscus for tea.
These little things today were sandwiched between some wonderful words with good friends, hours passing like minutes sharing each others joy in talk.