Honeycrisp

The loud voice is famous to silence,   

which knew it would inherit the earth   

before anybody said so.   - Naomi Shihab Nye

I am holding two cans of bubbly water, tin wrapped in matte plastic labels, one peach and one plum. An antidote to modern times written perpendicular to the bottom of the can. It is coincidence that I am walking out of Plum Market back to Ben and Cooper waiting in our Subaru. They look surprised to see me so quickly. Don’t they know by now I hold the record for fastest time in and out of the grocery store? 

I feel beautiful holding these two unique colored cans of calming hemp & adaptogens, peach ginger and black cherry. It feels strange to admit this to myself but it is true as I pass a tan Sebring in all my tin can glory. A woman sits barely over the dashboard, wears a floppy straw hat, her grey wisps fall along her squishy features. Perhaps she is in the middle of gardening and remembered she needs arrow root for her strawberry cobbler she is making for dinner on this cooler June day before getting back to weeding her Peonies and tomatoes that have started to really sprout up now. She is sunken down in the seat the way it happens when you have been sitting in that same seat for at least 15 years. The seat knows her curves well. But like any codependent relationship I speculate for a brief moment if it is really supporting her and I decide that this is questionable. Lady is talking on the phone. Through her drivers side window she holds an iPhone in front of her mouth like she is about to eat a hotdog instead of like a banana against her ear. Today the mask mandate is officially lifted in Michigan and I can see her entire face. She is smiling, laughing, talking to someone she loves. Lighting up that whole 3 x 3 cabin. We make eye contact as she continues to smile and laugh. My presence does not interrupt or disturb or shake her in anyway. She continues her conversation as though I am part of it. I smile back. Back in our car Cooper stands his long Newfoundland legs on the middle console and leans into my seat. His head almost touches the roof as he sniffs my purchases and Ben turns the corner to home. 

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,   

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,   

but because it never forgot what it could do. - Naomi Shihab Nye. 

I remember this woman. And our interaction feels just as or even more significant than many I have had with people I have known for years. Don’t we all have the right to project meaning into a simple encounter? Isn’t this our birthright? For a moment I can feel the wisdom and love and beauty of a woman I don’t know. That in these few seconds everything one reads in books and goes to therapy to try to understand is suddenly as tangible as biting into a cold, sweet, ripe Honeycrisp.