From Saturday morning, March 19, 2022…

It has been a long while since letting the warm bubble of Market sounds wash over me… and I had missed it.  I find myself tucked into a corner after over two years of not being able to sit within an atmosphere I find so comforting…the warm rumbly murmur of vendor patter and the wanderers-by who point and choose, greet one another and catch up, or simply pause to imagine what might be made at home with the organic art supplies so wondrously arranged with all of their knobbly, uniquely shaped, colourful potential on display.

There is a group of nine or ten gathered around the combination of tables nearest to me—they keep adding others that pass by and recognize one or more of them and somehow there is always room for one more chair—as there always is at that table where friends gather.  It is beautiful to see their joy at being together once again.   I say, nearest to me, but that still means a good ten to fifteen feet away.  Doesn’t really matter—people are gathering again in public places.  Me, I am happy to have a small table to myself…a table for two in the corner behind Boulangerie La Vendéenne and by the big garage-door windows, affording me a view down the arts side and out into the main area where, admittedly, the pickings are slim at this point in the year—but what Is there is so delicious.  I have come home recently with celeriac and carrots, Brussels sprouts, leeks, greens, fresh bread, eggs, chorizo… Soon enough (more or less) there will be strawberries, raspberries, broccoli, onions, varieties of radishes, kohlrabi, zucchini, eggplant, squashes, peppers, tomatoes, assorted heirloom apples… Dizzying, really…the possibilities, the sheer beauty of it all…all of the textures of peel and flesh, the shapes and colours, smells… 

And…huh…I suddenly realize that it isn’t simply the hues and contours of suppers-to-be that I am imagining… it’s a kind of hope.  A looking-forward-to, God willing and the world doesn’t collapse….brought on simply by sitting in a corner in a place where I feel safe enough to let the comfort of what surrounds me pass through me…fill in the crevices…soothe the edges…engage my senses…and remind me again of why I write…So I can see hope breathing time and again in memory and observation, in curiosity and sighing…on into a future that I can not know until I get there.  These pages, these places, they are the kindness of a friend who listens and receives and holds on with me, reminding me of what has been and what I hope will be, even if I can’t know for sure…. 

Basil, fresh ginger, mushrooms…cattle beans, butternut, oatcakes…and saltwater, horizon, and sunrise.