After filling my cart with mostly-fresh items at the grocery
yesterday, I was about to leave the produce section when I stopped to survey a
display of cantaloupe. I picked up
several, checking for ripeness, when a tiny, elderly woman with thick glasses and
snow white springy-frizzy hair approached me.
“Could you find me a good one, dear?” She looked eagerly into my face – not
in a needy way necessarily, but with pleasant friendliness.
It had been a long time since I’d seen that look on the face
of a stranger.
I told her with a chuckle that I was no expert at this time
of year, and that we both needed to wait until late summer for the locally-grown good ones,
but I would gladly share what I knew about selecting melons and we could look
together. She agreed, and we spent
the next five minutes chatting amicably while searching for peachy-colored
skins, punching butt ends for softness, and smelling stem ends for musky
scents. With the investigation of
each melon she said, “Oh? So
that’s how you do it?”
In the end, we both decided to take our chances and buy one
despite the fact that none checked out quite right. Nevertheless, she thanked me profusely. “Now I’ll know how to look for a good
one,” she said, smiling and nodding.
Her eyes shone bright; I saw no hint of confusion, although I had to
think that perhaps she used to know how to pick out ripe cantaloupe and had
just forgotten.
I lingered to check out tomatoes at a nearby island, and
noticed her again at a distance, picking out bananas - breaking one select unspotted
specimen from each of several bunches. I hadn’t noticed her clothing before,
but now she stood out against the wall of banana-yellow in her lavender stretch
pants and blue shirt with white and lavender flowers.
As she snapped off her three choice bananas, other shoppers streamed
by us with blank faces. An
unattended child, probably bored, tried to pull apples and carrots out of their
plastic packaging by poking holes with his fingers. A man seemed thoroughly engaged in an urgent cell phone
conversation, reiterating with a stressed voice certain requests for tomatoes and fresh herbs from
the other end.
A frazzled-looking woman purchasing many liters of soda pop leaned
heavily on the cart for support.
All in their own worlds, each a separate entity, disconnected.
I watched the cantaloupe woman with the smile still on her
face and remembered a time, long ago, when strangers comfortably approached one
another in public to talk about simple common experiences. I was glad this little lady with the lavender
pants took a risk there beside the pile of cantaloupe and brightened my day.
I wonder if any of the others noticed.
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