The Produce Section
As Imagine helps me gather the produce at Down to Earth, our local health food store, I give him simple hints on how to select. He's interested today and listens without me having to repeat. "Here, get some garlic. Squeeze it to make sure it's not dried out and check the skin on the outside to be sure it looks fresh and not dull." He picks the perfect ones, bags them and places them into the cart. "Okay, now get some carrots, one of the big bags." He comes back telling me he dug down and found the only five-pound bag that had only one broken carrot in it and all the carrot tops look fresh and not slimy. He knows somehow that I look for carrots without the old, slimy tops. "Now I need some apples. Get the ones that are the least expensive and get nine." He also knows that I like to buy in odd numbers. He can read well enough now that he can match the prices to the the product labels and comes back with a bag of mixed apples because they were all the same price-- Fuji, Braeburn, Golden delicious. I had to explain that the store probably would like them in seperate bags to ring each variety up individually, but we won't worry about that this time.
And so it went. I explained the selection of jewel yams and how to avoid the ones with soft ends, how to select leaf lettuce that was fresh and what to look for in chard and collard greens. It occurred to me that I don't ever remember my mother doing the same with me. That I somehow watched and learned from her as we shopped together. That she never bought greens, only lettuce. That she preferred the bulk potato bags instead of selecting them one by one as I do. There seemed to be something important about today, as if Imagine knew that this was information he would need. And instinctively I handed out the knowledge without fanfare, without adding more than was necessary. How could I be more grateful or hope for more than this?
And so it went. I explained the selection of jewel yams and how to avoid the ones with soft ends, how to select leaf lettuce that was fresh and what to look for in chard and collard greens. It occurred to me that I don't ever remember my mother doing the same with me. That I somehow watched and learned from her as we shopped together. That she never bought greens, only lettuce. That she preferred the bulk potato bags instead of selecting them one by one as I do. There seemed to be something important about today, as if Imagine knew that this was information he would need. And instinctively I handed out the knowledge without fanfare, without adding more than was necessary. How could I be more grateful or hope for more than this?