Farmers market

The farmers market is where I find beauty. My neighbor teased me, “How can you go on a Sunday? It will be so crowded.” But I love it. I purposefully go days before Thanksgiving. I am in the hubbub of the holiday. One of my gifts is being patient in this type of situation. I wait for a family in hijabs to choose their tangerines before me. I smile and make a quick comment about the perfectness of the avocados for guacamole. Grandmas buy pastries for impatient toddlers.I stop and eavesdrop on the elderly couple marveling at the radishes. I watch the family with four young boys dart through the frozen carts. I feel the festivity of the people and the colors.

I feel like a traveller myself in my own land. Is this the Seattle fish markets that I have only seen in movies? I hear accents and languages completely unfamiliar.

This weekend we ate like kings- brie and rustic bread, fuschia raspberries, steamed artichokes with stems wider than dollar coins. I made potato leek soup and three of the four of us liked it. And cheese sausage balls with the exact same ratio.

It felt good. Momentarily.

I miss my dad. I feel grief and anger- I think. It is hard for me to name my emotions. These emotions are strangers. I don’t want to even acknowledge them or shake their hands with a strong hand as my Dad taught me. With all this writing, I lose my words. I hole up. I’m scared of the dark. I’m petrified of caves. These strangers anger and grief live in the dark. I have avoided them. I’ll try again. I’ll write later this week.