A gentle rumble of thunder broke loose from an approaching band of storms, setting off on its own to see the world, and the skies have been silent since. I had just closed the heavy wooden door to the old goat barn, sliding it smoothly on its overhanging track after finishing an impulsive and random bit of pre-breakfast yard work that took me from trimming trees and moving cars to weeding around the raised beds and adding another pillowy layer of straw mulch to the thirsty Chinese cabbage. The rain we’re getting today is a welcome relief to gardens and fields of every size and scale. I could hear our farm neighbors exhaling into the humid air as I shed my boots in the mud room and stepped into the kitchen to heat some water for my morning tea.

The farmers’ market yesterday was a soaked and low-key affair, with a smaller crowd of sturdy, good-natured patrons in all manner and style of rain boots strolling through the puddles, giving the tops of their carrot and onion bundles a free rinse between visits to vendors’ stalls. We were busier than we expected to be in such conditions and grateful as always, setting our sights on the naps that awaited both of us once the truck was unloaded back home. We didn’t come close to selling out like the previous weeks, but didn’t mind too much. The advantage to coming home with product is being halfway packed for next weekend’s market. We’re “glass half full” people ‘round here.

The intermittent showers and customer traffic gave us time for some rare people-watching, imagining the stories that bookended their Saturday morning market pilgrimage. It was a real-time creative writing assignment—remember those from middle school, where you were given a photo and you had to fill in the backstory? Let me assure you, we had no interest in being critical or snarky with our observations. Quite the opposite. We gave our curiosity a workout, combining it with a good dose of amnesty and leeway for the hidden elements of the lives that crossed in front of and occasionally stopped at our stall. Sheltered from the pelting rain, we had a front row seat to a sliver of humanity going about their days’ to-do lists.

Umbrellas were everywhere (children in tow employed them with varying degrees of skill and satisfaction. Suffice to say, quite a few parents would be toweling off their youngsters when they got back home) and dogs on leashes shook out their fur at regular intervals. Tattoo art alone was reason enough to pull up a chair and make a day of it, but the market ends at noon and the village leaders are quite clear that vendors need to be but a memory by 1:00p.m. So we made good use of the four hours given us. What about the two young women sporting dreadlocks and thin leather bracelets, pulling a small red canvas-sided wagon across the wet parking lot? Holding hands, they browsed the all-natural dog biscuit stand and plucked two bags from the table to add to their collection of garlic, honey, cinnamon sugar donuts and a tall plastic container of pickles. What will they have for lunch? How long have they been together? Maybe the market is a fun early morning date? Such questions we would probably not ask them if they stopped for a sample of our Cranberry Orange Pecan granola, but we’d leave the door wide and respectfully open just in case. Curiosity without respect nudges the shallows of voyeurism; that’s simply not our vibe. We kept a eye out for one of the market’s regular patrons, a young man with his pet boa draped over his shoulders, pushing his toddler daughter in her stroller.

When customers do linger at our booth, trying more than one of the samples we keep in quaint mason jars topped with repurposed parmesan cheese shaker lids (they fit perfectly), we exchange pleasant bits of information, learn about their allergies and dietary preferences and confirm that we do indeed make every batch in our humble farm kitchen, rendering air fresheners and scented wax melts obsolete. They smile and sometimes laugh, select the flavors they liked best and promise to return. Many of them do, volunteering descriptions of how the Strawberry Vanilla they bought last week ended up as the topping for a midweek berry crisp or decorated their morning’s smoothie bowl in a sweet arc just around the edge. To be included even infinitesimally in a tiny slice of their day’s nourishment is a privilege that hums beneath our busy hands when we bake up the next batch. They could just have easily come back, purchased their next bag and then walked away.

In the grand scheme of things, we’re barely on the sidelines of anyone else’s stories but our own, and that’s on our best days. Most of the time our fellow humans get up, shower, dress and manage their lives’ details without any help or acknowledgement from us. They make their choices and mistakes away from our watchful and sometimes regrettably judgmental eyes, pick themselves up off the floor and carry the lesson forward. I often imagine the film clips that cleverly speed up the scene at a subway station, making travelers stream through the turnstiles like so much vertical water, each life a film unto itself. In my moments of pause, I wish them well and a life of ease, cheer on their triumphs with both hands in the air, hoping that perhaps they’re doing the same in the quiet corners of their hearts for all of us too. Presuming good intention about those who people the concentric circles of our lives is a lovely way to frame one’s existence. When practiced with some intention and regularity, it keeps the corners of one’s heart free from the dust and debris of bitterness or envy and makes those anxious moments in freeway traffic kinder (maybe the driver who cut it a little too close or didn’t use their turn signal is speeding to the bedside of an ailing friend. Of course they can move ahead of me). There’s far too much missing information in that brief encounter for me to draw conclusions about someone’s character and etch them in unforgiving stone for all eternity.

Whenever I have the chance, I take time to get to know someone, if they let me. Even a little bit. After forty years of interviewing volunteer applicants, I’ve got the mechanics of asking questions rock solid in my skill set. But it’s my curiosity that takes the lead in those conversations, and I willingly follow where folks lead me. When circumstance doesn’t allow for those protracted and dare I say sacred encounters, I do my best to fill in the gap with a charitable imagination. Like the other day, when I was driving home from work…

My commute takes me on a hilly two-lane ride cutting through farm fields and woods that hug the road and one intersection in a township that boasts a “mall” on one of the corners (it’s actually a quick-stop with two gas pumps and a modest deli counter but if the good people of Fredonia want to call it a mall, who am I to say otherwise? I’m just a visitor, passing through. I did stop once for a bag of white cheddar popcorn, back in the pre-pandemic days of eating food on the go that required licking one’s fingers. Sigh…I miss those days).

On that particular day, I was following an Amazon delivery van moving rather “not from around here” slowly when he turned into the gravel entrance of a small cemetery at the top of a hill and inched forward, looking left and right as if for the address listed on his next stop. I had so many questions rush to the front of my mind in an instant but with a string of cars behind me, couldn’t gather anymore clues without inciting a two-lane country road riot so I continued onward, curiosity unsatisfied. In the absence of facts, I let my imagination unspool across myriad possibilities, any of which would make a good story for a writer more skilled in fiction than I am. Do cemeteries have addresses? Could the package he needed to deliver have borne a fountain-pen inscribed destination that simply read “Alfred Bates, 1904 - 1975, Ninth Row on the Left, Third Stone From the Right”, like a letter from Hogwarts? How to explain that incomplete delivery to his boss back at the hub? I wish I’d given into the impulse to turn in behind him, follow him to the back row fringed in the oldest of cottonwoods. But, alas, the moment escaped me in a nod to good sense and I’ll never know what he was doing there or who, lying in repose beneath the grass, might have ordered a new set of soft bamboo sheets (sorry, that’s where my mind landed when I wondered what residents of a cemetery might need from This World, being all horizontal like they they are). Or maybe he just pulled in for a late lunch, his own bag of white cheddar popcorn waiting patiently on the seat next to him.

It goes without saying that I’ll be on the lookout for that van, or any Amazon van, when I go to work tomorrow morning. That’s one story I’d be willing to chase down.