I headed up to the park last Tuesday to pick up my weekly delivery of farm produce from the Community Supported Agriculture group I’ve been part of for years. Actually, I was picking up a double share: our upstairs neighbors were on vacation and had given us their week’s worth of veggies. Thinking of all that green goodness awaiting me put abundance on my mind.
On the way I ran into an acquaintance I don’t often see. He’s been waylaid by severe depression lately, and the last time I’d seen him was in the grocery store, where he was buying almost nothing–and struggling to pay for it.
The weather was good, and I wanted to find out how he was doing. “Walk with me,” I suggested. As we chatted, I remembered the generosity of my upstairs neighbors. Suddenly it was obvious that I’d been given those extra veggies so that I could pass them on.
I offered my neighbor’s share to my companion, who almost certainly wouldn’t have accepted if it hadn’t been clear that it cost me nothing. We picked up two bags of vegetables each–purple onions, sleek yellow squash, bumpy cucumbers, crisp lettuce, plump eggplant, red and green peppers, fragrant basil, and three kinds of tomatoes–and parted ways, each of us blessed in our own way.
