The Produce Whisperer
As she got older — mid-to-late 80s — my sainted mother, Thelma “The Thelm Unit” Koster, really liked to go to the grocery store.
Using the cart as a support device as well as to hold the items on her shopping list, she could make a fine afternoon out of slowly easing her way up one aisle and then down another. If I was in town, I’d accompany her on these missions, which is when I learned that Mom REALLY liked the produce section. She had a bit of a green thumb anyway and enjoyed nurturing her own plants and flowers. And she loved cooking and eating vegetables.
This era predated the dynamic dictating that a human constantly peck at a cell phone for endorphinic gratification, and so, escorting Mom, I’d stand by quietly, trying not to doze, as she’d pause in front of a display of, oh, green peppers, holding first one or another up to the store’s overhead fluorescent lighting, pursing her lips and studying each specimen according to some secret and perhaps innate checklist that determined whether that specific pepper might fit her plans. Or maybe it was just a cool looking pepper.
Then it would be on to the next fruit or vegetable —cauliflowers and broccoli, cantaloupes and black cherries.
These grocery/produce visits continued whenever I’d visit over the years, and at a certain point I realized that I was no longer slightly amused or bored by Mom’s garden-y meditations, but sort of … in AWE — not just that Mom was so transfixed, but maybe also by the simple miracle of the vegetables themselves. I mean, I like vegetables well enough, and I married a vegetarian — but I think it was just realizing that MOM realized the miracle of their existences.
Mostly, though, it was revelatory in the sense that I was watching my mother in her element at a certain point of acceptance and grace in her life. I don’t know if Mom would have described herself as “delighted” to be scrutinizing a cantaloupe, but she was certainly pleasantly engaged rather than simply fulfilling a chore like paying the water bill or returning audio books to the library.
There was something really beautiful about watching her — and she was completely unaware that my own level of observational participation had shifted from pleasantly dutiful to joyfully admiring HER admiring a piece of fruit. This was the woman, after all, who fed my creative impulses — she bought me my first bass guitar— in much the same fashion as she masterfully crafted and served me chicken and dumplings, biscuits and sausage gravy, shrimp and ham jambalaya, Navy bean soup and — hell yeah! — her narcotic-strength cinnamon coffee cake.
The Thelm Unit would have turned 99 late last month. I like to think of her as a lover of nature’s art, and any grocery store produce section was her own personal Louvre. And I’m glad I got to realize and appreciate this small but special aspect of her personality.
That calls for a slice of cantaloupe.