Little jewels from the last couple of days:

I pull into the Fred Meyer parking lot and park off to the side near the gardening center. As I’m getting my shopping bag and backpack-purse out of my car a tall man – probably a little younger than me, with the build of a retired quarterback – returns to his truck. His truck is parked near my car. He is wearing a red hat and I’m pretty sure I know what it says on it.

I feel suddenly impelled to exchange a greeting with him, but I let the Cosmos decide what’s going to happen here, and finish getting out my stuff. When I go to get a shopping cart in the little cart corral, he’s pushing in a small cart. His red hat does, indeed, say what I thought it would say.

“It’s getting colder!” I observe – weather is always a good place to start, right? He smiles and agrees with me. I notice him glance at my little Fiesta hatchback and I’m sure he’s taking in the bumperstickers there: “GOD BLESS THE WHOLE WORLD. NO EXCEPTIONS.” “MAKE AMERICA GREEN AGAIN.” And whatnot. He glances back at me and smiles. I’m pretty sure he knows we’re from different tribes.

“Do you need a cart?” he asks, offering me the one he just put back, and I smile back at him and thank him, and take the cart from him into the supermarket. I’m still smiling as I enter the store. There is kindness in every tribe.

I pick up the items I need to pick up and check out, then head to the Starbucks counter. The barista – tall, Black, with a longish goatee dyed flamingo-pink – steps up to take my order. I love this guy. He never fails to make me smile. He asks what I’d like and I tell him this will be my first coffee in a month. He gasps. “Honey!” he exclaims in horror, “We need to fix that for you!” While he’s making my pumpkin spice latte he regales me with tales of his dogs and his husband and his grocery-shopping experiences. By the time he hands me my latte I have had a whole day’s worth of laugh out louds. He is like a one-man comedy show. As I leave, I tell a couple of the workers who are sitting at the exit that “I love that guy!” And they nod their heads and laugh. They get it.

I go to the Target parking lot to take pictures of the autumnal trees and then go in the store to explore what they’ve got in there. As I’m browsing I wander down the coffee aisle and see there are a lot of coffee options for Keurig owners, but we are not Keurig owners – so that’s not going to work. There are also, though, bags of ground coffe, and I think, “Oh! I should get one of those French presses and press my own coffee!” So I ask a man stocking shelves if he knows where I might find French presses. He’s really helpful – tells me his wife uses a French press every morning to make her own coffee – and then clicks into his Target device and tells me what aisle I can find French presses in.

I proudly bring my French press home…

The next morning I’m back in Target to return the French press. I tell the customer service lady what happened: “I came home and showed my husband the French press and he said, ‘Karen. We already have two of those.'” The customer service woman starts cracking up and, as she’s efficiently taking care of my return for me, suggests maybe I should buy one for every day of the week. I love people who make me laugh.

On the way home I decide to turn onto Allen West Road just to see what magic I can find there. And there’s that amazing pumpkin display I remember seeing last October! Darla, the owner of Eagle View Farms, comes out to greet me, a big smile on her face. “Karen!” she calls – she remembers my name! It’s so good to see Darla again. It’s our annual reunion, I guess. We talk about her son, Adam, who was in my eighth grade class a couple decades ago – a very cool person – and laugh and chat and laugh some more. She’s covered in mud. She says she’s been cleaning out the gutters while her husband went shopping. I say, dreamily, “Sounds like a Hallmark movie,” and she laughs out loud.

I snap some pictures of her display, and then buy a big yellow pumpkin from her. I ask her how much – there are no signs indicating the price – and she says, “Seven dollars.”

“How much REALLY?” I ask. And she insists it’s seven dollars. Right. So I write her a check for ten, she calls me a stinker, and I ask her how much it really is. She admits it’s ten dollars.

We hug one more time – mud and all – and I drive home with a big yellow pumpkin and my heart full of humanity’s goodness.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell