Three Years Ago: The Clark Park Farmer's Market, West Philadelphia

Finding True Love at the Farmer’s Market

“Do you have any Grade B maple syrup?” can be quoted as the line that tapped his heart. And the curiosity it prompted in him, this young man standing beside her at the stall, whom she had not yet noticed, the question that flowed into her ears in a rich, deep voice, can be spoken of as the words that made her head turn. “What is Grade B maple syrup?” The vendor had only Grade A Medium Amber, but when she looked up to address her fellow farmer’s market patron, she wondered if she had not perhaps found exactly what she was looking for.

Potential exists between any two strangers; theirs she immediately recognized as handsome, maybe even delicious. Would they share mornings spent and wasted on pancakes flipped and drizzled with tree sap and decorated with berries? Would they share children, or maybe just this late August inquiry into the fruits of the year’s harvest? A passion for flavor two people were once pleased to recognize in each other? All of these thoughts spawned from a question that had only subliminally, perhaps only by hint in its tone, been meant to evoke such great portent. She explained to him what had been learned during her summer in Vermont with the professor who ran a sugar farm, and then they parted ways.

At the end of the aisle, she found him again. “White peaches,” he commented to the seller. “What are white peaches?” she asked, flirting with symmetry. This question was more provocative, for its dull answer—white peaches are just another variety, typically sweeter than their yellow cousin, thus lower in acidity—proved a faulty crutch for conversation. They would have to find some other topic to relate through. “Do you come here often?” one of them asked. This was her second day in Philadelphia; she was so excited to have a farmer’s market in the park just a few blocks from her apartment. He lived a block away, in the house where he grew up, was a student at the medical school. She loved this neighborhood – the brightly colored spindles on the Victorian verandahs. What is a verandah?

An hour later, juice from the peck of peaches they had devoured together dripping down their wrists became a symbol for how ripe they were for each other then. In his kitchen, a week later, over dinner – everything fresh from the market: risotto, fresh corn and bright red tomatoes – the symbol would gather more significance. And the next spring, as they sat with guests on his verandah, olive oil infused with rosemary dripping from sandwiches on homebaked bread this time – 'let’s make our friends eat the way we live' their motto – they would discover that the metaphor of their relationship was not ripeness, because ripeness fades and sours, but growth. In two years, they would sit on the dock behind their houseboat and acknowledge that no restaurant in the world could feed them better. And in the third summer, for their engagement party, they would invite their friends to languish with them, forget time and formality and eat -- cakes they had baked splashed with warm berry compote they had foraged -- and share in their abundance.