I meet loads of people selling at the various farmers’ markets; fellow vendors, their children, customers , friends and as my Mum calls them –  the tire kickers. That last group will ask you a ton of questions, the provenance of your butter, the organicness of your spelt flour and what time you start in the morning. You answer truthfully and politely for the most part ,but it doesn’t really matter , they’re not buying anything anyway . If they don’t know it, you sure do, in the first twenty seconds you’ve got them pegged or catalogued ,as the Frenchman likes to say. 

More often than you’d imagine, people you know and sometimes people you don’t, share the most private and sometimes heartbreaking bits of their life with you. They can do this in minutes – often with a lineup tailing behind them. I don’t think it’s a bakery girl thing , I know my  farmer pal Wanda has received  more than one secret over a bunch of chervil or a bag of stinging nettle at her booth.

Love loss, illness, tragedy, infidelity, loneliness, aging parent woes, even the death of a pet –  there’s nothing I haven’t heard.  Sometimes you are blindsided and move on to the next customer with a tear in your own eye. Each story – a chink in the armour.

 Often, I don’t even know ( or remember) the person’s name, I may know them by ‘ sourdough rye and apple turnover’ or ‘change purse who always forgets car keys’  but it doesn’t mean I am not happy to see them or that I don’t care about them. Caring too much can be a curse, next thing you are  home  in bed wondering how they’ve made out in court or are they eating enough .

A very sweet man at my Halifax market, a vendor in fact, has been lining up civilian style these last few weeks. I inquired  as to why he wasn’t selling.  His wife, he explained, had just had some difficult surgery to be followed up soon with ‘radiotherapy’ as he called it.  He is a soft-spoken and gentle man, meticulous in his appearance and his table layout, an immigrant with most excellent English. He was worried about his wife, that was obvious. With no children or family here, the caregiving was all on him and he was afraid. I told him how my Mum had fared well after some similar surgery and treatment and this made him smile.  

Though I have no idea how things will turn out for them, I told him the truth and for a minute made him feel just a little better. What else could I do?

Many years ago, in Lunenburg, an older but very elegant  lady opened her wallet to pay, tucked inside the window pocket, a small black and while photo of a handsome young man , in full view. I can’t resist these old photos, though nowadays, folks keep their memories digitally, and not visible to me.“Your husband? I inquired. “No “, she replied resignedly, “my son”. He had died many years before, but his image and memory accompanied her everywhere. I don’t remember all the story it was a long time  ago, but I remember how grateful I was that she shared it with me.

Sometimes folks have no one, sometimes it’s easier to talk to strangers, sometimes their heart is quite simply breaking and they just can’t bear the aloneness. All we can do is listen, take their money, hand them their purchases, squeeze their hand discreetly and hope that things will get better. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t and most often -we just never know.