A mother hushes her wailing toddler, with screams like a siren, and inadvertently pours an armful of green apples to the ground. The lanky, tattooed twenty-something behind her, unfazed, carefully selects a few bright yellow peppers. Nearby, an elderly man finishes paying for his red tomatoes and orange carrots, giving a wide grin as he bids a good morning. As fiddlers churn out folksy tunes in the background, the eclectic company, otherwise an unlikely congregation, flock to Clark Park with the devotion of weekly churchgoers, their life stories trailing behind them. 

The elderly man toddles slowly along. Hands clasped together behind his back, the bag of tomatoes and carrots swinging leisurely from a thumb; his pruned face radiates kindness and contentment. After decades of hard work (after all, dentistry can be hard work), life has been good to him. He can now enjoy the fruits of retirement—well, apples, if you will. The wrinkled folds of his face retract upwards, into a giddy smile. The elderly man loves apples, bright green Granny Smith apples. Time-carved hands stroke carefully across the smooth skin, mimicking the precision of perhaps plaque-removing or cavity-filling. The tart, mouth-puckering crispness reminds him of a past life, when a young version of himself did nothing but reenact scenes from Huck Finn and yank his sister’s pigtails. He lives vicariously through apples. He buys seven—one for every day of the week—but the vendor, who knows him all too well, asks about his wife and pitches in a few more for free.

The twenty-something prefers the blueberry honey to the pickled peppers, although the bleeding skull on his bicep might suggest otherwise. Perfect on toast, he buys two jars. In the mood for pie, the twenty-something considers pumpkins in his palm, his arms flexing up and down with the weight. Deciding on pumpkin #3, he lightly tosses it in his palm until even the bleeding skull seems to nod in approval with each bulge of the thin bicep. A loaf of banana bread (lightly squeezed to ensure moistness), a bouquet of daisies for girlfriend #8 (in guilt of an unspeakable offense), and a pint of cherry tomatoes later, the twenty-something reminds himself to hurry. A student only has so much time to shop and cook, with all of the studying, television, and sex.

The mother reconsiders the joys of motherhood. As she walks weary and deadened through the crowds, the child follows blindly with eyes swelled shut by tears, its face nothing more than teeth and tongue. Its vocal chords are astounding, matched only by its love for sweets, which the mother would not allow. Damning the grocery list she left at home, she walks around, lugging the groceries for the week, her child trailing behind, knowing she must have forgotten something. The generations of mothers and mothers-to-be around her pity her. But, in her fatigue, the mother sees none of the empathetic glances. She absentmindedly smells a bunch of basil then thyme, hoping to remember what was forgotten. The child continues to scream.

Soon enough, the twenty-something notices the screaming. He observes with neither annoyance of the child nor pity for his mother. Somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, the twenty-something remembers being a child, particularly one who liked sweets.

As the twenty-something approaches the child, the child’s eyes, though swollen, begin to widen to their best ability. The teeth and tongue fold into the lips. The sound is muted. The lanky but tall twenty-something, with pumpkin #3 in one arm and the bleeding skull staring intently from the other, looms impressively. The dumbfounded child does not know whether to scream again, this time in fear or astonishment.

The twenty-something pulls something from his bag and offers it to the child.

“It’s my favorite.”

The child decides that the tall man means no harm and encloses its small hands around the jar of blueberry honey. Peering from behind bloated lids, the child examines the amber liquid, curiously and with awe. As casually as he arrived, the twenty-something leaves, off to his world of books and women. The child’s mother, oblivious of the entire exchange, was buying the eggs she had suddenly remembered. The moment, however, did not go unnoticed.

The elderly man smiles with great youth, remembering a good life and a life that continues to be good to him.