I found a recipe for Apple Almond Gingerbread (modified by me to be Apple Walnut Gingerbread), but I discovered I was out of ginger.  I mean, really: who ever runs out of ginger?As expected when I am missing an ingredient for a recipe I've got in my head, I ran to Whole Foods for - yes - organic ginger and, as a bonus, fuyu persimmons and - also as expected - I ran into a friend and started chatting.



I didn't know she was a friend until I met her today, but yes, right there in the produce section, I discovered a friend. Just prior, she was kind of distracted, turning her buggy this way and that in the lobby area, and I had to wait for her to enter the store because she was looking at the orchids ... and at the indoor mums ... and then she walked inside the doors and just stopped. She was quite elderly, and I wondered if perhaps she had forgotten where she was.



When she realized I was behind her, she apologized and said she was just right in my way, and I said, oh it is no problem at all. And you know, mums are everywhere right now, and it's a great time to plant them in this south Louisiana climate ... even the so-called "indoor" mums that pretend to be scared of the weather. She was curious. What kind of light do they take outside? Do you cover them when it's cold? And you mean they bloom twice a year??



She told me that Louisiana Nursery has hibiscus plants for 80% off, and she had bought a double-pink just today. Well, I adore my double-pink so I trotted out my phone and showed her a picture. It's not the same variety, but similar. She noticed my other flower pictures, particularly those of various hibiscus plants. We both "ooh"ed and "ahh"ed over the dinner plate hibiscus, and she'd never seen a pink angel trumpet before.



And so our conversation was winding down and we were just about to go our separate ways when she said, you never know when a person will touch your life. My 57-year-old daughter died on October 16th from cancer, and I didn't want to come to Whole Foods tonight since I had such a bad day. But my other daughter had a bad day yesterday, and I thought that I would bring her some flowers to cheer her up. And then I met you and got to see your beautiful flowers, and I just needed to talk to someone who didn't know my heartbreak, who didn't know how sad I was, and here you are.



And so, as we were getting ready to part ways, we didn't. We properly introduced ourselves, talked about which pears are the best and the varieties of persimmons, why we love Whole Foods, moved on to our kids, discovered friends in common (she at nearly 80 and me at nearly 40, yes: we found common friends), what our favorite items are in the deli case. I learned that she was the president of the Catholic High Mothers Club way back in 1966, but the plaque at the school shows her first husband's name - even though she was married to her second husband by then - because that was the name she was known by when she was president and that was the same last name her kids had when attending Catholic.



Eventually, we moved on, both doing our shopping, she being called by the sweet potato crunch in the small loaf pans, me by the promise of Apple Walnut Gingerbread. In a way, it was a typical shopping trip in south Louisiana: picking up groceries while chatting with people about the produce in the produce section,the best wines and cheeses in the wine and cheese areas, the weather or maybe our beloved Tigers in the check-out line ... but sometimes, a person goes a little deeper.



Sometimes, a person touches your soul, if only for a brief moment in time. How lucky am I to have it happen to me.