The Jar She Didn't Read First

January twenty-fourth, technically, but I'm writing it today because it took me a week to figure out what I was writing about. The farmers market runs through winter here, which means by January the tables have contracted to their honest shape: parsnips, storage potatoes, a few types of squash that look like they've been waiting since October, honey, one jam vendor with an aggressive loyalty following, and, every week without fail, the sourdough stall with a queue that tells you everything you need to know about this neighborhood.

Simone had not been to this particular market before. I've walked past it a dozen times on Saturdays and only occasionally stopped. We'd talked about going together in the vague way you talk about things that are easy to keep almost-planning, and then one Saturday it just happened, the way easy things do when you stop treating them as plans.

the face of a person who has already decided but needs thirty more seconds to pretend she hasn't

She went straight for the small-batch preserves table, lifted a jar without reading the label, examined it at eye level for approximately thirty seconds with the expression of someone conducting forensic analysis, and then said 'I'm getting it' with the tone of a person who had made the decision before she'd touched it. I don't know what was in the jar. I still don't. She texted me a week later to say it was 'correct,' which I chose to accept as a full report.

end-of-market light, one mystery jar between us, the bread line finally gone

There is something about a winter market that feels more honest than the summer version. Summer markets have abundance as their subject, everything bright, everything photogenic, someone always photographing the tomatoes. January markets are about specificity. You come because you want the one thing the one person makes, or because walking through cold air on a Saturday morning with nowhere particular to be is its own reason. We stayed maybe forty minutes. Came home with bread, two jars of something I did read the label on, and the particular warmth of a thing that was almost-planned for months and turned out to require no ceremony at all.