About honey

Today.
After school, we slam on the brakes at the little market with the kids.
We’re buying fruits and vegetables.
We park the car a bit away and walk toward the smiling ladies offering their goods.

I love shopping at small markets.
I get such a good feeling along with the basket of goodies.
From one—berries.
From another—lettuce.
From a third—cucumbers.
And I think—almost done, we’ve “visited” them all.

Finally, all three of us, with our vitamin-filled baskets, head back to the car.
We get in and start driving home:
“Mom,” says Do, “you bought something from every lady’s stand. But from one, the oldest one, standing out in the sun and wind. You didn’t even sit on a chair—didn’t take anything.”

I stop.
Truth is, I was so busy chatting with the ladies that I barely noticed the one “out in the sun and wind without a chair.”
My heart tightens.
We turn around, and all three of us march back to the market.

“Exactly.”
Next to the loud, bustling ladies,
without a sun-and-wind canopy,
without a chair to sit on—stands an old man.
As we learn while talking, he’s a very elderly beekeeper, selling honey collected by his bees.

We buy it.
And with an elephant-sized feeling of goodness, we head back home for real this time.
At home, we all grab a cucumber and dip it in the honey.
According to Dominykas—it’s the most delicious he’s ever tasted.
Sweet for everyone.
And for me, who usually doesn’t like honey, it’s sweet twice over.
I don’t know if it’s the taste or the feeling—
that I get to raise someone with such a big heart.

Kiss the little ones with big hearts.
Sometimes we, adults, have a lot to learn from them.