She selected the wilted lettuce, the ugliest avocado, the peach with the bruise, the broken carrot, and the pithy radishes. Once I tried to point out some better choices, but she stuck to her guns, so I didn’t argue. This behavior puzzled me for the longest time. But eventually, as I got to know her better I came to understand this idiosyncrasy.
She had grown up in a very poor family and had lived frugally all her life. I came to believe that she was taking pity on the ‘rejects’ in the produce department. Having been passed over so many times in her own life, she had developed the keenest sense of compassion. And this compassion extended even as far as the shriveled zucchinis and less than perfect apples that everyone else had left in the display case.
She appreciated the barely functioning, the flawed and undesirable things in life. She could take the most pitiful bits and pieces and make a little arrangement for her kitchen table and find joy in it. Out in her yard, she would mark off with string and a few sticks the most scraggly clump of flowering weeds and make them look special.
In the end, I learned a valuable lesson from Eugenia Mae. She showed me that beauty bloomed in even the most rank and desolate places. In her world everything was precious. She never ran short of things that gave her pleasure. From the ancient cardboard Santa , complete with sleigh and reindeer, that she carefully displayed on a table in her house each year, to the tattered tablecloths that came out at the change of each season, she was declaring her determination to find joy in small things. Even small, worn out and tattered things.
Though she had very little, Eugenia Mae was the richest person I have ever known.
For another story about Eugenia Mae, please see the entry for November 19