Plum and I went to the market today. It looks like it’s going to be an inside-is-best week, so I thought that Monday should at least start tasty. I put him in the child seat on the back of my bike, bundled up in case he got chilly, and off we went to explore.
The market sits down town in a classy old Victorian building, and it is a bit of an everything market. Butchers, bakers, house-wares, fabrics, fishmongers, cheesemongers, tourist mementoes, stationary, used books and vintage hats. Upstairs, there are cafe stalls where you can always buy breakfast as well as vintage vinyl stalls and a barber shop. And a pet shop. As I said, everything.
Plum’s favourite place in the market is the fish stall, so that’s where we started today. He showed me the large fish with shiny eyes and the little fish with shiny scales. I showed him goatfish and lobsters. Then he asked me about the rocks in a bucket and I told him they were oysters which proved to be a ridiculously funny word to say together.
We bought a fat turnip for tonight’s supper, and wondered about a wrinkly-leafed cabbage, but decided that it was too big for the bicycle basket. Then, we visited the treats lady to sample her Turkish Delight, and choose some to take home for Daddy. And maybe to share with Panda, too.
When we walk to the market, I take a stroller so that Plum has a place to sit when he needs a break– and so that I have extra storage space for my vegetables. But we go by bike, my arms become his only refuge and that changes the dynamic of our day. We slow down. We pay more attention to each other. I spend more time crouching down so that he can show me what he sees. Or scooping him up so I can show things to him. He’ll be two and a half soon, and these little days are limited. Sure, they can be frustrating and so hard at times. And irrational. But there is a sweetness to the way he sees the world and I feel lucky to have the time and space to share it with him in these days together.
It’s lovely watching the world with a toddler.
Last night, I was reading Sophia Tolstoy’s diaries and came across this line:
“Later on, he ate a delicious pear and brought one for me to share with him.”
This moment comes in the midst of much complaining about her husband’s indifference and his difficult friends. It sounds like they had a volatile marriage. (As the blurb on the back of the book puts it: “Sofia’s life was not an easy one: she idealized her husband, but was tormented by him; even her many children were not an unmitigated blessing.” Bless.)
But because he brought her that pear, and she loved it and wrote it down, we have that moment, too, in the record of their marriage. It is a small gift – one small shared moment. Like a little pebble in a cairn or one small pane of glass in a window. This, too, is the stuff of a life shared in love. Maybe our market day works like that, too.
