Good Friday, Wherein I Manage to Make A Inordinate Number of Parenthetical Statements

I have a killer headache today. At first I was really grumpy about it but then I thought about the significance of today in Christian tradition and thought, "Well, maybe a little suffering is appropriate".

Today is supposed to be one of fasting and prayer. Got the first part down (and no, that's not why my head hurts), the prayer not so much quite yet. We are just now entering the 3 sacred hours, or Tre Ore, the time when we remember Christ's crucifixion. I usually try to keep this time in some way; if I don't go to the Tre Ore service at church then I at least try to unplug and be quiet, read the crucifixion story in Scripture and pray. I'll get to that in a bit.

The day began with other pursuits. Halfway home from dropping off The Child I realized I hadn't given her money for her lunchtime soup, so had to go back. Then my car did this weird stalling thing that it started doing this week where all of a sudden it just refuses to start. No sound, no lights, no clicking, no nothing. Needless to say, this has been semi-alarming given the fact that I've already repaired my car once in the last month. The odd thing is that after about 5 or 10 minutes it starts up again and behaves perfectly fine. The good news? The Spouse checked my battery and a lead was loose. He fixed it and says that should solve the problem. It's a Good Friday miracle.

After all that nonsense, I was finally able to get to the main goal of this morning, collecting the Easter groceries. Oh, how I love shopping for feasts. Best of all, purchase of the BAH required a trip to the Pike Place Market.

I love the Market. It is a tourist destination, which brings with it some annoyance, but annoyance happily forborne. When I lived downtown I shopped there every week (and I just realized that means nearly 30 years). We tried to maintain that once we moved to our house but it wasn't really practical so now I only get down there a few times a year, usually at the holidays, because we always purchase our festal meat from Don and Joe's Meats.

Since Trader Joe's didn't have any dry pink wine (which is what I prefer with ham) and I was going to be in the Market anyway, the adventure began at Pike and Western Wines. Here's what I love about the Market. Even though I don't shop there regularly anymore, my vendors still love me. I walked into Pike and was greeted with raucous joy by the proprietor and clerk. They've known me since before I was married. They remember when The Child was barely 3 and would stand on the counter and sing "Don't Cry for Me Argentina". I still remember when Maureen's kids were peanuts. Geez, I remember when she was pregnant with them. And I love that I can still walk in there and say, "I need something dry and pink for my ham" and Michael will just grab something he knows I will adore.

After promising to bring The Child in sometime soon, I wandered all the way to the
other end of the Market, past the Japanese tourists taking pictures. Tourists posing in front of buskers, tourists posing in front of Rachael the Pig, tourists posing with a greengrocer who threw the goat as he held up a basket of strawberries. I have often wondered how many photo albums all over the world contain photos of moi because I happened to be walking past tourists taking pictures. I digress.

Safely navigating through the thickets of tourists and pan handlers I was greeted at Don and Joe's with an enthusiastic "Lorraine!" Talk about feeling loved. More inquiries after the health of the family, more reminiscing about The Child when she was wee, and a really lovely sense of belonging to a community.

And then, oh then. I headed back to the car, out the walkway that connects the Market to the parking garage and was just gobsmacked, once again, by the brilliant beauty of this city. I don't think I mention it very often, probably because I take it for granted, but Seattle is a frakkin' beautiful place. I could smell the sea. The sun was out in all it's glory and Elliot Bay was throwing spangles everywhere. The Olympic mountains, dark and still covered with snow, popped out from the horizon. It was just one of those completely breathtaking moments and I breathed it all, amazed once again that I get to live in such a gorgeous place.

It made me forget all about my brain tumor for a minute.

So now I'm home and have to unpack all the glorious food that's sitting at my feet and candy some lemon slices for the lemon tart. Then I'll pray. Some more. Because there's a way in which the whole morning has been one big prayer of gratitude...gratitude for laughter and connections, for money to buy beautiful food, for a Spouse smart enough to fix my car, for a beautiful world and the glory of the Easter season. Yep. Feeling pretty grateful. (Although the headache, not so much. Just saying).