Food for the soul at the Fresh Market
Another surprise from Betty
My mother, Betty, was dedicated to the art of the hand-written letter, note, or holiday card for most of her 92 years, and it appears that she kept just about every one that was sent to her. I’ve been looking through them slowly but surely and picking out a few to keep.
One Christmas card had very few hand-written words but reminded me of how much you can learn about a person from one small bit of evidence. I couldn’t put my hand on the card this morning, but I remember the only part that matters — under the pre-printed holiday message, there was a woman’s name and in parentheses, “Fresh Market.”
My mother got this card several years after moving from Virginia back to her home state of North Carolina. In Virginia, the Fresh Market near her home was her favorite grocery store; it was small and easy to navigate.
I believe you can get a good sense of the way my mother moved through life by knowing that a woman who worked at her favorite grocery store was sending my mother Christmas cards years after she moved away.