We were out. Do you want peaches? I asked him.

Yes, (as in, Always, knowing where they would be coming from.) I looked at the clock–yeah, I had time to go, if I hurried. Traffic…

Off the freeway at last, glad I hadn’t been even five minutes later in that growing backup, past the construction zone, pulled into Andy’s.

And it was a whole different world. Rows and rows of trees, the mountainside looking east and the coastal range over yonder to the west, Andy’s flowers blooming around the small gravel parking lot, that familiar wooden building with the overhang.

Next to which there is a single parking space right against the patio. One step out of the driver’s seat and you’re out of the sun, half a dozen more shaded steps and you’re inside. My lupus approves.

Only, for the first time, someone else was in that spot.

The man was I’d say probably late 70s or maybe more.

The one in his hand didn’t even make it into his car: he stood outside the driver’s side taking one appreciative bite, then another. Kind of shook off the juice running down his arm there a minute trying not to be too messy about it and then tried to head it off at the pass by taking the next bite from under the bottom of it in a pose almost like a kid at a drinking fountain. And another. (While I was going in with my previous boxes, finding out they don’t reuse them anymore, taking them back to my car and heading inside again.)

The moment demanded to be shared in solidarity, and I found myself calling over to him, Good peach, eh?

He held up the little that was left towards the sky with the biggest smile on his face and pronounced with feeling, “There is nothing fiiiner than a perfect peach.” His eyes swept around the scene, the farm, the flowers, the mountains, the fruit. It had made his summer, right there on that spot, and he was clearly glad for me that I was heading in to go get some for my loved ones and me, too.

I told him about the treks to pick Lorings in West Virginia coming from DC in my childhood, and how I found Andy by searching for them. He was glad I’d found where to go; he loved Lorings. He loved this place.

All was right in his world, and now it was in mine, too.