[Mrs. Wing’s Fish Mint, Houttuynia cordata, is blooming outside in her herb patch.]

On Thursday at dawn, before work, I was down at Seth’s produce aisle.

   “Mary!” Seth exclaimed, maneuvering a massive tower of fruit crates on wheels. “Our Saturday shopper! What’s with the Thursday visit?”

   “Outa greens, Seth!” I held up two bunches. I’m always especially happy and a little shy to see Seth, who is gorgeous and fit and fast moving and brimming with optimism and chlorophyll-based vitality. (Why don’t you try asking him out, Mary? I did, years ago, suggesting that I join one of his birdwatching hikes. My idea just left him baffled, so now I stay out of his way. I’m still all smiles when he talks to me.)

   “You?? That explains the sense of urgency,” he reasoned, with his signature flash of smile. “Don’t be the only one on your block running out of mustard greens!”

Today, two days later, at dawn I headed for Seth’s aisle, the place to be at 6:30 on a Saturday morning. Seth was racewalking two empty industrial carts out of the cooler, but spotted me right away as always, and we hollered greetings over the avocados.

This time at the mustard greens there was a young man deliberating over the display. “Don’t want to accidentally touch them all while prying out just one bunch,” he explained.

   “Like a pickup stick game,” I agreed. “But with greenery.”

We wrapped our respective foliage and tucked them in our baskets, then gave each other a second look before turning away.

   “Derek??” I said. “Apartment 34-B with the snake plants and Ebbie the windowsill cat.”

   “Wow,” he said. “Yes. It’s been ten years. Or more. How’s the old building? I miss the neighbors.”

So I told him about our counterculture klatch, the single moms who team up to care for each other and the kids and dogs. “We had a party just this week,” I said. “One of the girls was in a recital, so we had to celebrate and make sure she felt special. Single moms and kids need each other.”

Well. That struck home hard with him. He gave me some rapidfire smart sensitive schooling on how many fathers get marginalized in their own households, edged out and made to feel increasingly dispensable and inept until finally the home life fades to pieces. He shared a little of his own story about a sincere marriage pulled apart by the hard and blameless ways that life is life. He was still in shell shock, by the sound of it. So there we were, 6:40 a.m., waving greens at each other in this intense head-to-head exploration of family structures and how society lets former partners flounder in free-fall.

   “Marriage is the bravest voyage there is,” I affirmed. “People deserve credit for even launching out on that ocean, and yes, no question, there are men getting shipwrecked too. Only we don’t see them! Where are the klatches for the single dads? Do they get to live upstairs and downstairs in a whole flock of other fathers who are out on their own? Do they make a point of buddying up? Do they ring each other’s doorbells every day with a pan of hot buttermilk biscuits? Do they rehash their relationships over drinks and hugs and a few tears? Do they text each other to say ‘Hey, your dog’s barking; you want I should go over and walk him?’? When one of them has a night class, do their kids run upstairs and knock on a door and say ‘Dad’s at school; can I do my homework up here tonight?’?”

   “No, nothing like,” he said. “Gosh. Those women sound amazing. That’s so eighties.”

   “Or sixties. Or fifties. Ricardos, with Fred & Ethel running in and out. AND men deserve that too! What encouragement do they get, to build support like that?” I described the “The Braiding Bunch: Dads on the Front Lines of Style,” about single fathers who meet regularly to swap tips on how to brush and style and braid their daughters’ hair.

   “Where are those men?” Derek asked eagerly. “Your building?”

   “No, it’s a CBS News story with Steve Hartman.”

   “When you see the women again,” Derek waved, “tell them stay strong. Stay strong.”

We picked up our baskets and wished each other a good day. Behind us, Seth finished stacking boxed salad greens at triple speed in precise pyramid formation. With a thoughtful glance at us he wheeled the carts into the cooler.