At Big Chain Supermarket, an outdoorsy looking man with backpacking gear strides up to me with a confident smile. “You do take gold, don’t you?” he greets me.

Gold? Uh… Is he suggesting that I glow up my teeth with a nice set of implants? But no, he saw my high-visibility vest and thought that I work here. “See, I’d like to buy this beer,” he explains. “With this bag of gold dust. I found it camping in the mountains.” I stand there with question marks swirling through my overhead cartoon bubble: Do stores carry scales for weighing gold powder? How would a store calculate the purity of the gold, how would they track the price from one minute to the next, and which coin dealer accepts powder as legal tender? “That would be Customer Service,” I tell him, pointing at the front desk toward Leon, the most don’t-you-give-me-any-o’-your-guff manager in the whole enterprise. “Right up there, Sir.”

__________

Back again at Big Chain Supermarket, in the flower / bouquet section there is a very small frail-looking older lady walking in circles with an amused exasperated look. She’s noticeably underdressed for this chilly rainy night, in little shorts and a tank top. As she lopes around doggedly in her circle I stop and say “Why hello! Are you looking for something?” She says “I want peanuts. Get me the peanuts.” I tell her that we have two kinds, peanuts in the shell in Produce and peanuts in jars over in the snack aisle, and I offer to walk her there. “Just regular peanuts,” she says, escalating her voice. “Just gimme the regular ones!” Her agitation is spiking rapidly; she’s angry that I’m hiding the peanuts away from her. Staff member Josiah, our calm Evangelical Christian, is at the service desk, so I call “Josiah? Can we get some help here?” In a flash Josiah calls out “Christy! Over here!” A very solid steady woman charges over, and very firmly cradles the peanut lady’s arm under her own arm. The peanut lady is all smiles now, beaming at her new friend with perfect trust, and the two of them go off on a little walk.

A few minutes later the two women go through checkout together. The peanut lady is delighted with her purchase, and happily leaves the store with a giant bag of what she calls peanuts. It’s popcorn. Then as I leave the store she pulls out car keys, leaps into a sparkling new SUV with her popcorn, and peels out of the parking lot.

But first I thank Josiah. “Your friend Christy calmed down the whole situation. She knew exactly what to do!” Josiah agreed. “Christy? Yes, she is in the army.” Oh? She’s military? “Yes. The army of Jesus Christ.”

__________

On the bus, a very tall strongly built young man clad in leather with a goatee and long ponytail swaggers in the door. Somehow he has the air of Someone To Not Mess With. But I’m about to do just that, because as the bus accelerates into traffic the man is thrown against me, and is landing right on my lap. I plant my feet and shove myself forward and brace his hips steady as he flings himself toward a support bar. “You can have your own seat, if you want,” I say as he recovers his balance. He laughs and asks me what I’m reading. It’s Arthur C. Brooks, From Strength to Strength. He’s all interested, and reads the front and back covers. “I may be a thug,” he clarifies. “But I’m an intelligent thug.” We have a nice talk about books.

At his stop, he gives me a sweeping bow. “Good night, Ma’am. Nice talking to you. Not every day I board a bus, and some sweet older lady grabs my ass.”

__________

My beautiful dental hygienist from St. Petersburg is gentle and warm toward patients, and laser-eyed death toward plaque bacteria. As is typical for Russians in America, she employs English to set and clarify a boundary — in this context, “Please close slightly,” “now to the left,” “now up a little,” but switches back to Russian for friendly conversation. I greatly enjoy our talks. The only problem is that with the noise of the suction tube and the bigger noise of the shrill high pitched water scaler, I can’t hear what she says at all. And I can’t explain that either, or talk at all, until she takes a break between tooth quadrants.

Meanwhile, she is asking in English whether I had a nice visit earlier that day with the clinic’s dentist, but I can’t make out a single word of the sentence. Seeing my baffled expression, she repeats his name three times. With all the equipment noise and the a versus o vowel substitutions in his name in Russian, it sounds as if she’s asking how I liked my experience visiting Afón, or Athos in Greece. Why would a dental patient expect a caring question about Mount Athos? Well, it’s the patient who studies Orthodox Christianity every night, and who often reads the works of elders from the Holy Mountain. During our next break I come up for air and explain in Russian that I’ve never been, since he (Afón is grammatically masculine) bans all women from their territory.

When hearing hoofbeats, some people expect a zebra. I was expecting a quagga. And what an interesting clinical application that would be, of Reverend Billy Graham’s Modesto Manifesto.

My hygienist is taken aback to hear that he is now banning female patients from his consult practice. As we piece together our parallel conversation, the visit falls to utter hilarity breakdown. She switches to English, now totally hamming up her accent. “Ooooh, I am so hiurt. Ees too ssstheek my Rrrassian éksent. Even Mwery — she ken naught anderstéind sach seemple phrez!”

__________

Neighbor Paul’s white lilies are in bloom — a whole row, six feet tall and covered with flowers. When night falls, they have a heavy luxurious drawing-room fragrance.

Tonight it’s a little late to be taking out the compost, so I’m suited up in high-visibility gear with a bright flashlight to shine around. After all, recently I stepped outside and saw two smallish lean unaccompanied German Shepherds with no collars playing on the lawn, and realized that whoa, these may not be dogs. That night I did an about face and just went indoors and stayed there. Tonight I remember that encounter and head down the walk with my flashlight. Right then a truly supersize furry canine jostles up right behind me. Yikes! His owner catches up, apologizing profusely. “That’s a gorgeous dog,” I tell him. “Malamute? Siberian Husky?” The owner stops and turns right around to thank me, and explains that the dog is half and half of the two breeds. As the dog approaches me I hold still and explain to the owner “You know what Cesar Millan says: No touch, no talk, no eye contact.” But the dog is appropriately friendly, strolling up nose first to happily inspect the compost and then give me a good sniffing. Finally I lean down and pet under his throat, and he gives my bucket hand a lick and heads off into the dark.

Last time these lilies bloomed, the neighbors and some visitors had a party on the lawn forty feet away from the garden strip. The adults were out late having a nice time with music and refreshments. At midnight I carried down a last bucket of water for the plants. As I stopped to look at the lilies in the moonlight, two little boys appeared right behind me. They were earnest polite kids, clearly very tired and forlorn, looking for something to do. “Ma’am?” the older one asked. “Please, do you have any children that we can play with?” I explained “My dream was to have twelve children, and all of my children would be very happy to come out and play with you. But life had other plans, and I have no children at all.” They thought that over. “Ma’am?” said the older boy, “I am very sorry for you.” I agreed with that. “Yes, thank you; I am sorry for me too.”

Then because we were in full view of the parents, I said “Would you like to see the garden along this little strip? In the dark, we can’t really see the flowers. But we can experience their scent.” We started with fish mint, which I warned them would smell like cat food. They took a sniff and had fun exclaiming and holding their noses at the strong astringent smell. “But these will be different,” I assured them. We moved on to the lilies, basil, oregano, the peppermint, the chocolate mint, the pineapple mint, two kinds of lavender, and best of all a big frond of fennel that they could each take home with them and rub in their palms for the nice licorice fragrance.

It was a beautiful night, being with the children exploring plants in the dark.

As we said goodnight and they walked back toward their party, the younger one turned and called to me “Arigatóo gozáimasu!” So I waved and called back to him “Dōitashimashite! Dóuzo yoróshiku!”