Today was a sort of full day.
Starting out, I woke up to feed cats as they walked all over my face, begging for attention.
Good start, right?
Then, to coffee – black. Because I love to burn my mouth first thing in the morning.
Finally, I got around to the actual reason that I woke up at a reasonable hour.
Birds & Words
It was for a group of artists, myself included, all together to help tell stories and watch birds for the Birds & Words event through the Michigan Legacy Art Park,
My friend Jack played a song that I love to hear and accompanied himself beautifully on an acoustic guitar, and some other friends that I’ve worked with in the past read some touching stories that I’ll be sure to go back and read on my own terms (this goes for you, Nick and Beth.)
It only took about forty-five minutes, but it was worth more than that. It was helpful to see some familiar faces that I haven’t seen in a good long time, but for Instagram feeds and stories.
The Farmers Market
Shortly after that, the goal was to swing by the Farmers Market quickly and pick up the order we’d place a few days ago. We didn’t expect the line outside of the order tents to take twenty-five minutes.
But god, that twenty-five minutes were some of the best that I’ve had in this whole quarantine.
Because for once, there were people around.
Actual, real life, human people.
Stretched down the entire lot where everything was taking place, and even a little bit snaked to fit the amount of people that ordered online to come out on a specific Saturday in May, to stand in a parking lot and support their community. It was beautiful to see how many people actually care to help local farm providers, even if they were maybe doing it with selfish purposes (I have a feeling that most of the people there weren’t doing it for that reason.)
Kristen and I even made friends with the woman who was the next person in line, six feet away and masked up.
She never gave her name, but then again neither did I.
I do remember that she used to teach at Northwestern Michigan Community College here in Traverse City, Michigan, and that she has fourteen grandchildren.
She was a hoot.
She called a seagull that was flying through the sky a “baygull,” because we don’t have any seas. How could it be a seagull? We all spent a good long while looking for bread in trees.
Down the line were our friends Jack and Em. Yeah, you know. The Jack from before. Just up the page. With the music.
Nick and Susan were the ones that called us up for our order at the end of that twenty-five minutes; after we’d met the “baygull” lady and I’d taken Instagram videos of Jack flipping me off, as Em shook her head disapprovingly next to him.
I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else to have to work the order.
Nick was glad to see us, though you couldn’t tell if he was smiling or silently screaming due to the face coverage of the mask.
Susan had gotten sucked in to helping, as she often does when Nick is in the situation. (Don’t worry, it works vice versa too. And it’s consensual.)
Between the two of them, another friend, Meghan, and plenty of other volunteers those order tents ran like a well oiled machine. We only had to stand out of the way as Nick prepared to take one order before Susan was back out with everything we’d payed for, minus one thing that we quickly noticed and she ran back to find.
They all did it with smiles on their faces, even through the stress.
Wow, it’s almost like they know that what they’re doing is a good thing?
Wild.
We got our order all packed up, from Modern Bird Bakery to Full Moon Microgreens, and got on our way.
And So On
The rest of the day ran pretty smoothly. We watched tv, played some Animal Crossing, I worked on a short story that has had my attention lately, etc.
Eventually we even ordered Rare Bird to go, as they’ve just recently re-opened their doors after about a month or so of being closed. We ate, watched Newsroom, cleaned with the new Dyson vacuum, and now I’m here.
Hoping that my words of a good day can shed a little bit of light onto yours.
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Micah Mabey
