just a speck

After a full day, as reported, Wednesday, I spoke with only one human being yesterday; a five-minute phone conversation with my son Spenser. In it he told me he was having chile for dinner, along with rice and applesauce and four chocolate chip cookies.

I went to bed late, thinking about chile, and during coffee a while ago I decided the next time I was at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods I’d buy a couple of cans of dark red kidney beans. And sitting in the recliner, second cup of coffee, I began thinking about how many cans of kidney beans there must be in the world. There’s probably 20 or 30 combined in two grocery stores in NE Portland, and just dancing out from there – Oh my head! – where are all these kidney beans coming from? Who’s growing them? Who’s putting them in cans someone made? Who’s driving them to two stores in NE Portland and a thousand or 10,000 other stores in Portland? And every grocery and mom and pop corner store in Lincoln, Nebraska and Newburyport, Massachusetts and the Brixton neighborhood in London, England and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and just over the river in Vancouver, Washington?

I was jealous of Spenser’s dinner last night, and inspired by it, and this morning I felt like this teeniest, tiniest thing floating around and through here in all the wonder.