Market Mornings

I was born on a market day.

That’s how long we’ve been doing this; long enough that my grandparents manned the stand while my mom labored. Long enough that even now, my parents still go to the same Saturday market they’ve gone to my entire life.

Every Saturday, from early June through September, our family was there. Same booth inside the county agricultural center building each summer. A different one in the winter, when the tables filled with my mom’s crafts, cold crops, and rows of jarred goods with the farm label. Over the years, we might’ve dabbled in other markets, here and there. But Saturdays were the constant — stitched into our weeks like punctuation.

When we were little, we’d nap in the truck or under the tables, curled up on comforters laid out on concrete, half-hidden beneath tablecloths and wooden crates. We were allowed to sleep for a little while, especially in the slow, early hours. But once the customers came, we helped. That was the expectation, and we didn’t mind. It made us feel older, useful, part of something.

I learned to count back change before I lost all of my baby teeth. Not just the math, but to count it back properly into someone’s hand. I didn’t know that was impressive until people started telling me it was. But on a farm, the skills come early, and you don’t think twice about learning them. You just do.

We were taught to ask, “What else can I get for you?” and to look people in the eye. We helped older folks carry their bags to their cars. Sometimes we would get a dollar tip, or if it was our beloved Aunt Bonnie - usually five dollars, and a wink. We stacked tomatoes just so. We kept the table clean. And we took pride in the way our stand looked. In the produce, yes, but also in how we spoke, how we worked, how we showed up.

Some of our customers have been coming for decades. I’ve seen them every summer of my life — first from under the table, then behind it. Some of those familiar faces have passed on. Others keep showing up. New ones join them. And before long, we recognize those too.

There’s a camaraderie among vendors that’s hard to explain. A kind of chosen family built out of folding tables, familiar breakfast or lunch orders, and years of showing up in the same spot before the sun finishes rising. We know who’s got the best this or that, who needs help setting up, or putting tables away. Some of them have been coming longer than we have. And we love them. They are ours.

Sometimes a longtime customer, someone who remembers me hiding under the table with a stuffed animal and a blanket, will ask about my son. I’ll show them some photos of him. They’ll smile and say something like, “He looks just like you did.” And I’ll smile too, because I remember exactly what they mean.

There’s something sacred in that, in being known not for a moment, but for a whole becoming. In growing up in a place where your family’s table has always been in the same spot. Where people remember your face, your name, the way you used to nap under the zucchini baskets.

This is what market mornings taught me: to work with care, to speak with kindness, to show up even when it’s early and humid and your shoes are still wet from unloading the truck in the dewy grass. That a folding table can hold more than produce, it can hold memory. And pride.

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