Orange Stand

A sharp exhalation of thunder brings to a definitive halt whatever L- has been saying. She is three years old and she has been saying a lot. This faux summer storm is emanating from hidden speakers in the vicinity of the vegetable case. It is a convincing facsimile, but caught sound is inevitably tame, and in this case, small and localized. L- runs over to the vegetables to look for the source of the noise and pauses as a hissing mist descends upon the neatly partitioned and groomed fields of watercress, broccoli, and cilantro. She moves closer, little plump legs cantering, arms akimbo. But the peal dies away as she approaches and it does not return.
“It stopped, daddy.”
These “daddy’s” are a sweet and delicate barrage, a glorious refrain on our outing today. Mommy and L-‘s two sisters are back at home. But despite the fact that L- is not addressing a panel, a clarifying “daddy” precedes and punctuates every statement of fact, every question, every pause. And today the statements and questions are legion.
“It did stop.” The large store clerk attending the oranges says this with nearly as much wonder as my daughter. ”It’s not supposed to. It should be going still.” He looks genuinely puzzled, but goes back to corralling citrus.
“Daddy . . .?”
“I am here for oranges,” I remind myself as we continue to meander amongst the produce displays. Having gone slack for a moment, the rhetorical leash tugs again. “Daddy”, now louder and more insistent, is followed by a string of syllables smooshed and stretched like play-doh. I look down at her.
“Pardon me?”
L- informs me that she, “wikes dese ones” (pineapples), but not for eating. She smells strawberries. She smells apples. She tells me a scale is a clock, a “kwock”. She is wrong. Unless she means it tells you what time the watermelon is. “Daddy. . .?”
We circle the fruit stands and our steps make almost no sound on the laminate floor. There are few shoppers here today. L- gives up trying to keep my sunglasses perched on her head and she hands them back to me. I hand her a bag of particularly small clementines which she is barely able to keep off the floor. She is happy to bear the burden and insists on doing it herself all the way to the checkout counter.
We leave the hinterland of produce and make our way to the front of the store, past the in-store coffee shop with its steam and industry and the sound of espresso being tortured. And “daddy”, still an introduction and coda to her every vocalized thought, forms a curious melody. It expunges the music that has begun to yawn from the upper strata of the store, trailing a tendril of audible wonder as we make our way outside.

About these ads