Vegetable vendor

Her hands were rough, and dry, like bark. Her nails dirty from soil and toil.

"Fresh vegetables from the mountains!" she called out. And then I recognised her. Those eyes, that careless and uncombed tuft of hair with fringes of white, and a mole just above her upper lip. She has a smile, small but infectious, one that distracts from her deep wrinkles and wind-beaten cheeks. Normally she sells her basketfuls of greens up in the mountains nearby. Spinach, cabbage, carrots, leeks, onions, and vegetables I do not even know the names of. Whenever we go up there, we would buy from her. Fresh, home-grown and exchange a chat or two. Perhaps the festivities had driven her down to the city in hope of a little more money to welcome the new year.

Her shoes were worn, having been worn for who knows how long already. The threads had split, giving away to a little hole that revealed the roughnes of her foot. She wore a yellow windbreaker, the surface of which had remnants of dry mud, and the traces of raindroplets. "Fresh, these are all fresh from the ground. I cut them a few hours ago. At 2am."

"2am?! Wasn't cold then?" A chill blew, as if in response.

"Yes, but I have to if I want to get to market on time," she said. I looked at her rough hands again, dry and rough like bark, and tried to imagine her gathering vegetables under the cover of dense, dense gray clouds, braving the howl and cold of gale force winds at 2am while the rest of the world slept soundly in warm beds.

"And your husband helped you?"

"He returned. Last year," she answered. A Taiwanese euphemism for someone who passed away.

"Mine too, on new year's eve of all days," my mum said.

And right there, was a shared moment. Shared grief, sorrow, yet also of shared comfort, and a momentary silence that seemed to quietly say "I understand how you feel". Especially on this eve before the new year.

Around us, the usual din of the market, of vendors' calls, of cars buzzing by continued, drowning our thoughts.