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It's Friday, market day in my little town in Provence. The exceptionally warm weather has drawn people out of their winter hibernation, and they are now crowding the narrow alleyways between the colorful market stands.

My first stop this morning is the local PMU/Bar/Tabac. It's a rather seedy, smokey bar filled with rather seedy, smokey kind of guys already drinking pastis, wine or beer at 9:30 in the morning. But when the weather warms up enough, they put a few nice tables outside. Juxtaposing the market, this bar is a good place to rendezvous with a friend for a market morning coffee, as I did this morning.

Then it's time to get my shopping done, so I can get home and get lunch on the table before the girls get out of school. I picked up a rotisserie chicken and then headed off to a vegetable stand that my friend told me had good prices this morning. She was right, I was able to get my first bunch of asparagus at a reasonable price, along with a salad, eggplant, zucchini, broccoli.....carrots, I need carrots. There was an older couple at the carrot bin, their backs turned to me, blocking any possible polite approach to the bin. The wife was picking out the carrots while her husband held their wicker shopping basket. Slow, she was being so slow, moving deliberately slow, surely just to annoy me. Picking up each carrot as carefully as one would choose a piece of new jewelry. I was getting impatient, I wished she would hurry on her way so I could get my carrots.

Her husband was standing at her side, waiting patiently for each carrot that she would slowly pass to him. And then she was done and they slowly turned my way. A big smile animated her slightly crooked face as she recognized me and I immediately felt guilty for my impatience. I knew them, they are very good friends of my mother-in-law. And I also know that she is a very ill, but courageous woman blessed with a caring, loving husband. A patient husband. Her illness has physically disabled her in many ways, but her heart remains so very whole. I haven't seen this couple in many months, probably sometime last summer, but she remembered that my father had been ill, and she asked about him. Tears filled her eyes when I told her he had passed away.

Beating myself on the head with a big invisible carrot, I took a few moments to talk with this couple who clearly savor each moment of each day as a blessing not to be rushed. I don't know why I was in a hurry this morning, I wasn't late for anything. The woman I waited behind for carrots this morning is physically slowed down by illness and not yet realizing this, I was getting very impatient. When I realized that I knew the woman and the reason for her slowness, my impatience disappeared and was replaced by compassion for this family friend. A compassion that I need to find more often, even if I don't know the person or the reason why.