Several weeks ago, I sat cozy inside while a blizzard swirled outside. The New England winter was attempting to keep March in its clutches for as long as possible. I read my morning emails, including one from 40acts, a Lenten generosity challenge Scott and I have been participating in this year. The day’s theme: Chocolate Tuesday. The challenge of the day was to gift someone unexpectedly with chocolate. It was clear I wouldn’t be going anywhere that day. The snow was piling up inch by inch outside. Who could I offer something to?

I was looking at pictures online of others in other parts of the world, with baskets of full size chocolate bars, giving them to coworkers, handing them out at train stations, passing them out at traffic intersections. I thought about what it would be like for a complete stranger to walk up to me with a candy bar. Would I think it was a scheme? Would I be afraid to eat it? Or would I smile and start munching away? 

I couldn’t do anything like that, not on a day like this. 

And then it came to me. The only clear option. The chocolate had to go to Dave the mailman.

The room had the classic church basement feel—low ceiling supported by strategically placed columns, scattered metal folding chairs. Scott and I stood with a paper plate of danish slices and almond pound cake in one hand and a Styrofoam cup of coffee in the other and surveyed the room. “Where to sit?”—it was always the question. Where was the best place to break in to the space of those already in knowing conversation? We spied two empty chairs and pulled ourselves up to the table. To one side was a burly large man in late-middle-age whose accent told me he was a long-time local. Across from me sat an elderly man, with the thin cord of a hearing aid snaking out of his ear, and a smile that spread across the width of his face. He wore a brown tweed jacket, and I couldn’t help but think how much Scott would love a jacket like that, particularly if it included elbow patches. 

The man in the tweed jacket, Ralph, told us about his childhood home in Nova Scotia, about his children and grandchildren, about his career. It turns out they used to use the same type of turbo engine for electricity production that Scott now helps to create. He proudly told us this year he would celebrate 62 years of marriage with his wife. The secret?—”Always say yes,” he told us with a chuckle. When he gave a nod in his wife’s direction across the room, my eyes follow his gesture to see a horseshoe of elderly women seated along the back and side of a long folding table, strategically positioned to eye up the room. I realized then we had plopped ourselves down at what was clearly the “men’s table.” Oops. 

We had such a delightful conversation, and our new friend Ralph had some interesting stories to tell. It’s in moments like this that I’m reminded of the beauty of fellowship that spans the generations and of the dignity of having someone to listen to your stories.

I met two men coming out of church last Sunday. They were sitting on a bench, under the shade of a tree. Their worn backpacks rested on the wooden boards between them, and resting relaxed between their knees, their hands each grasped a well-worn walking stick, covered with names written in black marker. Their faces were weathered, framed by graying hair and long beards.

They had been out in the downpour that had swept through. I remembered the lights flickering, as tree branches bent and twisted in the wind outside the windows. I remembered realizing, as the rain pounded in erratic sheets, that our windows were open and had worried about the puddles of water we might find on our windowsill and floor. They were wet through, and held up their dirty flannel shirt sleeves and baggy pants to demonstrate.

“Do you go to that church?” they asked, gesturing across the street to the building I had just exited. I nodded.

The leader of the two said, “Some kids from your church talked to us last week. They gave us coffee. They signed my stick,” and with this, he pointed to one of the signatures on the thin piece of wood he held. “When they left, they told us they were going to bring us back sleeping bags and tents—but they never showed up. We even prayed together.” He said it in such a way as to suggest that praying had sealed the deal, like a handshake after a business arrangement.

“I thought Christians were supposed to be people who kept their word and stuff,” chimed in his buddy, “but I guess I was wrong. It’s okay—I’m learning now. You know, adjusting my expectations.”

My husband and my father spread out on either side of me in the thick shade of the trees, slowly scanning the forest floor. I carried a long, misshapen stick I’d grabbed along the trail, and now I used it to guide my eyes, scanning along the arc of its tip as I moved it back and forth in front of my feet. I gently pulled back clumps of crispy brown leaves, the hearty survivors of the winter’s snow. They made our task more of a challenge, blanketing the ground and matching the shade of the hidden gems we sought. We were hunting morel mushrooms, rare woodland treats of the rural Pennsylvania of my childhood.

My shoulders and neck ached from stooping over for a better view of the ground, and my eyes blurred from the pallet of brown and gray. I looked for small growths rising from the moist earth, little conical protrusions with twisted ridges and irregular pockets, like the texture of a sea sponge—or a small brain.

Back in the kitchen, we’d soak them in salt water and coat them in a bed of flour, then place them in a pan of spitting, sizzling butter. Crunchy, salty, buttery wild mushrooms—with the distinctive flavor I always forgot how much I liked.