Market again

Day before yesterday I went to the farmer's market as I do most weeks in the summer, and I met Steve's girlfriend Krissy there. The market is shrinking as fall approaches, or as vendors decide they don't like the Thursday afternoon sales, sadly. Krissy and the hard cider seller exchanged pleasantries over being happy that fall weather has arrived. It rained pretty hard several times yesterday, with sun in between, cool temperatures. I looked up at the dark sky against the green trees and the grey-black castle-like church next door, and smiled and sighed. Krissy asked me what's wrong? or what's up? and I said, "Oh nothing, I'm just happy to be here." We bought a few more things and visited the mushroom vendor. Last week Krissy and I shared a creamed lobster mushroom dish I made, bought from this seller. (Our SO Steve was working.) This seller always has a sauteed sample of her mushrooms. The shitakes were all gone; we learned that she grows them on her farm in the coastal range and picks them the morning of the market. The other wild mushrooms she usually picks the day or evening before. Shopping done, Krissy gave me a ride home.

I've thought about the warnings I've received over the years about having an open relationship, and how people on the outside of such "lifestyles" see them as doomed, as craven, as lacking, as emotionally immature. I've been thinking of how my fears going into it were shaped by those judgments, but once we got ourselves more fully immersed, I found more capacity to feel love and compassion, more spiritual wisdom. What troubles I encountered stemmed more from fear of those judgments than from having an open relationship. Well, that and what do we call ourselves? English has no good words for lovers, wives, and girlfriends. So here we were, two women who love the same man, shopping together. The wife and the girlfriend, imbalanced words, that's so unfair. I was glad we could share a little time together.

I think I was content in being human, feeling the cool air, seeing the saturated colors from the earlier rain, finding sustenance along with a significant friend. It feels so right, yet so many view this kind of family as wrong, as perverse. We're showing them.