Sleeping Out, Sisters and Marmalade

I'm sleeping outside this weekend...Saturday night to be exact.  If anyone wants to join me on the back deck, there's plenty of room, wide-open vistas, and whiskey; just bring your own sleeping bag, and prepare to be dazzled.

The Perseid meteor show--an annual August event--will begin sometime after midnight, in my part of the world at least.  I'm going to experiment with my camera and try to capture a shooting star or two, though that might be out of my league, and beyond my camera's abilities.  But hey, if you don't try, you never know, right?

Before that, however, my sister is coming tomorrow to spend the night before Mom's big move on Saturday.  She's driving down from up north, and we're going to have us a Girls Night.  I haven't seen her for months, so I'm looking forward to her visit, even if it's just for an overnighter.

So, this morning after walking the boys, I go to the store to stock up on Girls Night stuff, plus I have to make those Good Morning muffins for the moving crew.  I'm standing in the jam/jelly aisle wondering if I should stick with the apricot preserves, or follow the recipe and do the marmalade, when this old guy comes tottering toward me, and leans in to read the labels on the two jars I'm holding. 

I smile in resignation, because these things happen to me all the time, though I honestly don't understand why.  I turn the jars toward him so he can read the labels without squinting, then something clicks in his mind, and he begins to talk about his childhood in Berlin--and going by his age this would be Berlin sometime before WW2, for sure.  He tells me how wonderful it was to have oranges, and how his mother used to make marmalade that he would eat right out of the jar with a big spoon; how tart and slightly bitter the orange rinds were, but so delicious.  I was just mesmerized, and the look on his face?  He was back in Berlin, no question, and for a moment there, he took me with him.

When he was done with the story, he looked up at me (he was short, I'm kind of tall) and gave me this lovely smile, then patted my arm and said, "Take the marmalade dear, it's always best." 

I smiled back.  "Thanks for your help."  And I put the jar into my cart as he walked away. 

Guess now I'll find out how the muffins taste with marmalade.  I have it on good authority that it's the best...