Now I will tell you what happened at the Farmer’s Market last Saturday.

The story begins in Turkey. If you are reading the Heaven Community Forum postings, particularly in the Translators Corner, you know that Engin who lives in Turkey translates Heavenletters into Turkish every day! What a wonderful thing that is.

If you are reading the postings, you also know that there is a dear subscriber to Engin’s Turkish translations who is hostess at The Raj Restaurant right in Fairfield where I live. The hostess of this luxurious spa restaurant is Sule. She is from Turkey, and she is a most beautiful brilliant young woman, and I am thrilled she subscribes.

Saturday morning I went to the Farmer’s Market and got all the wonderful fresh vegetables you could ever want. Tomatoes, cucumbers, radicchio, broccoli, and more. The Farmer’s Market is a high point of my week. It’s where you get marvelous fresh produce, and it’s also when you see people. For instance, Doug was there. Doug is the farmer in the famous Story of the Farmer and the Hat. You can find the story here. http://www.heavenletters.org/hat.html

I had my daughter’s car. It’s a fairly new car, and she takes excellent care of it. Not a scratch on it.

I was parallel-parked, had just loaded my purchases into the back of the car, gotten into the driver’s seat, and was fastening my seat belt when there was a crash. At first I thought that I had somehow done something wrong, but a SUV that was angle-parking across the street had backed into the front of my daughter’s Pontiac Vibe.

I have seen movies when one or more of the parties in an accident get irate. This instance, however was the opposite. This was the sweetest confrontation there ever could be. I would call it an enlightened exchange of insurance information. And the policewoman who came was also an example of the world that is to come. She was wonderful. She gave us both good advice, and I know she was happy that this was not a confrontation. The only negative statement was when I blurted out: “My daughter is going to kill me.�

Who, of all people would the driver of the SUV be, but Sule, the beautiful young subscriber from Turkey. She is probably the last person I would ever want to exchange insurance company information with. She and her niece were innocently on their way to a family picnic, and the joy of that was all spoiled.

Sule apologized. I apologized. Each of us was so sorry for the inconvenience to the other, and in Sule’s case, I was so sorry for the out of pocket expense she would incur and/or increased insurance rates. This is one time when I clearly wished I were wealthy, and I could have said to hard-working Sule: “Oh, dear Sule, just forget about it. I’ll take care of it. No problem.� This is not how I typically am. Sule is so lovely she would bring that out in anyone.

What are the odds of Sule’s backing up into the car I’m sitting in?

Of course, as with all things, we were lucky. I was inside the car, not outside. Sule was only driving probably five miles an hour. And how do we know that it wasn’t good I was delayed there, or that Sule was, and what we may have been spared? And it turned out that my daughter wasn’t in the least upset!

So, if there had to be an accident, it couldn’t have been with a nicer person, but I sure would give a lot for it not to have been with Sule from Turkey who subscribes to Heavenletters and works at The Raj.