Saturday morning Hania grabbed her purse, I picked up my book - Midnight Oil by V.S. Pritchett - and we drove 595 to Sawgrass Mills. She went in to shop for presents for family in Poland while I found a bench in the shade and continued rereading one of my favorite memoirs. Though I often looked up from the page to admire the parade of humanity that passed. It used to be said that if you sat outside Paris's Cafe de la Paix long enough, everyone you knew in the world would pass by. Sit on a bench outside Coach at Sawgrass Mills and the world passes by. I heard Spanish of course, but also Swedish, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Chinese, and Arabic. The discount mall was an international bazaar. I must have made an oddly quaint sight, sitting there without any shopping bags reading a hardcover book, because three women looked over and smiled at me.
