I thought I was carrying the mail.

I was gathering a life, one butterscotch and one jar of honey and one October afternoon at a time, and I did not know how rich I was until the letter came to tell me it was ending.

I think we are all of us waiting, most of our lives, for the big thing — the achievement, the arrival, the moment that will finally make our existence count.

We defer the feeling of a life well-lived to some future summit we’re always climbing toward.

And the terrible, freeing secret the route taught me is that there is no summit, that the big thing never comes, or if it comes it isn’t what makes the life — that a life is made, entirely, of the small things we’re too busy waiting for the big one to notice we’re living.

Emmitt’s tomatoes.