I was in the frozen food aisle, standing in a freezer, trying to reach the frozen blueberries (why is everything always so hard to reach?) when someone said, “Are you the person who wrote Because of Winn-Dixie?”
I climbed out of the freezer and turned around and said, “Yes.”
“I read that book when I was a kid,” said the woman. “I loved it.”
“You’re an adult,” I said.
“Yep,” she said. “I guess I am.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for reading it and liking it and remembering it.”
“I still have my copy,” she said. “I keep it close by. I wanted to tell you that.”
“Thank you,” I said again.
She wheeled her cart away and I climbed back into the freezer and tried to reach the blueberries again and I still couldn’t get them and it didn’t matter at all.
Who cares about what is just out of reach when something so impossible and wonderful (a child loves a book you wrote. The child grows up and remembers the book you and keeps it close by) happens in a grocery store, in the frozen food aisle, on an October day?

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