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Costco was the last stop before home. Cat food, of course … and some other stuff.
I rarely taste the samples, but today I was trying every single, solitary thing that I walked by. Cheesy crunchy chips. Thai sticky rice. Marshmallow chocolate things that looked like deer pellets (those were good!). The last sample before check out was a pistachio bar covered in chocolate (*really good)!
As I reached for the ruffled paper souffle cup, I heard, “It’s pistachio. Did you know pistachio is not a nut?”
“What?!” My eyebrows raised.
“It’s a fruit. Beautiful flowers,” she shared with a knowing, helpful smile.
“Wow, thank you. I had no idea. I learned something new today!”
“They’re from my country.”
“Ooh, can I guess which country?”
“Sure”
“Peru?” And another guess …
She shakes her head no.
“OK, which one?”
“Iran.”
My chest tightened, shielding my heart. In spirit, we were no longer standing across from each other, but now side by side, facing the same direction.
We talked a bit more. She worries about her family still there. We didn’t fix anything. But we now knew there were two more people in this world that could rely on each other.
It was Anthony Bourdain that said: “The Iran you see from the inside, once you walk the streets of Tehran, once you meet Iranians, is a very different place than the Iran you know from the news.”
On Feb. 28, 2026, the U.S. began attacking Iran. A girls school has been bombed. There are over 180 reported dead, mostly young schoolgirls.
Ray Chapman-Wilson
Centralia
