The Grape Man

More appropriately he should be called the grocery man, but it just doesn’t have that ring. I’m referring to Jack, one of my elderly male patients at the clinic. This is the man who brought me home grown lemons when I first started at the clinic, shot a duck or two for me during the fall, and again cascaded me with bag after bag of beautiful, fragrant lemons again this past summer. The nurses call him my elder boyfriend. (A term that occasionally puts feelings of consternation and anxiety into my actual boyfriends head.) I call him the best patient a small town GP can have. Just when I thought his offerings were over, he upped the ante this year by offering grapes. Now these aren’t just any grapes. These are the thin-skinned, full flavored, tightly clustered, picturesque grapes you see being fed to the Greek gods and goddesses on ancient monoliths. No doubt about it, they are the best grapes I’ve ever tasted. So bountiful is Jack’s offering I have to (begrudgingly) give away multiple clusters to nurses because I simply can’t eat all of them myself. Savoring my last bundle yesterday I was thinking surely this would be the last I would see of this god-forsaken gift as fall was rapidly approaching. Yet, as if on cue, who should drive into the car park of the clinic today, bountiful bag of produce in hand? Jack, The Grape Man.