My two best friends from high school. Ann and Betsy. Ann was my bad friend and Betsy my good friend. And I was their ‘different’ friend……and still am…..which can be seen by the two gourds that they are holding. I gave them gourds for my 30th birthday celebration night.

Ann got the big gourd, because she is pregnant and Betsy got the little gourd because she is little. They challenge me, and I challenge them….

Ann: married, first grade teacher for 8 years, mother of almost two, owns a house in the same neighborhood she grew up in, drives an SUV.

Betsy: single but ready to start a family, manager at an industrial warehouse supply company for 7 years, loves football, owns a townhouse in Atlanta, drives a BMW convertible.

Me: in a relationship but not sure about having kids, free-lance photographer, loves hiking, doesn’t own a house or a car and lives in London.

Together we eat ice cream (me from a cone to save plastic waste, Betsy from a cup to save calories,) we laugh at our differences and we gossip about people from high school but we don’t talk about politics and we feel lucky to be in each other’s lives.

And now, because of the gourds, our lives are connected to Reidville.

Ben Brockman, who is now in his 70’s, had polio as a child which left him handicapped for the rest of his life. He was his parents’ only child and the only heir to the property that sits at a busy corner in Reidville. He has full-time care takers who enable him to continue to live in his family home.

Ben is known by everyone in Reidville for sitting in his golf cart, in his front yard, and selling tomatoes that his dad would plant for him each year. But Ben’s father passed away last winter making it hard to find someone to plant and maintain the crops and Reidville suffered through a long drought this summer, so this summer he didn’t have as many tomatoes to sell.