If it’s a small world, then it’s a smaller Bethlehem. Here, we all have our waffles - problems to chew, decisions to ponder - and we just might find that if we take time to learn about others, we will learn about ourselves in the process. After all, we are each other’s teachers, young or old, each other’s students, confident or questioning, each other’s neighbors, regardless.

Now, let’s dig in to some scrumptious food for thought.

What gets you out of bed everyday? Really, what gets you out of bed everyday? It may be an alarm rattling at some ungodly hour. It may be an engine starting outside your bedroom window, or your spouse’s motors beginning to churn beside you. Or, it may not be.

But what if you have no real reason to get out of bed? What if duty doesn’t call? Or, what if duty calls, but duty hurts? Then what?

Barbara Ottervik has seriously pondered those questions for several years, now. In 2009, she lost the job that she had held for 25 years. She went from having “a super full day” to “nothing and all this time to think.”

She worried about money and not having a job. She worried about worrying. She “needed some kind of stability.”

Then, after a while, things started going better. She eventually settled into a role as a freelance marketing consultant. She found stability in joining a gym, and four mornings a week, she would begin her day predictably, exercising with a personal trainer.

Had that trend continued, life would have been fine. Unfortunately, life sometimes throws curveballs, and Barb got to take a whack at ovarian cancer.

More often, it seemed that life was taking the whack at her. Barb experienced a few bouts of depression as she sampled an assortment of chemotherapy drugs. Without earning a steady income as she had for so long, the medical costs really took their toll. The stress alone might have thinned anyone’s hair; the chemotherapy made hers fall out in late 2013.

This Waffle resolves optimistically, though. This Waffle is about a woman whose “medical history is longer than most people’s resumes,” but this Waffle is about a woman who accompanied that statement with a brave smile.

Most acquaintances refer to Barbara Ottervik as “Crazy Aunt Barb,” because through all of her downturns and economic recessions, she has stayed “crazy and caring.” She still has small pockets of cancerous cells lurking perniciously in her abdomen, but other than that, she is now a normal person who really delights in life and in her job.

Her story is a happy one because she made the decision to make it happier. What makes her get out of bed everyday?

“There is always something more to do,” she says. “There is always … something more.”

She appreciates each day now, no matter what. After all, had she never lost her long-standing job, she never would have found out about Scholl Orchards, the blossoming, bustling fruit stand on Center Street in Bethlehem with a colorful array of produce and an old-time feel.

She truly loves her time at Scholl’s, and she eagerly goes beyond the call of duty: she explains the characteristics and attributes of all the juicy products that her customers have selected. As she says, “If there are people who seem like they care, why should I not share?”

And so she shares. She finds helping at Scholl’s gratifying. She gets to witness “the good in people.” She sees clients spontaneously paying for the orders of strangers who have accidentally forgotten wallets, and Crazy Aunt Barb empathizes with that unprompted generosity.

She truly enjoys the fruits of her labor, and selling plenty of apples a day essentially seems to be keeping the doctors away.

Barb could easily yearn for times of yore, when fruits were hawked by the roadside, her cancer was nonexistent, and waffles were served with good, old-fashioned maple syrup. Barb understands that the right path is not always easy, though.

What makes Crazy Aunt Barb get out of bed, then? She is never quite sure, but she is always excited to find out.