Grocery shopping

Good morning! Yes, I know this is being posted on Monday morning, but it’s Saturday as I write it. I am very cheerful because it is soooo beautiful outside. It’s not very warm yet, but it’s getting there. And I’m kind of excited.

About going to the grocery store.

I’ve just come back from a writers’ retreat that was so much fun and was exciting (and fattening, but we won’t go there), I’ve sent in some requested revisions, I’ve written the dedication for the out-in-July novella, and I’m excited about groceries?

Well, yeah.

The produce section is the first thing in the store. I love the colors of the fruits and vegetables. I know going in that I like Idaho potatoes, Honeycrisp apples, Vidalia onions, Chiquita bananas, but that doesn’t stop me from looking at all the other brands and varieties or trying something new.

Liquor comes after produce. Unless kids are coming home, I don’t buy anything here, but I still like to look at the bottles. My son told me a pretty bottle wasn’t a good enough reason to buy a brand of wine. I think he’s wrong.

There’s the meat aisle, the canned-vegetables selection, the—well, you know what’s there.

There are always people to talk to in the grocery store. People you get a chance to do something for—“can you tell me where this is? My wife said to just ask someone.” There are the ones you get to watch, whose haircuts and outfits you covet even as you know you’d wear sweats and a ponytail to the grocery store even if you had them. Some people you can sympathize with--“no candy. I already said that. Sit down.”

There is no bookstore close to where I live anymore. I read on a Kindle and I order most everything from Amazon. I can count on one hand the times during the year I actually go to a brick-and-mortar-plus-good-coffee bookstore. I miss it. Oh, gosh, how I miss it.

But, in the grocery store, I still get to peruse shelves. I still neaten things up that have been shuffled. Even though I know what I want when I go, I look at everything else, too. There is free coffee in our grocery, and they sell books, too, although not all that many. There is no scent of paper and ink, nor anyone discussing so-an-so’s latest in the middle of the aisle. No little kids sit on the floor in the children’s section.

But there are people who smile and speak in grocery stores. There are conversations to be had. There is, just like in a bookstore, empathy.

***

Today is Memorial Day. Let us not forget. Cheryl Reavis said this on Facebook. I can think of nothing better to close with.

“Memorial Day isn't a "holiday." It was intended to be a day of solemn remembrance, one dedicated to those who made the ultimate sacrifice for this country, a sentiment which has gotten completely lost in the blatant commercialization that now surrounds it. This day is not about picnics and barbecues and the beach. It's about unlived lives. It's about the young men and women who did their duty and who never came home. The price of Freedom is always buried in the ground, and our duty on this day is not to let them be forgotten.”