grocery
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Wednesday
One Wednesday morning, I was filled with anxiety. There are things I can’t change, as much as I want to. I had not slept well. I went to mass and breakfast with my Dad. I saw Jim O. and Maura T. and Fr. George and each of them was so graceful in their light-bringing that…
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Damaged
I shared the grocery aisles with a mother and her four small daughters and it was not going well. The two littlest ones were wiggly on the cart-bench, grabbing and opening food packages from the carriage. The five-year old periodically wandered away, attracted by brightly colored boxes and tasty snacks. The nine-year old did the…
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Cart
I watched my groceries as they traveled down the conveyor belt and thought of what an impressive bunch of stuff it was. Greek yogurt, almond milk, feta, hummus, pita, avocados, spring mix lettuce, English cucumber, apples, butternut squash, cremini mushrooms, yasso bars, pasta, sliced ham, cheddar cheese, frozen blackberries, frozen spanakopita, dark chocolate with almonds,…
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Eulogy
“You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story… “ Hamilton Yesterday, I embarrassed my daughter in the checkout line of the grocery store in which she works, and I left there thinking surely, here is yet another story to tell at my funeral. This is not a rare occurrence. Through the…
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Rules
I went grocery shopping at the worst possible time. It was Saturday, and the day before the Super Bowl, and it was as crowded as you might imagine, but I thought I could get in and out with my short list. I was wrong. The aisles were crammed full of people and carts and the…
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More grocery store wisdom
“I really like your hair,” said Beth, the woman working the grocery checkout, and I did not know what to say. All Summer long (truthfully, all life long), my hair has been my nemesis. I’ve bought products, scoured hair-care websites using the search terms ‘frizz’, ‘curly’ and ‘help’. I’ve ‘plomped’, deep-conditioned, dried with a t-shirt,…
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Dr. Who Chicken and the Good Tomatoes
Last Summer, we spent much of the precious daughter-home-from-camp-weekend time binge watching multiple seasons of Dr. Who. At the same time, we discovered how delicious chicken thighs were when cooked on the grill, and we grilled many, many pounds of them with piles of red peppers, zucchini, Vidalia onion, and eggplant. These were perfect dinners,…
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Pineapple, orange soda, chicken salad
I rounded the corner of the produce aisle, almost done with my hectic Christmas food shopping trip when I felt my mother. She was pointing me toward a display of whole pineapples and urging me to bring one to the family gathering on Christmas Day. I have learned to listen to that still, inner voice,…
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That’s What We Do
I looked a beat too long at a young mother and her baby boy at Market Basket yesterday. She was settling him into the seat, and sweet talking in his ear. She might have been me sixteen years ago. She looked up and smiled, and I apologized, explaining that I sometimes really miss those days. We talked…