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Illustration by Alex Deadman-Wylie
I dislike grocery shopping. Not as a result of spiking prices, although that’s made it worse. No, I dislike everything it entails: lineups, strategizing for parking, navigating for elbow space.
For me, grocery shopping is a long wait at a medical clinic, bad coffee in a church basement, semi-trailer trucks in the fast lane.
But as my husband says, “everybody’s gotta eat.” And so I go.
I enter each store with a mission: rush in, grab what’s needed, and rush out.
The problem is I can’t rush in and out on Saturdays. That’s the day my elderly mother and I shop together.
My mother is a sprightly 85-year-old with a penchant for speaking her mind. Before we head out, she applies lipstick, a hint of blush and a shimmer of attitude.
She’s had a driver’s license for decades but never drove, so in the early years she grocery shopped with my father. Then it was my older brothers’ turns. Then it was mine. It was the least we could do considering she cooked for a family of five.
Since moving to Mississauga with my husband more than a decade ago, I started driving to Toronto to visit her each Saturday, and our shopping excursions evolved from there.
It made sense.
But it hasn’t always been a smooth ride.
My mother and I have different attitudes toward grocery shopping.
I run around like I’m on a timer. Grabbing. Tossing. Maneuvering.
My mother strolls and peruses.
When we arrive, she unwittingly parks herself and her cart in the middle of traffic to study the flyer for sales. I watch as shoppers and staff squeeze past her or are forced to take a detour.
As I zoom around for items to check off my list, I’ll leave her at, let’s say, the produce section. And that’s where I’ll find her a half hour later with an intense look on her face, studying the zucchini like she’s Alan Turing trying to crack the Enigma code.
Grocery shopping is also the perfect occasion for my mother to people watch. Cue the comments.
“Look at all the groceries in that guy’s cart.”
“Is that woman wearing pajamas?”
“Did you comb your hair this morning?”
My mother’s astute observational skills of her only daughter are also on full display during grocery shopping.
“That was on sale last week,” she’ll say while peering at an item in my basket. “Why didn’t you buy it then?”
Sometimes she remains silent and simply grimaces at my choices or their sticker prices.
And she always insists on examining the prepared foods section – not in order to make a purchase but to bemuse herself.
“They think I’m going to pay that for that?” she asks no one in particular. “I can make it for half the price.”
Each Saturday mother-daughter grocery shopping adventure also involves an elaborate hide-and-seek game we didn’t intend to play. At some point I’m unable to locate her. Where has she gone? Up and down and around and around the aisles I go.
“Have you seen my mom?” I yearn to ask the stock clerks and deli staff I encounter.
After frustratingly circling the store twice with no sighting of her, I imagine tacking a missing persons poster to the front doors: “If you see this woman, please don’t call!”
On more than a few occasions I’ve found her waiting by the store entrance or my car.
“Where were you?” I ask, exasperated.
My mother shakes her in disappointment. “Where were you?”
Then there’s the will-we-won’t-we-finally-leave conundrum. My mother will invariably announce she’s ready to go and we’ll start making our way to the checkout lane.
But then something beckons her. It might be the sale on broccoli crowns or the pyramid of discounted detergent. As she starts for it, I sigh. Don’t do it, I plead in my head. Please don’t go. It’s what we all think when the lead in a campy horror flick walks toward the dark, ominous basement.
But she does it. She goes there.
Now that I’ve reached middle age, I’ve started to reflect on these Saturday mother-daughter grocery shopping adventures. My mother has begun to slow down. She tires quicker. Her aches and pains are more pronounced. The arthritis in her hands make sewing, a hobby she once enjoyed, a painstaking process.
She became a widow three years ago, and while she’s known for her independence and resilience, some days I can hear her sadness over the phone. Winters are hardest. She feels cooped up and restless. But when the weather obliges, she takes the bus to a nearby plaza just to get out of the house, she tells me.
So for my mother, grocery shopping is an outing. A chance to see and be seen.
I’ll never look forward to grocery shopping. But I appreciate why she does.
I realize our excursions aren’t infinite. One day I’ll wander the grocery store on my own, yearning to find her strolling an aisle or studying the produce section.
For now, I’m grateful there’s still time for me to work on my patience and understanding.
Saturday is almost here.
When I pull up to her driveway, I know she’ll be ready for me and for a new adventure.
Rita Simonetta lives in Mississauga.