Food for thought

            There is a love and love relationship that I have with food. If I could just sit around all day and eat, I would. I'm positive that I'm not the only one who would be a member of my food-loving club. A friend of mine recently brought up the topic of food while we were out for a walk and we began a discussion about all of the affiliations we have with food. One of those connections is certainly life. We humans cannot live without it, in fact, no animal on Earth can. Besides that, love goes hand in hand with this dire resource.  It's the way many of us know how to show how we feel about one another. For instance, my mother has always been a very loving and affectionate person to my three brothers and I. But, beyond the hugs, kisses and sweet words, the way that she really showed how she felt about us was through food. Like many women from any European culture, they would rather starve than think for one-second that their husband or children were even remotely hungry.
            As I was grocery shopping this morning, I began to reminisce about my days as a wee little lass. Growing up, grocery shopping with my mother was the bane of my existence. While my father was out working one of his two jobs and my brothers had the time of their lives terrorizing the neighborhood, my mother would drag me on a walk to the grocery store across the street, or really, it was very busy Route 44 going through southern Massachusetts. Food shopping for my mother was the only time she didn't have to feel guilty about spending money, so she went to town in that place every week. The first stop was always the fruit and vegetable section and by the time we got through that, the cart would already be half-full before we got to isle two.
            One thing that my mother never bought, to her credit, it junk food. Our meals were always big and hearty filled with lots of protein and vegetables. Although, at the time I hated any and all fruits or vegetable because that was all we were allowed to eat. If we even mentioned that we might be hungry, my mother would run to the fridge pull out the carrots and start peeling the whole bunch of them. However, we never had a chance to be hungry. Before we could peel our backpacks from our shoulders coming home from school my mother would have a banana peeled and ready for us when we walked through the door. We would find the most demented places to hide our bananas just so we wouldn't have to eat them. I was master of this hide and seek game. I would stuff them in the shower drain, drop them out of our second story window at just right angle so that they would plop down into the bush below or just toss them into the woods behind the house. The toilet was never an option because my mother would listen for the flush. To this day the four of us can't even take a whiff of a banana without the need to suppress our gag reflex. What I wouldn't give to have an Oreo cookie or a cheese puff like the other kids at school. 

            On our grocery store adventures, the last stop however, was always the challenge. It was the dreaded dairy section. You see, my mother didn't believe in giving her children just one tall glass of milk a day, it was always a minimum of a quart size glass twice a day for "strong bones". To fulfill this quota, it was necessary to purchase no less than five gallons of milk at a time and I was responsible for finding the little nooks to put them in the already mountainous cart, while my mother would decide in that moment to go back for the things she forgot.

            At checkout I could almost feel the thoughts rolling around the checker and bagger's heads as they tried to assess the situation that was rolling towards them. Trying to get through the shopping without being spotted by anyone from school was bad enough but exiting the store and getting back home still makes me flush with embarrassment to this day.  Rolling the cart out of the store was a balancing act between the two of us, as we would make our way down the long ramp to level ground. Then, before we even hit Route 44, there was the massive minefield of a parking lot with man-sized potholes to swerve around every six feet. God forbid we got stuck in one of those. I'd be picking up groceries all day. I would try to hide my face behind the towering cart of paper bags as we finally hit the road but there really was no hiding for me and it was do or die trying to cross Route 44. By the skin of our teeth we always seemed to make it, however, slightly deaf in both ears from all of the honking.

            The grocery stores here in New York City are probably a third of the size of the one's back home. However, I can't help but think of what it may have been like doing our shopping here in that time. I'm sure my mother could probably clean out this store in a month. Key Food would certainly need their stock boys if we lived in the neighborhood.