The Grocery Store

I posted the lyrics to a song last week. Nothing is Wasted. I truly believe it. There was a reason I posted them (of course).

Last Wednesday, I went to the grocery store. Wednesday is not my usual store day, it's a busy after school day. My husband and I were both feeling a little crabby at the thought that our 14th wedding anniversary would be celebrated with early parent pick up, doctor appointments, gymnastics classes, harried dinners and too-late homework sessions versus the date night dinner we both needed it to be.

I received an email that morning from a friend who is expecting her fifth baby soon. "How is it really?" she asked me. I couldn't answer her.

I packed up the littles and headed off to the grocery store armed with a recipe to pick up what I needed for the surprise dinner I was making my husband, a throwback memory to our Grecian honeymoon.

At the deli counter the older women oohed and ahhed at the blue-eyed blondes nibbling cookies and cheese in the rocket ship cart we had chosen that day. Our talk centered around the whereabouts of the wandering moose who had caused quite a stir in our little town. He had passed very near our house on his way out of town.

A woman spoke to me and told me how she missed her children, and how I should treasure this time as the grow up too soon.

I know. I have guilt. I know I should treasure my littles being little, and not sweat the small stuff, and relax and be more patient and not yell and worry less about cleaning. But I'm normal. I sweat the stuff. Inwardly I rolled my eyes at her.

Then she surprised me.

She told me, while I should treasure the days, her children are in their 20's, but they were little, too; that she remembers the crying and yelling and dinnertime messes and overpooped pants and wanting to tell women in the store just like her to go away and leave her alone because the days are loud and messy and all a mom wants to do sometimes is run away screaming and slam doors and break things. And she told me it was okay. To do it. Because she was there.

She was there.

I wanted to hug her. She got it. And when she learned I had three more at school, she blessed me with the sign of the cross and told me to go get a bottle of wine or three.

My littles and I finished our tasks at the deli and moved on through the store, making our way down the list, covered in cookie crumbs and drinking sippy cups, hugging our baby brother and shrieking, pulling boxes off the shelf if I got too close.

At the end of one aisle and the beginning of the next present hit past again. I wanted to throw myself over my cart, protect my babies and scream, "Stop looking at them! After all you've done you don't have that right!" I was blind-sighted, and questioned, why that day, why of all days.

He looked old. Stooped over. Tired. Sad. Beaten. Worn.

I didn't yell or scream or slap, as I most certainly could have. I pushed my rocket ship cart ahead, got my salad dressing, and finished my shopping. Diapers was my last stop.

Up the aisle I headed towards the checkout was the woman I had met only 20 minutes before. I stopped and said to her, "I needed to hear what you said today. I believe I was meant to meet you today. Thank you." And I hugged her, this woman holding a bottle of shampoo, and me with a hand on my rocket ship cart, my crumb covered littles holding their sippy cups of juice.

As I emptied my cartful onto the checkout and bagged my items, I noticed him leave the store.

Everything for a reason. Nothing is wasted.