Shop Rite

Just how many unwashed grapes can you pick off the bagged bunch in the produce aisle before the pangs of conscience turn them sour to your tongue?  Five. You can safely eat five. Then it’s time to move onto the deli counter, where you can ask for samples of shaved havarti, in differing degrees of fat levels, and salt content, before deciding to go with the store muenster on sale.

You have to make this fun, because food shopping has become your life.  You do it daily, picking up a carton of blackberries from a fruit cart, or a gallon of milk at the corner deli.  But the real party comes with the big haul when you tuck the boys in bed, letting each add one item to the shopping list first. Nothing is off-limits. One of anything is not going to kill them.  Besides, giving them free rein has the surprising effect of encouraging better choices.  You dab on a little lip gloss, throw the canvas bags in the back of the KIA, crank WBLS, and tear off.  You take up two spaces in the basement lot because you can.  You test three carts before settling on one that steers straight and you roll through the magic doors.  The horn section on Prince’s track Glamorous Life heralds your entrance as a fine mist sprays the flat parsley and butter lettuce.  It’s a glittery ‘80s dance party on satellite radio this evening.  Not just the Material Girl, and Michael Jackson, but New Order, The Cure and Missing Persons too. Nobody walks in LA When did you last hear that one?

Fortunately, the Shop Rite is not a club with a cover and a bouncer to whisk the beautiful people past the velvet rope, leaving the rest to shiver in our party frocks.   It is everyone’s 24-hour discotheque, and taking a line from Slick Rick: “The freaks come out at night.” Lately, this includes one middle-aged mafioso with a relaxed middle in unclean running pants belting, and you mean belting, “Let’s Get Physical, Physical, I wanna get physical..” with a box of Life in one hand and Corn Chex in the other.  And it is a good Life isn’t it?  After exerting extreme self-control in riding the wave of hysterical laughter welling up inside you,—you don’t want to hurt his feelings—you realize you admire this dude.   He gets it.  He doesn’t give a damn what you or anyone else thinks.   He is having an unapologetic blast amidst the Corn Flakes and Cocoa Krispies.  He is one bad fruit loop against the tower of Fruit Loops at the end of the aisle. 

You have to make fun happen wherever you happen to be…

“Let me hear your body talk, your body talk…”

The Dip

“You’ve got something to prove,” her husband says.  She opens her mouth to object, then shuts it. He’s right. When a 48-year-old mama decides to join the crazies and jump in the waves at Coney Island on January 1— when up until now, she wouldn’t even touch her toe in the ocean before July 1—there’s something going on below the surface.

When she chooses a bikini with tassels over a classic black maillot, oils her body and drops and does 15 push-ups on the sand before hitting the water, she’s out to prove something, but what?  That she’s still young?  That’s stupid. She knows she’s not. That she feels young?  That’s closer to it, but she can’t do a full split anymore, or sit in the lotus position.  She can’t read recipes, or garment care labels, or the back of shampoo bottles without help from one of three pairs of glasses knocking about the house.

She doesn’t have a “bucket list” either – that would seem presumptuous to her– to tell the universe what adventures she expects it to sprinkle, like stardust, before she kicks, well, that bucket.

She just wants to take advantage of untasted opportunities that roll her way and won’t compromise her trick knee (skiing is out; ice-skating is approached cautiously.)  So when a friend, over a recent pork roast dinner, warm from red wine, boasts that he’s going for a swim at Coney on New Year’s Day, she offers to join him.  Besides, she has been hankering for a winter beach holiday and this one fits her budget.

There’s another reason too. She fears she’s making too traditional an impression on her nine-year-old son—because she does rock her domestic side.  She is the cookie-baking mom that Hillary Clinton once derided, the mom who throws end-of-school year ice-cream socials and hosts piñata parties.   When she tosses out the idea that she’s thinking of joining the polar bears for regular Sunday afternoon dunks, he replies: “Why would you want to go to the beach in the winter? The rides aren’t even open. I want you to stay home Mom.”  Now she knows she really has to do this. That rigid, rational mindset must be challenged. 

So mother and son head for the Q-train on New Year’s morning, with the pork roast friend and his nine-year-old son too. The uneven sand, even through snow boots, offers welcome softness after asphalt. She peels off the layers, throws her towel at him and takes the plunge. Happy New Year!  The water is as packed with bathers as on the Fourth of July. The whiff of seawater brings back the summer of her youth, before it is quickly overtaken by the stench of second-hand smoke.  She skitters out of the surf and her son is there to wrap her up, shivering and triumphant.  She has no idea what he thinks.

On the subway home she can’t feel her extremities and she’s nodding off like an ‘80s junkie on Avenue D. It’s been a shock to the system.  “Get ready,” she tells herself, “there are more to come.”