Monday is the day in which I take my sacred pilgrimage to acquire food for the week. I dream some day of balancing my consumption with production, of some day taking my sacred pilgrimage out to a large garden or down to a pantry stocked with foods grown by God and picked, prepared, and dried or canned by my own two hands. For now I get to choose between Safeway, QFC, Lenny's Produce, and the new Grocery Outlet.
After my sophomore year of college I moved out of the dorms with their convenient cafeteria fare and into my first apartment at 949 S. Kickapoo in Springfield, Missouri. Those were the old days when Buzz and I rented a two bedroom apartment for $375 a month. Those were also the days when I began to love shopping for groceries. The options were fewer there, and I went up the road to the Dillons on National Avenue just a mile or so north of the university. I'd start with the staples: cheese, yogurt, bread and then wind my way around the store in orderly fashion.
But come to think of it, perhaps I began loving the grocery store longer ago. My brave mother used to take the four of us kids along with her into town. We'd stock up, literally a grocery cart piled to the brim. A family of six goes through a lot of food in a week, and from the farm we couldn't just walk over to get some more margarine like Jamie and I often do today. Mom would deploy us on little missions through the store, the ever-moving cart being the home base. Sometimes it was scary to go to the next aisle over. I much preferred jumping over the tan tiles on the Dillons floor, staying within sight of mom.
I didn't realize it back then, but getting to know a grocery store is like getting to know a person. It happens over time, and there are many layers, high and low, front to back. I've learned to reach behind the front row of milk to the fresher stuff because there's no way I can drink half a gallon in just three or four days. I've learned there were some things I just have to ask about, though often that has involved my shy self calling mom or one of my grandmas before talking to a store employee. In fact, I still remember Grandma Lu directing me to the hominy that was to later star in that week's white chicken chili.
Getting to know a grocery store is like getting to know a place too. You weave in and out of the aisles, tying yourself to the shelves and the walls and the tiles on the floor. A store has a certain smell and plays a certain kind of generic music, even when the music is completely ill-fitted to the culture of the neighborhood. Some stores, usually in lower income neighborhoods, have bruised produce that you have to sort through and that remind you of your participation in systems of domination and oppression.
It's disorienting to be in a new grocery store, but after a while you get to know the place. You learn to buy things on sale. You learn when the store brand is just fine and when you need to pay the fifty cents extra for the name brand. You learn the people who work there, for sure by face and if you're not shy, perhaps by name and other things. They recognize you too, at least if you're like me and wear the same pair of sweats and baseball cap every Monday morning.
A new favorite singer/songwriter of mine is Carrie Newcomer. She's a Midwestern folksinger, a Quaker with deep spiritual roots, a strong sense of place, and a gift for expressing the profound. She has a song called "Holy As A Day is Spent." It doesn't mention buying food, but it might as well for the sacredness it finds in our pilgrimages through the ordinary.
