When my older boys were very small and home with me all day, I looked forward to our grocery store outings as if they were puffs of pure, clean air, and indeed they were —getting out of the house, going to a place where other adults were, being able to buy a cup of coffee to sip while choosing tasty things to put in our cart, all while my little boys happily steered the steering wheel in the truck part of the shopping cart and ate their free-for-kids cookies, it was all such a lovely hour (most of the time), and I looked forward to each and every grocery store run.
One of the other things I loved was going to the store early on a Friday morning so I could get the new People magazine. No matter what else was going on that week or how many other times I went to the grocery store, I made sure to go on Friday mornings for my magazine. I might also plan to swing by Dunkin Donuts on the way home for a big “fancy” coffee, and maybe also a small something delicious just for me, but it was all centered on the magazine and my plan to settle on the couch with it, my coffee, and my treat after the little ones went down for their naps.
But one Friday, the magazines hadn’t been put out on the racks yet. I pushed my cart up and down the row of checkout lanes hoping to find that they’d started stocking them on the other end and hadn’t gotten to the open registers yet, but all I found was the previous week’s issue still in its spot.
I know it’s silly, but I felt a little bit of a mounting panic, because I knew how very disappointed I would be if I left the store without my magazine, and disappointment is just the worst, isn’t it?
I finally saw all the new issues with the other publications that had just arrived, bundled in big stacks in carts and on the register belt of the last register near the service desk. It wasn’t possible for me to just slip one out, so seeing them there was like a tease—“Here I am! But you can’t have me!”
I am not a confrontational person. I hate feeling like a burden. I have no wish to make a nuisance of myself or otherwise disrupt someone else’s day. But that morning, I felt like I had to prevail upon any help I could get from anyone who could give it to me. I explained the situation to my cashier, feeling like I was blubbering a little too much about how much I look forward to my weekly read, hoping she could just discreetly ask one of the baggers to cut open a bundle and retrieve one copy for me. Instead, the lovely, accommodating cashier threw discretion to the wind and took up my cause as her own.
“Oh don’t you worry,” she soothed. “Someone can definitely do that for you.” Then, “Can someone help this young lady?!” she started shouting to the shift leaders. “She comes here every Friday morning to get her magazine and it’s not out yet this morning!” I was mortified at being the center of attention for such a silly thing, but so so grateful. Not two minutes later I had my magazine, and my day was salvaged.
Such was the day-to-day of a mom with only very small children.
I was at the grocery store after dropping the older boys off at school on a recent Friday morning when I had this flash of memory, which I haven’t thought of in years. Even typing “in years” emphasized for me as much as the memory did that life has moved on. Nowadays, my Friday morning grocery runs still involve two very small boys, but instead of shoring up my sanity with a magazine and a fancy coffee, I’m buying dinner and picking up a Redbox video for our Friday Family Movie Night. I’m still delighted to see friends at the store to chat with, but it’s not such a life raft, since I’m surrounded by other adults at school pickup and meetings and sporting events, and my older boys are turning into really great conversationalists.
Our Movie Night is as much evidence of life moving on as anything. Until very recently, my husband and I didn’t feel like we had anything left to put into a family event like game night or movie night, despite our agreement that such a thing would be a great idea. Every evening we counted the minutes until it was time to put the kids to bed, and adding anything more into the routine would have just broken us.
But a couple months ago we became aware that things had changed. Bedtime isn’t such a set thing anymore—the little ones still go up at the same time every night, but the older ones hang out a bit more. We’re able to do some of the things while they’re up that we used to have to wait for them to go to bed for, whether working on the computer or doing exercises or folding laundry. So we don’t feel as much need to focus exclusively on the process of dinner and bedtime during the 6 to 8 p.m. time period. Does that make any sense? All I can say is, we’re a different family and we’re different parents, now that we have older boys, even while still having little ones.
It’s always so bittersweet to me, the passage of time, as I know it is to all of you, and I’ll likely be writing a lot more about it in the next few months, because my oldest is graduating from elementary school next week and I have no idea what happened to his little boyhood. I hope you all bound as happily into summer as we will, and happy Father’s Day to all the papas!
Kate Towne Sherwin lives in Saratoga Springs with her husband and their sons ages 10, 8, 6, 5, 3, and 1. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
