Sent for Groceries
Originally published at Pittsburgh Girlie. You can comment here or there.
My mom would send me to the store pretty frequently when I was little. I guess I was 7 or 8. I was a grown up 7 or 8 though, I had to be. Sometimes it would just be for milk or bread, but sometimes it was the whole list. I’d tow my little red wagon behind me on those trips.
She’d hand me the list and some cash. My route to the store would take me through backyards and across a dry creek, unless I had the wagon. Then I’d have to follow the main road that had no sidewalks. Once I even took my sister and brother in the wagon with me. They would have been 3 and 2 years old.
I remember getting all the way to the store one time and meeting a lady from our church. She was leaving with her groceries and wanted to give us a ride back home. I thanked her, but knew that I’d just have to walk back to the store to buy the groceries anyway.
I’d walk the aisles, picking out the items on the list that I recognized from our pantry. I didn’t know how to shop. I didn’t know about prices. More than once I had to make the call on what to put back when I didn’t have enough cash. I pretended not to see the looks.
In a way I was glad no one ever offered to help. I don’t know what I would have done. I know I would have felt even more sick to my stomach being indebted to someone in that situation. I knew we lived in a big house but I knew we were dirt poor. I was so scared someone would find out.
I don’t want you to think my mom was mean or uncaring. I think she was doing the best she could with what she had. I think she made some tough decisions that maybe didn’t turn out like she had planned. I think that maybe I turned out okay anyway.