I did it on a lark when I was alone one night, as foolish things are usually done. I didn't drunk-dial anyone or search Google for someone from the past who was better left in the past. On retrospect, though, it kind of felt as if I had.
I made an impulse buy. I bought a Groupon for a year-long membership to one of those big-box grocery chains where you can pick up a lawn chair along with your rotisserie chicken. The ones where you can't just buy an onion, you have to buy 5 pounds of them, and you can make a meal of the hot and cold food samples doled out along the way.
And I mean that last part literally: A friend once told me she went to visit relatives in another state who said they were taking her out to lunch, and then took her to Sam's Club for the samples. When she declined, saying she didn't want to ruin her appetite for lunch, they disclosed that that was lunch.
But I wasn't thinking of lunch when I bought the Groupon. I wasn't in need of 5 pounds of onions. I was looking for something else I couldn't place, something I used to get when my sons were young and their father was here and we had a family membership.
I had let that membership lapse since I cook mostly for myself now, and don't need several dozen of everything or two years' worth of dishwasher detergent. Plus, there are so many good options for food-buying now: chain supermarkets, local markets, farmers' markets, ethnic grocers, health-food stores, farm stands. Even Target sells milk.
So what drew me back? At first I thought it was the rotisserie chicken. But I've been buying those from a Mexican grocery store, which spices and roasts them over onions and green chilies in a way that's hard to top. Or the wines? There are better selections and prices at smaller stores these days.
I went in the day after the purchase, still uncertain of what it was but sort of excited. Shopping for food is a happy experience and I do it in many places, so the idea of Amazon buying Whole Foods and replacing the shopping experience so you never walk down a grocery aisle again is unthinkable. As kids, my friend Dodie and I would visit supermarkets just for fun, racing our carts up and down the aisles and laughing at stuff we saw. I married a man, Rob, who took just as much pleasure in food shopping, even though he was a quirky eater and not much of a cook. He liked having a full fridge and never running out of paper towels. Or socks. At this place, he could stock up on both.
I walked up one aisle and down another, picking up a chicken, sampling a sushi and a pasta, taking in the physical changes since I was last there. I could hear my boys, the younger one seated in the cart, debating what kind of juice boxes or candy to get. I could feel the tug at my sleeve from one of them in need of a chaperone to get an ice cream sample. I pictured Rob in his element, putting coffee beans through a grinder.
I realized why I had clicked the "Buy" icon and what I had come in for, and why I wouldn't find it. It wasn't a product. It was a time in my life, a time when exhilaration could come from something so mundane and domestic because you were so madly in love with the people you were with. A time when all the people I loved, beginning with Rob, were still alive.
Shopping for food continues to give me pleasure. My life is full of good meals and loved ones (though some live at distances), rewarding work and adventurous travel. But now I remember the secret to releasing children as they grow up and move away and no longer need you the way they once did. And to relinquishing a soul mate to the universe. It's incorporating the people you love into who you are, and absorbing your past self into your present one, and moving forward. It's not trying to recreate what's no longer there
I thought I knew that, but when I bought that membership, I had forgotten. So I won't be saving on 40 rolls of paper towels, but the Groupon was worth its price for a lesson relearned.