I Take My Aunt to Wal-Mart

She eased out of the passenger side of the Honda without the usual fanfare of complaints and difficulty, her gaze focused on the shopping cart next to the car. I watched as she did a fast shuffle to snag a shopping cart to use instead of a walker. At ninety, she thinks a walker makes her look old. When I joined her at the curb, she was smiling triumphantly. I was puzzled because while her pace was slow, her determination belied her constant complaints about walking. Then she turned to me suddenly with a look of concern.

“Where is my cane? Oh, darn, I must have left it at home. Oh, Lord,” she exclaimed. She is a church going woman who doesn’t curse, certainly not in public.

“I’m not sure where you left it,” I say, knowing that I won’t go back and look in the car. Her performance in getting this far was surprising. Does she need the cane if the cart works?

We slowly roll from the parking lot towards the front door of Wal-Mart. I am wishing now that I had chosen someplace not so large. Like so many older people, she gets just inside the door of the store and stops dead in her tracks, oblivious to the people behind her entering the store. There is a lot that needs to be done here and I am working it out in my head now that I know that she moves so slowly. In front of us is the food section of Wal-Mart with display cases starting to the left, produce in front of us, everything else off to the right.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. “The meat section is over there,” I say pointing to the left.

“Where are you going?” she asks with some confusion. She is gripping the handlebar of the cart and not moving. “Chicken, we need chicken.”

“What? No, I need to get ground beef. Remember, I said I would cook meatloaf tonight.”

“Chicken,” she repeats, her top dentures perfect in their pink and whiteness. They give her a comical look because no one her age has natural teeth that perfectly formed. “We have to have something to eat. I need to get chicken. Don’t you want something to eat while you are visiting?

This statement is one of the many observations that alarm me and I have only been in town less than twenty-four hours. She has forgotten our grocery shopping plans made less than an hour ago. I figured a meatloaf would last a few days and maybe some of it could be frozen for meals next week. Her mind is on chicken. She seems afraid there won’t be food at home for me to eat because she has so little in her freezer. She often forgets the Meals on Wheels daily delivery. I am annoyed about the chicken because she only likes dark meat and I only eat chicken breasts and neither of us ever accommodates the other

We move slowly over to the meat case. I point her to the poultry section while I check out the packages of ground beef.

“Why don’t you go ahead an start checking out the chicken while I look at the ground beef,” I say to her hoping to save time.

“No, I don’t want you to leave me,” she says.

“I’m going to be right here. Besides, you can’t lose me if you are only fifteen feet away.”

She pushes the cart over to poultry while I figure out Wal-Mart’s pricing and packaging. After I decide on the plastic wrapped four pound economy size of ground beef I walk over to where she is examining the packages of chicken. I can tell she is having a problem so I watch for a moment before jumping in to help.

“Do you see what you need?”

“I can’t find the wings.”

“Here they are. You can buy the small package for $4.97 or for a better deal this large one for $7.97.” She continues to go through all the identical packages and looks confused. She moves to the chicken thighs and then stops in confusion. I know what’s coming and I brace for it.

“How much are these?” She is frowning while trying to find the price on the package. It’s on the bin label, not the package.

“The price is right there on the label. They are all the same price. If you want the best deal, buy the larger package,” I say uselessly because I know she is frugal to the point of self-denial. I wait.

“How much is this again?” she asks as she again picks up the smaller package of chicken wings and frowns at it. She seems to be counting the number of wings.

“Four ninety-seven.”

“Oh. And how much is the big package?”

“It’s still seven ninety-seven.” I am starting to get irritated.

“I think Wal-Mart is too high. I don’t know why people think Wal-Mart’s prices are low because I know I can get a better deal at Save Rite. I think I’ll just wait and buy chicken later,” she says. This means we will visit another store and do this all over again.

To Be Invisible

Why is it she thought she would be invisible? When she saw Rita walking across the corridor (and she had the advantage of seeing her first,) her mind went to “What if she doesn’t remember me? Maybe I could just walk right on past her like the others who don’t acknowledge me.” Only that didn’t happen this time. Rita stopped right in front of her, shaking her finger. Carrie knew that it was her face Rita recognized, but that she was hung up on the name. To help her, she supplied it in her greeting.

“It’s Carrie and how are you doing?” she said.

“You should be so glad you here in the home office. When did you get here? It’s just awful in the field offices, with all the constant work and people leaving for the home office every week.” She hardly takes a breath as the words tumble out. Carrie realizes that nothing has changed much in the nine years she has been gone. It was the same complaint back then and the same complaint now. They chatted for a few minutes with Rita speaking only in negatives.

After making motions to show she had to be on her way, Carrie continued on to her intended destination, the snack food stand that was run by a blind man. He could be seen walking down the corridors from time to time, making a wide sweep with his cane. It reminded her of the way blind people used to walk. She had noticed in recent years that blind people with a cane used a shorter sweeping motion as they navigated their way so the blind man at work with his wide sweeping moves seemed almost comical as he walked down the wide, empty space of the building corridor.

She decided on peanuts. She noted on the back of the package that if she consumed the entire package that would be a third of her daily required caloric intake. She reasoned that peanuts had the good fat and that it would grease her insides and keep things healthy and moving. It was sugar that she needed to stay away from and its addictive qualities. In the past year she had make a strong connection between the sugar she ate and the headache that followed ten minute later.

While paying for her peanuts, she ran into yet another person from her past. She did not want to explain herself or play that game of career geography that invariably ended up with how much power you wielded and how much money you made. She was one of the few people that had a promising start to her career only to see it all but fizzle to nothing, not much advanced beyond the new recruits. In fact, older than most, she was a bonafide washout among her peers. She was now hanging on to her job (no longer a career) for reasons known only to her. It was always hard having to explain herself and watch the surprised recognition of her failure in the eyes of former peers. Today was no exception. When he asked where she was now, she deflected to the one thing everyone, man or woman, loved to talk about: their children.

“So where are you now?” the inevitable question came at her like a strong gust of wind, nearly knocking the wind out of her.

“Don’t ask,” she said laughingly, all the while knowing this answer wouldn’t hold for long. She could see the questions in his eyes so she quickly said, “So how are your girls?” With that, he went on to tell her about his oldest daughter (local graduate school) and his younger daughter (which she didn’t realize he had) who was still in high school. She collected her change from the blind man as he leaned over the ice cream case, following her voice to gauge her location. Normally she would tease an acquaintance about middle age and ice cream, but she didn’t want to prolong the contact. She wanted to go back and hide in her cubicle.