I get sad every time I leave Winco. Not inside- usually. Just outside when I push my cart into the parking lot and over the speed bump because it entertains me. That makes me think about Ant pushing the cart all crazy when he was little. Then I get sad and a little mad. I marvel at how long the people close to me have been married, and how they can really choose if they want to do things with friends or just be with their person. It makes me wonder if they ever think about that when weighing my invitations: I wonder if she’s lonely. I put my same groceries in the same car in the same parking lot for ten years. I try to see myself through Ant’s eyes now: still Jenny, still the same. I put the cart away and think about when Ant was always with me- when he was young enough to run everywhere. Returning the cart was his job, and he took it seriously. He would look both ways carefully, knowing I was watching. Then he’d push the cart all the way in to the corral and then jungle gym his way back out, dropping to the ground and running back across the lane, forgetting to look, me yelling at him to look, having already looked. Routine. We’d go home the same way, but now I go straight instead of turning right. I think about how alone I am. Ant has grown up. Riley’s gone. Daniel’s gone. Gus is gone. I’m still here.
Maybe I need a new grocery store, but it’s really more the other things: I need a new job, a new home, a new love story. Besides, have you BEEN to Winco? It’s lovely. I chose to come back to this area because of the sidewalks, the trees, the grass, the routes, and my beloved Winco. I don’t think I would feel so sad if anything had changed for me in all this time. I couldn’t have known that, and things will change. I like to think I am proactively grieving now so that I don’t have to do it when I put different groceries in a different car in a different neighborhood. Maybe writing this will help me stop feeling so lonely, and maybe one of these days I’ll walk into my home and someone will be in there making dinner. Let’s hope it’s someone I know, haha.
