Conceit to Make Mrs. Lewis Laugh

<p style=”text-indent:20pt;”>Another trip to InfernoMart

Good, penitent I, I try faithfully to attend my Sunday morning menu-making, grocery list generating, best-intentioned ritual — only demonic forces, then, remain as a plausible explanation of how at the unholy hour of 5:15 pm I find my minivan drawn into a line of cars oozing through the grocery store parking lot, desperate for a parking space that won’t require me to drag a two-year-old forcibly by the wrist five hundred meters past puddles and irresistible shiny things lying on the ground — oh, the magic of broken beer bottles! And I look around at the other zombie mom shoppers, their children surreptitiously pinching each other or outright throwing themselves on the ground in front of my shopping cart, and recognize that I am fully and completely doomed.

Yes, a demonic force, no hyperbole, I resist, I stroll, casually, confidently towards the elysian fields of good intentions, pyramids of polished and unblemished apples and coddled, misted greens that promise never to fade or wilt. I am going to make a beautiful salad tonight! And surely if I find the right way to prepare kale my three year old will see the error of his pizza-grilled-cheese-and-chicken-nugget-only ways and come to the light. This time I will not succumb to forces emanating from the ominous vortex at the center of the store, the happy humming of the refrigeration units the mists of condensation swirling against the glass doors of the freezers.

Here I add that I have a guide slightly less charming than Virgil in the person of that creative and dreamy child accompanying me. To think, I once thought that dreaminess and creativity were charming traits in a child, qualities I hoped for in the child in my belly, with secret plans to nurture and cherish all that potential. Only tonight when he steps carefully only on the beighe tiles, explaining that blues are water and oranges are lava, it not only fails to charm me, but apparently does nothing for the heavyset woman behind us ready to do jam her cart into my heels so she can get to the Froot Loops aisle faster.

Now we catalog the seven deadly sins of grocery shopping: 1) Envy is glancing covetously at the shopping basket of the woman five years younger than me, thin and not wearing sweats, but, oh, professional-looking clothes, shoes that shout out poise rather than comfort. Her cart seems — childless! Gourmet cheeses and a ridiculously thin baguette, champagne grapes and fancy bottles of water, and vegetables, that, were they to appear on the the character-emblazoned plastic unbreakable plates in front of any of my children would cause heads to spin and ominous voices to emanate a lá The Exorcist. 2) Gluttony: oh, too easy. How many forms does chocolate come in? 3) Anger: well, now it is my own offspring with surreptitious pinching and throwing themselves down on the floor and I can feel the heavy-set Froot Loops grabbing cow rolling her eyes behind my back — which, by the way, offends my 4) Pride, because I am a good mother, dammit! 5) Greed is the sale price on something I don’t need, but I save money buying two… 6) Lust is the senuous pleasures offere in the aisle of overpriced personal care items, the red lipstick that, in this seductive lighting, promises to transform me into that desirable, young childless woman, who — yes, she buys muesli rather than anything manufactured by General Mills! and I ignore the little voice in my head that tells me I’ll try putting it on before carpool in the morning and wipe if off because it looks ‘slutty’, a voice which I must here interject is far easier to ignore than the tugging on my jacket, “Mommy, I need to go to the bathroom. Now!”

And in the interruptions that characterize my life now, I drag you, dear reader along with my four offspring, to the shadowy, secret corridor at the back of the store, at least I think this is where the poor employee in the produce section who, it turns out, speaks no English, was pointing in response to my embarrassed and apologetic “Excuse me?” And I can’t take the cart with me, as brother gets idea from brother and I realize I have to change a diaper and the case in my purse is, shoot, of course, out of wipes, and then waiting, and waiting, as the older boys who would die of mortification before setting foot in the women’s restroom take so long that I am quite sure there’s a child molestor in the men’s room, and, looking around to make sure no one’s watching I press my ear to the door and hear water running, “Stop that!” “No you stop!” “I’m telling Mom!” and figure no one is THAT perverted.

Finally, finally, we trudge back to where our shopping car was, only some helpful and efficient employee must have mistaken it for abandoned and reshelved our groceries — the endless doing and undoing that makes up life with small people! Which is how we find ourselves in the frozen center of the maze — and is it exhaustion or 7) sloth, me reaching for the gaudy colors of the box of frozen corn dogs?