Lost in the Quotidian

Growing up vegetarian made health food stores kind of like heaven for me. Here was a store full of food and I could eat nearly all of it! Even the candy wasn’t completely off-limits because most of it was made of carob or rice sugar or God knows what other healthy things.

About 1/4 mile from my house was Yola’s. I think it may have actually been called the Emerald Garden but I only know this because a deep purple t-shirt embellished with that names survives to this day somewhere in storage. My brother and I knew the market as Yola’s because it was Yola who ran it. And making a trip there was always a treat. It was a tiny store chock full of healthy goodness and closing my eyes I can still remember the different locations of all the sweets.

It was here – before I fully understood just whatall went into processed food – that a family friend brought me when I was in the single digits. She offered to buy me a sweet treat and picked out a gooey sesame covered item. I looked at her wide-eyed and determined to stand my vegetarian ground. “Would you like this? Let’s share this?” she said.

“But…” I said pausing, “Is there any chicken in it?”

After Yola, a woman named Danny took over. She stood out because her hair was always dyed an unnaturally vibrant hue. I remember thinking that someday when I was older – because I was a vegetarian and she ran a health food store – I could be just like her and have pink hair. In middle school, with an argument of the henna dye that the store sold, I was convinced my mother to let me dye my hair orange to be Pippi Longstockings for Halloween. From that point on, there was no stopping the colors that my hair took on. Until I reached college that is and somehow grew bored with it freshman year.

At 14, I began working at the little health food store when it was run by a woman named Bernadette. It was my first job outside babysitting and I loved it. Running the cash register, stocking the fruit spritzers according to their rainbow color, bagging up the organic raisins. I remember my granny coming in to buy a few items that you couldn’t find at the chain supermarket. I gave her back her change without counting it. Then blushing, I had to watch as she counted it out loud in front of me. “It’s not that I don’t trust you Honey,” she said. After that, I always made a point of counting a customer’s change back to them.

And I remember the art of bagging groceries and being taught how to do it properly. There’s a right way to do things – and in that situation, I had to pack groceries in a way that my grandmother or my mother would approve of. It was that art that caused me to reminisce this afternoon about the place that was Yola’s. I was moseying through the HEB to pick up ingredients for a salad for tonight’s dinner. As I approached the cash register I realized that yet again I had forgotten to bring my own bags. I told myself therefore that I better suck it up and buy a re-usable bag instead of getting more plastic ones.

Not only did my cashier get all my food to fit comfortably in that bag, but he also packed it right. Watching him, I realized how long it had been since I’d seen someone care about which item went were and what went on top of what. Watching him place the spinach and bananas aside for last, putting in heavy items first, shifting & moving & fitting all the pieces in the puzzle, made me more happy than it should have. I felt like I was 14 all over again and learning how to bag groceries, watching in awe as someone did it right. “Thank you,” I said, “Thank you for packing my bag like that.” He smiled, handed me my receipt and said, “Have a nice day.”

And off I walked towards my car, thinking of a little health food store that had long since been sold and turned into a little cafe.