Making Grapes

The memories come to me at seemingly odd moments.  Often, oddest of all, they have often come to me in a grocery store.  Perhaps, because I am alone while shopping.  Or it may be that she made even grocery shopping special.  While I lived with her, we shopped at a memorable grocery store.  Carpeted and hardwood aisles.  Wealth, along with 'fancy' people roamed with us, pushing their carts or holding their green baskets over a crooked arm.  Imported cheeses.  Fancy olives.  An in store pastry chef and dietitian. Organic before organic was something you had to have.  Any ingredient a home chef would search for.  All of this made our grocery list laughable.

We were there for prepacked frozen dinner items, bags of snack foods, anything deemed 'low fat' and diet coke.

(I have no earthly idea how I survived the summers that I lived with them.)

But the shopping trips were events.  Much like shoe shopping, my godfather and I would banter back and forth as she vacillated between being in charge of the trip and being confused as to why we were there in the first place.  She'd have a diet coke can in her hand...usually one she grabbed from the grab and go beverage cooler at the front of the store.  She'd finish it early in our trip and then just hold on to the can until she handed it to the cashier at check out--"Ring this one up, too, please."

I have memories of my godfather trying to move the trip along, and her insisting we take our time and consider the offerings of each and every aisle.  Looking back on it, I'd bet money on the fact their trips went faster when I wasn't along.  Now, as I consider our relationship, the fact I was with them was precious to her as well.  She might have known her 20-something god-daughter would not always find time to grocery shop on a Friday night or Saturday afternoon.  It was also time to listen to my idle chatter and together, my godfather and I provided more attention and humor for her.

So these days, as I grocery shop, these moments come back to me.  I pass diet coke.  I see chocolate milk.  In the frozen food aisle I hear her proclaiming her microwaved cuisine "delicious" as she replayed her day to us over dinner. I see her strolling the prepared food aisle and delighting in the processed and ready to eat salads, sandwiches and reheat-able meals.

I toss a few raisins on my salad and think of making dinner together.  The bowls lined up around the kitchen island.  The various (and gross) low calorie dressings she'd offer.  The yummy croutons that were arranged on each salad.  I pass kielbasa sausage and fresh packaged pasta and the list of stand-by "cooked" meals comes back to me.

Recently, as I took grapes off of the stems and tossed them in a bowl so that they would be ready for my family to grab and eat...I found myself smiling through tears.  I was the "grape maker" in the household with my godparents.

As dinner assignments were being handed out one night decades ago, I must have said, "I'll make the grapes."  and it made people laugh.  It made her laugh.  From then on, she would ask me to "make" grapes whenever they were brought home.

***

As it goes, the grief is less palpable this year.  My emotions bubble up in other ways.  Anger here.  Frustration there.  A quiet tear.  Everything is masked by a postpartum lens.  But I know missing her is real.  While eased by time and space and survived days, grief remains-ever at the surface.

She's with me in spirit and, to those who knew her, in the oddest place of all, grocery shopping.