Chores

I’ve heard it said that there are people who enjoy doing chores.  Let me tell you right up front, I would NOT be one of them. The very nature of the word suggests to me that it can’t be fun or enjoyable.  My mother had a very comprehensive and exhausting list of chores for us to complete weekly – from laundry, cleaning the bathroom, washing and drying dishes, dusting, washing floors and not with a mop but on our hands and knees. Occasionally she would throw in washing windows. I think she was trying to kill us with that one because we lived on the fourth floor in the projects in Brooklyn, N.Y.!!! I’ve often sat down to try and think of my least favorite chore. Well there’s definitely a race for the bottom – I hate them all!!!!! But perhaps if I just HAD to pick one, it would be grocery shopping.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love to eat and I particularly enjoy eating what I’ve cooked, but getting the food and cleaning afterwards is quite a deterrent for me. As a young girl (pre-teen/teenager) my mother would make my sister and I go to the grocery store to shop for the family. She would dutifully make the list and usually on Friday, we were tasked with going to the store. Sometimes we would go together and sometimes we took turns going. We would pull out the shopping cart, get the list and money and off we would go. The store was, what I would say, a good distance from the house (maybe six blocks). The challenge always was getting everything on the list. Sometimes they would have exactly what she wanted or sometime what she wanted but not the brand she wanted. Inevitably we would have to make judgement calls. The worst part was when we got to the cash register. Would we indeed have enough money? Usually my mother was good about guesstimating the amount to give us. Money was always tight and most times we were cutting it pretty close. The whole process was quite stressful for me. Of course after getting the groceries we would have to pull that shopping cart (often times it was heavy) back the six blocks, three of which were going uphill. Once arriving home, we had to put the groceries away. Needless to say, my fondest childhood memories would NOT include grocery shopping.

As an adult, I still dislike chores and I absolutely hate grocery shopping. When the children were little, I would have to juggle how I could get the shopping done. I remember a time when we lived in Dayton, Ohio and the four of us set out to do the shopping (or as they say in New Orleans – make groceries).  I would guess that Yamil was about 5, Maya about 3 and Nayda about 6 months. Yamil always had a fascination for the game machines that were in front of the store. Not that he ever put money in them, but he would have so much fun pretending that he was playing. That day he begged me to let him stay in the front with Maya and play on the machines. Since I only needed a few things, I agreed. I admonished them to stay right by the machines until I came back. I strapped Nayda on me with the baby carrier and dashed around the store picking up a few things here are there.  It took me about 10 – 15 minutes to get everything and when Nayda and I got to the checkout line, I could see Yamil still there playing on the machine but Maya was missing. I quickly perused the entire area in the front looking for her. Of course I asked Yamil where his sister was. He turned around and gave me that “deer in the headlight” look and said “I don’t know. She was right here a few minutes ago”. Well I immediately went into panic mode. We both started running up and down the isles calling her name but to no avail.  The more time that elapsed, the more I panicked. People in the store started looking at me in disgust. Normally Maya, of all the children, would be the one screaming to the top of her lungs about everything so the fact that I didn’t hear her screaming caused me great alarm. I started asking random people if they had seen her. Finally a lady stopped me and said “Are  you looking for a little girl? “I almost bit her head off as I screamed “YES!!!!”.  She proceeded to tell me that she saw a little girl sitting in the corner in the back of the store crying. Before she could get out the entire sentence I went running hollering for her. There she was quietly crying in the corner. Imagine that.  Of all the times to be quiet, she picked that one. She had never been quiet when I took her to church or the library and when she couldn’t have her way but that day, lost, in the grocery store, there she sat quietly crying. OMG!!! I\’m sure that\’s when I got my first gray hair.  I tell you right then and there I thought \”these children are going to be the death of me!\”. Of course Yamil started fussing at her as if it were her fault. From that point on, we all did the shopping together; Nayda strapped on me, Yamil holding on to the cart and Maya sitting in the provided child seat in the cart. Grocery shopping……..you can have it!!!