In our house, before the day even begins—before Charlie is up asking me what’s going to happen for the day, and while David has already left for work—I find myself thinking about what needs to be done. While Gerald is still sleeping on the couch like he owns the living room.
In those quiet moments, I think about the places that hold the most memories for my family, not only for Charlie, David, and me, but back when Suzanne was here too. And for me, the grocery store always comes to mind first. What about you?
I can still see it in pieces when I think back far enough. Taking Suzanne shopping when she was little, her standing there beside the cart in her red cowboy boots and gown because that is what she wanted to wear. Acting she had an important job to do.
Which she did because she would help pick things out like it mattered more than anything else in the world. Sometimes it was cereal, sometimes a canned vegetable, sometimes something she had seen on a box that caught her eye. It wasn’t about getting it right. It was about being there, part of it, helping in her own small way.
Back then I didn’t think much of it. It was just grocery shopping. Something that had to get done. Then life moved forward the way it always does. The LORD called her home and I dreaded grocery shopping. But then life changed David and I got together and we had Charlie and I begin to like grocery shopping again.
Seeing Charlie barely walking, holding onto the cart with those little hands, trying so hard to keep up with David and I like he was the one making sure we didn’t get lost. He would reach for things as we went, dropping items into the buggy like he was building something important, even if half of it never made sense with the meal I had planned. I used to laugh and put things back when he wasn’t looking. Now I wish I had just left more of it in the cart.
And now he’s a young man, and he’s the one doing the grocery shopping for me. That still catches me off guard sometimes. The same store. The same aisles. Just different seasons of life walking through them. I love going shopping with Charlie because he points things out he used to like as a child reminding me of things we did back then.
There was one day I remember more than the rest, even though nothing about it was special at the time. I was pushing the cart with David and Charlie. David was already thinking ahead, talking about what we needed for dinner, what we were running low on, what would last the week. Charlie was drifting a little ahead of us, pretending he didn’t know us, like teenagers do, but never really going far. Every aisle, he’d circle back around, like he was still part of us even when he acted like he wasn’t.
And I had the list in my hand, trying to stay focused, trying to do it “right,” but more times than not I was grabbing things that were on sale, telling myself I was saving money even when I probably wasn’t. Somewhere down the cereal aisle, I slowed down without meaning to.
The cart stopped just enough that everything around me became clear for a second—the sound of wheels on tile, David talking, Charlie circling back again, the normal chaos of just getting groceries done. And that’s when it hit me. I wasn’t just shopping. I was living inside something I would later miss.
I was collecting moments I didn’t even know I was going to need. The kind of moments that don’t feel important while they’re happening because they’re just ordinary life. But later, when the house is quiet again, they’re the ones that come back first.
The grocery store was never really about groceries. It was about all of us moving through life together without realizing how quickly it was all changing. And somehow, those aisles still hold all of it although life has changed and Charlie is grown those memories carry me through the hard days.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
