Our Town

I love perusing grocery stores. Chicken potpie photo from Griggstown Farm website. Actual potpie in my freezer.

Today I pushed through and walked into town at 4:45 p.m. It took about 25 minutes. I realized it's not just the can-do journey I miss, or the lacing up the sneakers, wrapping my mother's aquamarine mohair scarf around my neck and heading to a destination with a purpose (today was grocery shopping). 

It's also the familiarity of passing all those houses along Valley Road, the ones I have passed for 30 years. Lydia's. Mary's. Maiko's. The house where the woman worked hard planting flowers, like tiger lilies, in the heat and then her family moved. The ranch that took so long to sell. The idyllic white farmhouse with a porch and front garden. The house with the iron entrance gate, and the one with the hydrangea tree (not bush) that is so pretty in bloom. The small house that always has a shiny, colorful sports car in the driveway, turquoise or yellow. I figure the homeowner must be a car salesman, who can rotate cars from the inventory. I figure him to be a bachelor, though I've never seen him.

And it's a jolt of energy to be downtown in a cosmopolitan place that is not my living room, home office or immediate neighborhood. The commuter train nosing out of the Bellevue Avenue station. The people walking from the platform to their homes. The woman in a cute knit hat with fluffy pompom. The railway connection to my beloved New York City. And yet, yet, commuter time in our town is so much lighter since the pandemic, with hybrid/work-at-home schedules. I no longer see a rush or crush. It's different, and quiet.

I had two very heavy bags of groceries, so I couldn't walk back from Kings in the dark. Figgy picked me up and drove me home. But I laid in lots of nourishing family groceries, including fresh blueberries, mangos, organic milk, a big bag of Bell & Evans frozen chicken patties, Ezekiel cereal, Dave's Killer Bread, a large Griggstown Farm (Princeton, NJ) frozen chicken potpie to stash in the freezer, organic apples, fresh mushrooms, oatmeal, fresh salmon from Norway, vegan coffee creamer, a papaya and more. Groceries cost a lot, even with the many digital coupons I used. I better step away from Kings. It's just that I can walk there, and that's good. And healthy groceries are an investment in our collective well-being.

Good night.