Shopping

I haven’t been feeling great for the last week or so. I’m not in anything like terrible shape, I’m not in pain, but I’m still nauseous and so tired I spend almost all day in bed. My wife is taking good care of me. She lets me rest as much as I need and she lets me know she loves me. That’s what I need right now.

It’s nice, sometimes, to have somebody wait on me. For some reason a tuna sandwich always tastes better when someone serves it to me, on a plate, with a pickle slice or two, and tomato soup is great when I don’t have to open the can myself.

My wife is not real handy in the kitchen but she has been known to make me sandwich or a hot dog and she can mix a mean glass of iced coffee and that’s really okay. My mother taught me to take care of myself, so I know how to bake a strawberry pie and Yorkshire Pudding, iron a shirt and hem a pair of slacks all with the same masculine hands. I think my mom figured my personality would keep me from getting married so I’d better learn how to fend for myself.

Anyway, I believe I’m pretty easy to care for. I don’t like to be fussed over. When I’m in pain or sick I find comfort in being left alone. I think I got that from my distant ancestors who handled illnesses and hurt by crawling into some cave in Donegal, hiding under a pile of skins and trying to tough it out.

Of course, when I’m hiding in my cave I don’t get to do some of the things I’m still able to do. I can’t, for example, go to the grocery store. And that means I don’t feel very useful.

I enjoy the grocery store. I go to the big Publix not far our home early in the morning almost every day. I walk the nearly empty aisles and I almost always find something I’ve never seen before. A lot of interesting things are sold in grocery stores now, things that weren’t sold in the store my I went to on the south side of Chicago with my mom when I was a kid. This morning, in the aisle where the dog beds are sold right next to the butane candle lighters, I discovered a kind of air freshener I’ve never seen before. I won’t go into details, but I stood there and read the instructions for about ten minutes. I enjoyed that.

I also enjoyed saying hello to the men and women I see every morning stocking shelves and working behind cash registers or just walking around looking for something I guess they never find. There’s one guy, James, from Jamaica, who’s about my age and he smiles as soon as he sees me and then we compare our aches. And I buy treats for myself.

And every day, at some point, Lynne thanks me for going shopping. That’s good because it makes me feel as if I’ve accomplished something. So this morning I left the cave and, just like the hunter-gatherer I am, I went to Publix and brought home the cottage cheese and frozen pizza.