A Tale of Two Cashiers

Unless you know my daughter, whose soul is a glittery black balloon filled with puppy love and a thirst for justice, this first anecdote will not make much sense. Ergo, a brief primer on Daughter: You know how in board game commercials for kids, there’s always a big hamburger faced lad who elbows out everyone to hammer the gavel joystick thing or whatever and then shouts I WON? Yeah, my daughter would have been the side kid looking on with amazement, genuinely happy that Burger Boy took the W. But in the last couple of years, she’s become a bit of a righteous crusader and she sees you winning Hungry Hungry Hippos and is all STOP HUNGER SHAMING HIPPOPOTAMUSES! JUSTICE FOR THE PIGMY! SAY HER NAME!

So that’s my shopping companion. Thus, our mission a few weeks ago on a rainy Saturday evening was to visit a very disorderly Dollar Tree in order to see what we could see. We watch a fair number of YouTube Momfluencers in which the Momiverse teaches us how to assemble baskets with only Dollar Store Items. It’s…amazing? We wanted to mount our own adventure and we thought it would be more fun to sidestep the bougie boutique in favor of a chaotic experience.

We were not disappointed. In COVIDian times, there are arrows on the floor of store aisles directing traffic flow, as everyone knows, and which 66% of people ignore. At this particular Dollar Tree, 108% of customers were like, I see your arrow and I raise you an I NEED THAT BAR OF SOAP IN AISLE 4, BREH. Please socially distance your own self while I plow through with my cart full of stocking stuffers and by the way, where’d you get those fresh Lisa Frank stickers, hon? This was the kind of store where you’d just find a pregnancy test stuffed inside a Valentine’s mug (not, like, totally unrelated but still not a major merchandising concept). 1-800-HOTMESS. By the time we got to the register, we could not explain what had happened and what we had bought. As we were checking out, I looked up at all the mylar balloons that had escaped capture and floated up to the ceiling and I pondered how a balloon graveyard is actually 6 feet off the ground (deep, yo). The cashier handed me my bag and I told him his Senegalese twists were pretty and before I could say Merry Happy, he YELPED, I mean, YELPED, “Ohmahgahh, thank you SO MUCH! I was doing my hair all night long, I was up until 4 a.m. and I was like this is taking FOREVERRR, but you all are just making me feel so good” And then Daughter yanked her bunny rabbit hat ears and he died and was buried under a graveyard of mylar balloons, ashes to ashes, dust to Dollar Tree dust.

Not even one day later, I had to pick up a few more Christmas gifts at Target. As I was nearing the cashier, I had that sinking feeling that this was not going to end well. I saw it on the downcast face of the cashier. He was having a day. As I pulled my cart up to the register, I saw him look left, look right, and then yell, OH SHIT! THIS KEEPS HAPPENING. He then took off. I mean, there was no explanatory pause, like, “Pardon me, ma’am. I just need to go chase after this customer who forgot her bags.” Nope. Just BYE. Apparently the prior customer had forgotten to press the button that would have closed out her transaction, so the cashier just abandoned ship and ran after her. The security guard walked over and rested his hands on his head, sighing The manager also came over and tried to make sense of why there had been a cashier at register 7 a second ago, and that person had now vanished.

And the tale of these two cashiers pretty much captures the whole story about the way 2020 elided right into 2021. We either found a spark of joy somewhere in our lives, we perished, or we yelled SHIT THIS KEEPS HAPPENING and hoped management would swoop in and take care of this hot mess, STAT.

Love is Actually

I had to make a quick pickup at the mall this evening, which is a lie, because even in pandemic times, a quick pickup at the mall in peak holiday shopping season on a Friday night is One. Big. Oxymoron. The holiday rush was so different, still loud and rushy, but it was masked up and spaced apart.

When I saw the Mall Santa wearing his shielded mask, sitting six feet behind the bench where children could supposedly meet him, something caught in my throat and I found myself oddly choking back tears. Shuffling by, I tried to unpack why I was so moved by the Socially Distanced Santa. I think it was partly due to how dystopian all this seemed, and how frankly unfair it is to the kiddies. We could have given them a virus-free holiday season as they are able to in, say, Australia which has effectively beat the ‘VID. I’m mourning the holiday that could have been.

But the Socially Distanced Santa also reminded me of the scene from “Love, Actually” when all the anonymous people are hugging in Heathrow Airport. We hear Hugh Grant intone that “Love is…actually…all around.” In spite of the film’s problematic relationship with curvy women, I’m a fan of the ways that it normalizes turtlenecks for all mankind, as well as its dismantling of the hierarchy of people needing love. Yes, the Prime Minister gets lonely. Yes, the widow and Claudia Schiffer and the married couple and the folks living in developmental care facilities are all dying to be well-loved. If we train our eyes to see, so says Hugh Grant, we’ll see the love all around.

I’d like to add a Covid in America Asterisk to that adage, if I may. In this quaky season before anyone on the stateside is vaccinated, I think it’s important not just to look for love, but to look for opportunities to love. Those are actually all around. They are found in the spare change jars we’ve been meaning to empty and turn into gift cards for the mail carriers and crossing guards. They are in the shoebox of stationery we’ve been meaning to bust open to write a letter to our granny in the home. They are in all the places we can exercise extra patience. True, no one can see our smile because it’s hidden by a mask, but that, too, is an opportunity to show love.

As for self-love, I will attest that I’ve been staring at this same mug for 40 years and, well, I don’t fully know how to love that lady. But she is looking for ways to love being herself. I can’t imagine learning to love being alive in one’s own body and not wanting it for one’s neighbor. Maybe it’s a radical notion, but wouldn’t we want for others the same measure of love we have experienced? Self-love, when it translates to love of being oneself, wants for others to be a part of that whole joyful equation. Self-love negates itself when it does not show that same love for others. In other words, stay home, drink egg nog, look for ways to love from a safe distance so that Mall Santa can live his best life next year and get back to handing out candy canes and judging kiddies’ wishes for ponies.

Documenting the Quarantine ed. 6: Stress + Strawberry Pie

When I was in labor with Tatum, I could feel his head trying to come out, but his head was sort of too big for the chute and I was sweating so hard that anything touching my skin made it feel like it was burning and I cried to the nurse I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE and she was pretty much like, SAME, BOO. But we gotta persevere. Because keeping that baby in your belly is not a legitimate Plan B right now.

I've thought a lot about that time particularly during quarantine. This too shall pass, but sometimes it doesn't pass through the chutes we want it to, with the ease we hope it will. We're strong enough for this, but this is very, very intense. Like everyone I know, I have wanted an exit hatch from this madness at every turn. I want to go out to eat and not oscillate between wearing a mask and sipping through a straw. I want to hug my friend’s children. I want to go sit in a dark movie theater and eat so much popcorn and not give a single thought to catching the ‘rona from the bathroom/reclining seats/doorknobs/air molecules we breathe. History reminds us that it rhymes, and right now this great unknown is rhyming with other great wars, depressions, and other epochs whose ending was always indefinite to those wandering through.

July has been hot and filling me with homesickness. I miss seeing my family in the summer and eating fish tacos on their back patios and swimming in their pools. I am trying to cultivate a rich outdoor life but it has been stupid humid here, so mostly I bop around to different beaches where the dog can splash and boop the noses of other dogs. I feel stressed that the kids are stressed and I’m learning my codependence on their moods is really unhealthy. I am working on this.

It’s pretty much too hot everywhere to turn on an oven, but we did find a lot of joy in picking strawberries last month, and I adapted a strawberry pie recipe to make it gluten free, so I’ll share it here.

Gluten Free Crust:

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups (184g) King Arthur Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon flax meal

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 6 tablespoons (85g) butter, cold

• 1 large egg

• 2 teaspoons lemon juice

• 1 drop cinnamon essential oil
  

Instructions

1. Lightly grease a 9" pie pan.

2. Whisk together the flour or flour blend, sugar, flaxmeal and salt.

3. Cut the cold butter into pats, then kneed the pats into the flour mixture until it's crumbly

4. Whisk the egg and vinegar or lemon juice together until very foamy. Mix into the dry ingredients. Add drop cinnamon essential oil. Stir until the mixture holds together, adding 1 to 3 additional tablespoons cold water if necessary.

5. Shape into ball and refrigerate for an hour, or up to overnight.

6. Allow the dough to rest at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes before rolling.

7. Roll out on a piece of plastic wrap/ silicone rolling mat. Invert the crust into the prepared pie pan.

8. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Line the pie with tin foil and bake for 25 minutes. Remove the foil, and bake for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, until the crust is a light golden brown. Allow to cool.

9. Fill with pie filling:
   

Strawberry Pie Filling

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup sugar

• 2 tablespoons cornstarch

• 1 cup water

• 1 package (3 ounces) strawberry gelatin

• 6 cups sliced fresh strawberries

• Whipped cream, optional

Instructions

• In a small saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch and water until smooth. Bring to a boil; cook and stir until thickened, about 2 minutes. Remove from the heat; stir in gelatin until dissolved. Refrigerate until slightly cooled, 15-20 minutes.

• Meanwhile, arrange strawberries in the crust. Pour gelatin mixture over berries. Refrigerate until set. If desired, serve with whipped cream.