It's not the tears I'm embarrassed about, although, truth be told, I try my best to never cry in front of anyone. No, it was the reason I was crying.
I was crying because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get food to feed my family.
Let me give a little context. It had been quite a while since we had been to the store and done any shopping other than to pick up a few things we needed right that minute. Looking in my refrigerator and my pantry this morning, there was very little that qualified as actual food. And I have two teenage boys. We need lots of food.
On top of that, it had been a long, stressful week, leaving me on edge. It was my husband who actually pushed me past the tipping point, though. Not intentionally, of course. He is the manager of a large grocery store, and all week he has been sending me pictures of his store to show just how frenzied it's become with everyone rushing out to buy their lifetime supply of toilet paper and whatever else it is they are buying. I really hadn't been paying a lot of attention to the hoarding up to this point. I mean, my husband works at a grocery store. He has access to food on a daily basis. There was no need for alarm, right?
Then this morning, he sent me a picture of the almost empty chicken counter.
And that's when I lost it. I was irrationally convinced that there would be no food left for me to buy. We were all going to starve. How ironic would that be?
Drying my eyes, I rushed upstairs to throw on some clothes and a little make-up. Then, I grabbed my list and raced to our neighborhood store, certain that I would be met with nothing but empty shelves.
Much to my relief, that didn't happen. I walked in and everything looked relatively normal. There was food! My heart quivered with delight (or maybe from too much caffeine) as I rolled my cart over to the deli to pick up a container of my favorite salsa. Sure, when I got to the meat department there wasn't much there other than an abundance of corned beef, but the meat manager, who unfortunately recognized me despite my just-rolled-out-of-bed disguise, assured me more meat would be delivered tomorrow. We weren't going to starve after all!
My mood was much lighter by the time I left. As was my wallet.
I braved the store today and found myself looking at things and maybe picking up a couple of items just because they were in stock and other things weren't. We still have bare shelves and I was grateful the crowd was less.
ReplyDeleteI am worried about what I will find later in the week when I go out, but I'm trying to resist the urge to go before then because for right now, we're fine. I'm so glad there was plenty there, even if some of it was a bit less appealing (corned beef is not my. thing!)
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