Page 71 of The Warmth of Our Closest Star

Lifting my mask to cover my mouth and nose as I walked into the grocery store, I retrieved a shopping cart from the return area a few steps inside the front door. I didn’t necessarily need the cart for the shopping I planned to do, but it kept me from having to carry my bundle all around the store. My arms were getting tired of the weight, though it wasn’t that heavy, no matter how much the bundle meant to me, so it was a nice reprieve to nestle it carefully in the top part of the cart.

Greeting other customers with a nod of my head, since the way the world had changed made smiles impossible to convey a greeting, I ventured into the store. It shouldn’t have been surprising, but the percentage of shoppers who still chose to forgo a mask was astounding. At one time, early in the pandemic, a maskless face was enough to send me into a rage. A scorching emotion that I was forced to push deep down so that I didn’t say or do something inexcusable.

Stupidity is fed by rage, anyway. My rage would solve nothing, and only create bigger problems, so I chose to keep it to myself every time it boiled up at the sight of those toothy grins from reckless nitwits. Over time, it became easier and easier to pretend that I was not looking into the naked faces of people without regard for theirs’ or others’ health and well-being.

To date, something I’d rarely admit out loud, is that I had developed an unspoken philosophy about the careless unmasked:

That will eventually resolve itself if we keep wearing masks and simply wait.

Dark thoughts usually remind me to say my prayers. That was one of those thoughts I chose not to say a prayer over. God would have to look past it or condemn me later. I’d made peace with my feelings on the matter.

American grocery stores, as I’d discovered upon my inaugural visit, are an experience unlike any other. It’s not only the crowds and the overwhelming selection of groceries one has to choose from down each aisle. It’s not the overabundance of sugar and chemicals and salt in nearly every prepared food found on the shelves. Nor is it the overwhelming bright colors of every box and bag.

The thing that is most surprising about American grocery stores is that it’s rare to find one that is merely a grocery store. One can buy books in the same store as one can pick up an obscenely cheap bag of apples. Prescription medication may be filled while a person is selecting their weekly groceries, and picked up before one pays for them. Hair products and televisions are a short walk from where cereals with colorful and cheerful mascots are on display. Even shoes and house slippers and t-shirts can be picked up yards away from a display of cake mixes.

Cakes. Everywhere I’ve lived, most of the larger grocery stores sold prepared and decorated cakes. They had nothing on what one would find in America, however. Cakes for every occasion. A plethora of colors and flavors and styles. Bakers at the ready to write a message on top of a cake you have selected. Pre-sliced cakes, tiny cakes, wedding cakes, birthday cakes, individually sized cakes—that would actually feed four people anywhere else in the world.

America is abundance. Unashamed abundance. I’m neither bothered by this nor approving. It’s simply American culture.

I am impressed by it.

Though I’ve never felt justified buying sneakers in the same store where I select my dinner ingredients; America can have it, but I will not partake.

My favorite thing about American groceries stores is the produce section. Not because they are exceptional compared to other countries, but because one never knows what they will discover. Especially in the Midwest.

One will find standard fare that is typically available year-round, such as carrots, celery, potatoes, apples, oranges, limes, lemons, green beans, peppers, onions, garlic, and bananas. But at the beginning of each season, one will find new and exciting choices. Depending on where one is in the country, the choices can be truly exotic. However, the new things to choose from each season in middle America are fairly common for the country. They aren’t exotic, but it is fresh and exciting after waiting for months to see them return to the shelves.

In the Midwest, one might occasionally see something like dragon fruit, papayas, or starfruit. I’ve run across daikon radishes, fiddleheads, and lotus root. A variety of mushrooms to choose from is fairly common in Middle America. Anytime I see something that is uncommon in the U.S., especially in the area in which I live, I buy it. Immediately, I rush home and Google recipes for the ingredient. Though there are many places in the world where many of the “exotic” ingredients I find are much more common, it feels special in America.

It’s as though America is finally discovering the immensity and diversity of the world. Possibly accepting something new and challenging, and I had been present to witness it. The only way to celebrate such a step from a country that is typically puritanical and resistant to other cultures and ideas is to encourage it. Buy the ingredient. Make something with it. Eat it. Hopefully, it encourages the shop to continue stocking that item—and to try ordering even more exotic foods—in the future.

The sheer immensity of some produce sections—some the size of small stores themselves—is also impressive. There is room to walk down aisles, four carts wide. The display for one variety of apples may be ten feet long and five feet deep. When Halloween comes around, bins big enough to park a small car in will pop up in stores, overflowing with the orange gourds in all shapes and sizes—and it will not impact the ability to maneuver around the produce section at all.

When I say I love America, it means simply that.

It’s a country that has given me plenty. It has taken from me, for certain, but much less than every other country in which I’ve resided.

However, it doesn’t mean that I feel America is equal to or better than any other country in which I’ve lived. Or those that I haven’t. I simply have an appreciation and affection for it. Even in all of its ridiculousness, all of its political and social strife, I love it. It struggles, in its youth as a country, to catch up with many other countries that have had centuries longer to figure things out. As far as its age goes, America is doing fairly well. It’s not moving any slower towards real progress than any other country in the world when one compares their ages.

So, no more or less than the rest of the countries in the world, I love America.

Lost in my thoughts—as I often am—I made my fruit selection on auto-pilot. However, as it was spring, cherries must have seemed perfect. I found myself standing by the display, a bag half-full of the crunchy, juicy little red orbs, their stems threatening to stab through the thin plastic. At both times tart and sweet, cherries are one of my favorite fruits. They’re familiar enough that most palates are accustomed to their flavor, yet they are common only through spring and early summer, so they feel exotic when they arrive in stores.

Cherries also connect me to my history. My heritage. My family. So, they also feel comforting.

It’s funny how a cherry can do those things by simply being a cherry.

Part Three

Life Goes On

One Less Bell to Answer

“The view is something, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry?” I asked.

“The view,” the building manager repeated. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? You can see almost all of the city.”