Choice

I should have known I was in trouble when I got in line.

I was blissfully unaware, though. Perhaps imagining a pan of roasted Brussels. Perhaps going over my list on my phone just to make sure.

I should have looked around. I’m thinking you’ll not be surprised.

One cashier. One.

It was good news, at first. There was the woman who was having groceries rung up, a family behind her and another woman with one of those half carts behind them. Three carts! I couldn’t believe my luck. I even almost forgave the person in front of me who didn’t pull her cart all the way and, instead, parked it in the middle of the aisle and then stood there looking on her phone while people became acrobats to get around her.

Almost. I just rolled my eyes a little. I mean, I’m not a saint.

There I was, masked, half-full grocery cart, patient human being - the perfect customer.

And then I looked behind me.

It actually went wrong when the cashier left to “get another cart” which I heard her say, and, even though I didn’t really understand, accepted. Goodwill and all.

That was when I turned around to see about 14 or 15 people, full carts, lined up behind me. That’s a lot, people, come on. A lot.

Then, the rumblings began. I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but people are getting mean. The world has worn us down and we, often, are not responding from our best selves. I’ve seen it the worst at grocery stores. I saw a person the other day yell at another who was putting on her mask outside the store before she went in. All of a sudden, someone walked up to the mask-wearer and started yelling at them to “stop staring at me!” And they wouldn’t let it go.

“Why are you staring at me??”

The ashamed and broken mask-wearing woman just hung her head and walked away. I would guess that the one who yelled was ashamed and broken too. But maybe not about grocery shopping.

We talk a lot about how food is the way we show love. How potlucks are community creating. How we take a casserole over to someone who is sick, someone who has given birth, someone who has had a loved one die.

We feed one another.

Well, those of us who have food.

Which made (for most of us) the grocery store a safe place. At any moment when you look at the human beings wandering the grocery aisles, you may see a cart full of Halloween candy, fruits and veggies, diapers, a favorite kind of granola bar, a pint of ice cream.

Again, please forgive me for all the unmentioned complications of grocery shopping for those with no money to eat, for those in line right now relying on another’s generosity, for those kiddos hoping they get a life-sustaining backpack from a non-profit with some food in it for the long weekend ahead. This is not that entry. It is, of course. But it isn’t.

But now, the grocery store is becoming a place of anger, a place for people who have given up on expecting anything good to happen to them. Hoping that someone else, who is feeling the same, showed up to work to check them out in the grocery line. The grocery store has become a place of distrust (please, don’t hoard - make sure there is something for all of us), a place of high prices, a place of impossibly long lines.

So there I was, 14 people behind me, listening to the not-so-quiet comments. I don’t even have to tell you what they were. You already know. Maybe, like me, even if you haven’t said them out loud in the same situation, you’ve thought them.

There was a woman behind me, masked as well. Older than me by a couple of decades. Cart half full. Eyes wide as the comments started. I recognized fear.

I looked at her and then she said: It breaks my heart that people who work in grocery stores sometimes have a dozen people lined up waiting to be checked out.

I instantly knew her. Knew her heart. Was taken to my core where I found, and chose, compassion.

Yes, I said. Mine too.

We talked about vaccine boosters and favorite grocery brands. We talked about memories and hopes for the future, both. We talked about our families: Kids in college and grandkids in college. We talked until, finally in a moment of revelation, another line was opened and, since I was next, I was called over. I looked back at her and gave the universal tilt of the head which meant, “come with me!”

And she did.

Now, did a person try to cut in between us and become the next in line, leaving my new friend startled? And did I say, really loud, “that woman is with me, she is next!”? Yes, all of that happened. But I was being protective.

I wanted to preserve the connection with someone who showed me, with loving gentleness, that sometimes we have a choice to make.

That, in relationships with others, known and unknown, we get to make a choice.

There exists in this world trauma and horrible abuse. There is torture and there are systems of oppression that bring the world to its knees for pain. There is illness of all kinds and there is always someone sensitive to being stared at.

And somehow, in the midst of all of that, moves the Spirit. And, even more surprising, somehow we sometimes are able to choose to be in that Spirit’s flow and respond with a choice that leans us into love.

And, somehow, I found myself in that flow at that grocery store on that day.

I could have rumbled, irritation under my breath. I really could have.

But I made a choice.

And I have to believe that choice, like muscle, needs work to strengthen. Repetition. Intention.

I have to believe that a choice for compassion is available to all of us in the grocery store line.

Because I’m pretty sure that, in the end, it will be that choice, that muscle, that compassion, that will save the world.

One loved cashier at a time.