My mother went grocery shopping on Saturdays, almost always. It was the easiest time I guess with her busy work schedule and the demands of home. Saturday afternoons to be precise because the mornings were spent at the Polish school, where she taught and some of us attended. Maintaining our language and cultural identity was most important to her.
I often volunteered to come along to the store because I knew if I was with her when she made the decisions of what to buy, I could influence her. I could often sneak in a candy too.
I wasn’t old enough yet to be embarrassed by her poor English or by our poverty. I don’t say that proudly, although I think a lot of kids as they become self-aware and really want to look cool in front of their friends, get embarrassed by their parents. I wasn’t any different.
Superstore was a shock to the system for my mother. It was enormous and there was so much food and different kinds. I would run circles around her, excited about the meals she had planned.
“Maybe we can have tomatoe soup?” I’d ask; hers was delicious.
“Maybe instead of corn flakes, this week we could have the honeycombs?” As long as the price was the same, better yet if it was cheaper, I’d get to choose what I liked most.
Occasionally, we wouldn’t know what something was, so she’d turn to me and say, “Zapytaj Pana co to jest?” [Ask the gentleman what this is?]
I was her interpreter, although my English wasn’t very good, I knew more words than she did.
In the vegetable aisles, I’d overhear her practicing the English names for different things. “As-pa-ra-gus”, her accent was so strong, I could tell just by listening to the other people in the store. She sounded very different than they did.
“Dorotka, pacz, cena tu jest mniejsza, ale popacz na ilosc, jesli przeliczysz na wage, te opakowanie jest drozsze.” [Dorotka, look, the price here is lower, but look at the amount, if you convert it by weight, this package is more expensive.]
My mother was brilliant. She paid attention to every detail and everything she touched was made better because of her efforts. She was a teacher by profession, but also in life. She knew how to feed a family of seven on a dime.
Grocery shopping usually took about two hours; we walked through every aisle, looked into every discount bin, sorted through the expired foods to find the ‘least’ expired ones, examined closely every bag of overripe fruit marked down for quick sale.
In the end, the cart was very full. I remember how happy it made me to see that mountain of food. I was excited to go home and eat.
I was responsible for putting everything on the conveyor belt, boxes beside boxes, fresh produce together, refrigerated items close to each other and right up against the frozen ones. I had a system. My system also made it easier to pack everything on the other side, where I ran as soon as the cart was close to empty. My mother would put the last few things on the belt while I went over to start bagging.
I was small for my age (let’s be honest, I’m not exactly tall now either), so I’d kneel on the shelf at the end of the conveyor belt and press the button. As things magically moved towards me, I bagged them. By then, my mother had pushed the now empty grocery cart beside me so I could put the bags back in it.
After the first few items were bagged, she’d inevitably get my attention and I ask me to put something aside. [I’m writing it all in English, but our conversations were always in Polish.]
“Put that on there,” pointing to a spot off the belt.
“Yes, mama,” I did as she asked me. I had done this many, many times before.
A moment later, “that too, put it aside.”
Eventually there’d be a whole section of things on the side, left unpacked.
Then came the moment of truth. The cashier would tell her the total. I don’t know if she understood them, but she knew to look at the red glowing number on the register display.
I’d say nothing as she opened her wallet, counted the money again (she knew exactly how much she had with her, but maybe she hoped some more would have appeared), then she’d turn to the cashier, this time speaking to them without my help.
“Moment…” the word is the same in English and in Polish, although pronounced differently. The cashier understood her.
She walked over to the ‘put aside pile’ and grabbed things one by one, handing them back.
Back went some bread, back went the cream cheese, back went the honeycombs (I didn’t dare protest, I could tell this was so hard for her already), back went some cans of fruit, back went…
Occasionally she’d go the bags I had already packed and picked things out of there.
The cashier subtracted the price of each item and my mother would look at the new total. This went on for a while.
The people in line behind us were visibly frustrated. I smiled at them cheerfully, but inside I was getting terribly anxious.
Finally, the number on the register was low enough. My mother handed over all her money.
I finished packing whatever we were allowed to keep and piled on the bags. It would be a week before we’d come back to the store, there were seven of us, she had to figure out how to make this food last. And she always did.
She took the receipt from the cashier, “Thank you.”
She pushed the cart, I grabbed the heavy, four litre bottle of milk, I hadn’t managed to fit it in anywhere, and we walked away.
I barely took a few steps, my hand slipped, the milk fell.
I screamed.
My mother stopped and looked back at me. I was standing in a pool of milk.
She didn’t move, neither did I. We both just started crying, no wailing or making any sounds, only tears slowly rolling down our faces. I had done it again, how could I have done it again?
There would be no milk at home for the entire week.
Thing is, we had been through this exact scenario once before, maybe five years earlier.
Most mornings my mother would take the three of us girls out and put each of us into a line. We’d have our voucher in hand and clear instructions of what to buy.
One daughter stood in the bread line, sometimes for an hour or two, slowly inching forward, hoping there would still be something left over. She’s know which bread to ask for, if that wasn’t available, the second option, and if that wasn’t there, what would be third.
One daughter stood in the meat line, to buy the cheapest cuts so my father could make sausages at home later. She knew the cuts, or to ask for the ‘cut offs’, or the carcass for soup.
I stood in the milk line. I suppose this didn’t require any decision making. I just needed milk, one litre.
In the meantime, my mother would go to the vegetable vendor and then the ‘chemist’ for soap or other household things. She’d circle back to collect each of us and then we’d walk home together.
We lived in these massive buildings, on the fourth floor I think, a walk up. They were cold, concrete monstrosities, housing thousands of people within a couple square kilometers. There were underpasses so you didn’t have to go around them, but could zigzag the neighbourhood. Small shops operated out of the basements or were built on the sides. But most vendors were small wooden stores that could barely fit a handful of people in them at the same time, with roofs that stretched in front to provide rain cover for the goods displayed outside.
We had food vouchers as did everyone else. You still had to pay for what you wanted, but the ticket would tell the cashier how much you were allowed to buy.
Because my parents had kids we were entitled to candy. I don’t remember when and how the vouchers were distributed, but I remember clearly, my grandmother convincing my mom to ‘trade’ the meat ones for the confections.
“Ewa, give me the candy voucher, I need it for ‘my child’. ‘My child’ is what my grandmother called her eldest daughter, my Godmother, my mother’s oldest sister. She was an adult, unwed. I don’t know if she had already taken her vows, or if that came later, but she was or would become a nun. “You can take my meat one, we don’t need it.”
My grandmother had a sweet tooth for sure, but she wasn’t after the candy, I know that now. The candies would always be there when we visited her and she’d fill our pockets going home.
Right, sorry, back to the milk shop.
I got the front of the line; I handed over my ticket and my money and was given a one litre glass bottle of milk. Cream gathered at the top. I wrapped my little hands around it and walked out of the shop. I didn’t get much past the doorway before it slipped. I couldn’t have been more than five or six years old. The glass shattered and the milk spilled.
My mother was already standing out there with my sisters and all of their groceries. Someone came out of the shop to clean up the broken glass. The milk was left, the rain would wash it away. I walked towards them, head hung. My mother didn’t say a word, took my hand and we turned to walk away.
“Come on girls, let’s go home”, I could hear the tears.
I didn’t get punished.
Fast forward several years, we left Poland, lived in a refugee camp in Germany and then we were resettled in Canada. We’re past the checkout in Superstore on McPhillips.
I stood frozen.
A cashier ran up to me, “Please wait”. I told my mother they said to wait.
Someone else appeared from behind a counter with a mop and started cleaning up the mess I had made.
The cashier returned with a new bottle of milk in their hands. They handed it to me, smiling, demonstrating how I needed to put one hand under the heavy bottle and use my other hand to grip the handle tightly.
“I have no money” I remember saying, in my tiny voice.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to pay again.”
Tears were running down my mother’s face but she was smiling. I was smiling back at her.
She told this story to my father in disbelief. Then to my aunty, who had come over with her family a few months before us. And she told our neighbours, the other teachers at the Saturday Polish school. She told the story to anyone who would listen.
“And just like that, they gave her a new bottle of milk. Four litres! Imagine, and they didn’t ask us to pay for it again. There is so much here.”
After that I learned to pack the grocery cart leaving room for the milk. I was happier carrying a few bags filled with anything, so long as it was unbreakable.
